Tété-Michel Kpomassie: Giant Michel before a plate full of slices of some unknown meat

Tété-Michel Kpomassie was born in 1941 in Togo in West Africa. At the age of sixteen, he ran away from home to embark on an improbable journey to Greenland, a place that had enchanted him through books. In every country he visited, he stayed for several months. He first travelled across West Africa and then managed to reach Europe. In 1957, he journeyed through Abidjan, Accra, and Dakar, with a stop in Nouakchott, before arriving in Paris, Bonn, and Copenhagen. In 1965, he finally set sail for Greenland. He recounted this twelve-year journey and the years he spent in Greenland in the acclaimed book L’Africain du Groenland (An African in Greenland, 1980; English translation 1983), which will be published in a Czech translation by Helena Beguivinová at the end of 2026 by the publisher Argo. The book offers a unique perspective on Greenland as it was and how people lived there half a century ago.  Kpomassie later wrote articles and short stories, published in French. He lives in Nanterre near Paris and regularly returns to Greenland.