Madagaskar nad przepaścią. Obraz rozpadającego się świata w nowelach Raharimanany

This paper aims to shed light on short stories of Raharimanana – a Malagasy writer, poet, playwright and novelist (born in 1967) – as well as the image of reality of Madagascar and its inhabitants. The analysis is based on two literary works by Raharimanana, which are ones of his earliest: the series of short stories – Lucarne (1996) and Rêves sous le linceul (1998). The author analyses the situation of his mother island by pointing out all its dark sides: poverty, dirt, abjection and squalor. Human beings are wandering in the moral and material darkness; no hope of a feasible exit seems possible; there are hardly ever any signs of tenderness or love visible. Raharimanana’s style, with its rhetorical forms and a specific vocabulary, enhances the expression of his short stories and the image of Madagascar that they reflect.