Building on an ethnostylistics approach, this article aims at analyzing the ways in which African oral literature and self-appropriation of the French language by Africans has challenged and reconfigured the writing of Francophone African modern literature. Ahamadou Kourouma’s Allah n’est pas obligé and Patrice Nganang’s La joie de vivre are scrutinized in this article to show that the above mentioned features – orature and appropriation of the French language- are paramount paradigms useful to assess the reception of the Francophone African fiction aesthetics, as well as that of the discourse which is thereby produced.