Novel
The Abandoned Baobab
Le Baobab fou
Ken Bugul · 1982
Synopsis
In the Ndoucoumane, in Senegal, a little girl grows up without her mother, in the shade of a centuries-old baobab, the youngest in a household where she feels she is one too many. French schooling takes her as far as the lycée, then a scholarship takes her to Belgium, where she believes she will find the North of the promises. There she meets with shock and disillusionment, a West that demands its share of exoticism; drugs, sex and prostitution lead her towards her own ruin, and the unloved child still seeks the mother from whom she was separated.
Context
The book was published in Dakar by Les Nouvelles Éditions africaines in 1982. It mixes life story and fiction and describes the effects of colonisation on the women of her country; it opens and closes on the village baobab, a figure of tradition. Translated into English by Marjolijn de Jager, it appeared in Chicago from Lawrence Hill in 1991, then from the University of Virginia Press in 2008; Présence africaine reissued it in Paris in 2010. American critics praised its wisdom and lyricism.
Who it is for
Under two hundred pages in the original edition, written in the first person. The text speaks frankly of drugs, sex and prostitution.
Prizes and reception
It is its author's first book; translated into English as early as 1991, it has since been reissued in the United States as well as in Paris.
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