Browsing: West Africa

Une si longue lettre (So Long a Letter) is a 1979 novel by Senegalese writer Mariama Bâ. Written in the form of a long letter, it…

Les Soleils des Indépendances (The Suns of Independence) is the debut novel of Ivorian writer Ahmadou Kourouma, first published in 1968 by Les Presses de l’Université…

So Long a Letter is one of those novels that arrives quietly and stays with you permanently. Written as a single extended letter, it is brief…

When Les Soleils des Indépendances was first submitted to French publishers in the 1960s, it was rejected on both sides of the Atlantic — in France…

Négritude is one of the most influential literary and intellectual movements of the 20th century. Born in Paris in the 1930s among Black francophone students from…

Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001) was a Senegalese poet, cultural theorist and statesman. He was the first President of Senegal (1960–1980) and the first African elected to…

Mariama Bâ (1929–1981) was a Senegalese writer and feminist whose debut novel Une si longue lettre (1979) won the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa and…

Ahmadou Kourouma (1927–2003) was an Ivorian novelist, one of the most important voices in African literature in French. His debut novel Les Soleils des Indépendances (1968)…