Novel
The Beggars' Strike
La Grève des bàttu
Aminata Sow Fall · 1979
Synopsis
The capital wants to please tourists, and the beggars who stand at the mosques and crossroads damage its prestige, it is said. Mour Ndiaye, director of Public Health, orders his deputy Kéba Dabo to drive them out; in the violence, an injured beggar dies in hospital for lack of care. Confined to the outskirts around Salla Niang, who knows how to organise them, the beggars decide to stop holding out their hands. Now Mour Ndiaye is being talked about for the vice-presidency, and the marabout he consults prescribes that he sacrifice an animal and distribute the meat to the city's poor.
Context
The author's second book, it was published by Nouvelles Éditions africaines in 1979, in one hundred and thirty-one pages. The city is never named, and a South African critic recognised in it Dakar as readily as Abidjan, Nairobi or Johannesburg. The strike deprives the powerful of the prayers that alms buy for them, and this is where the book strikes home. Dorothy Blair translated it into English as early as 1981; Le Serpent à plumes brought out a Paris edition in 2001.
Who it is for
Short, funny and quick, driven by dialogue. It is worth knowing that almsgiving is one of the five pillars of Islam to gauge what the strikers take away from the powerful.
Prizes and reception
Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire in 1980, and her best-known work, translated into English the following year.
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