Dear friends

I recently received this posting from APELA that Jean Sevry has passed.

So, it is with deep sorrow for this loss that I pass on the word. Jean was a specialist in south african literature, and co-founded an organization that studied colonial literatures. he was active in APELA, its president for a period.

He and his wife Madeleine collaborated on translations into french of a number of major anglophone novels, and he continued to have more african literature projects all the time. His publications were original, important contributions to african literature, to travel literature.

I saw Jean and madeleine every summer. We had met when i shared the rental of his house in france with steve arnold's family, and then repeated the rental 7 years later on a second sabbatical. I pillaged his library when I wrote my first two books on african literature, living there. Jean's life was surrounded by a rich and inspiring library and aesthetic world that included everything from religious icons to beautiful paintings, and watercolor sketches of the countryside that he himself drew.

I want to salute Jean with the remembrance that he embraced life, friendship, and food, and above all ideas and words, across languages and cultures, often with a wonderful laugh and sense of humor. He took us walking through the countryside over and over.

I want to remember the Jean who told me of his refusal to join the troops seeking to overthrow de Gaulle when Algeria was put on the path of Independence, naturally, he would say, making little of the dangers of the times.

Alain Ricard details his accomplishments below. I would welcome those with memories of Jean to pass them on to the rest of us.

Ken Harrow