Narrating Environmental Sustainability in Véronique Tadjo’s In the Company of Men

Abstract

This article examines how Véronique Tadjo’s (2017) In the Company of Men constructs ecological awareness within a postcolonial African context. Drawing on postcolonial ecocriticism, the study argues that the novel reframes environmental crisis not as passive loss but as the historically embedded consequence of human violence, ecological dispossession, and exploitative modernity. Through qualitative content analysis, the article explores the novel’s thematic patterns, multispecies narration, and symbolic landscapes to demonstrate how indigenous ecological epistemologies are foregrounded as ethical alternatives to extraction-driven development. Tadjo situates sustainability within communal responsibility, spiritual cosmologies, and reciprocal human–nonhuman relations, emphasising the need to mend fractured interspecies bonds. At the same time, the novel distinguishes between destructive technological expansion and responsible scientific practice aligned with ecological balance. By narrativising interdependence and tracing the causal links between environmental degradation and epidemic outbreak, the text advances a relational vision of environmental justice that challenges dominant developmental paradigms. The article positions Tadjo’s work as a form of literary environmental activism that reimagines sustainability through ethical recalibration and ecological consciousness.