West Africa

Overview

Speech here is a trade: the griot holds genealogy, history and satire, and the first books published in the region transcribe that matter, from Birago Diop's Tales of Amadou Koumba to Dadie's African Legends. The novel that follows keeps the trace of that voice: Kourouma's The Suns of Independence bends French to Malinke syntax, and Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard bends English to Yoruba. Cinema begins with Ousmane Sembene's Borom Sarret in 1963, the first film made by a director from sub-Saharan Africa. The griot's trade has survived the arrival of the book and of the screen.

What circulates

Two book markets coexist without meeting, one francophone and turned towards Paris, the other anglophone and turned towards London and Ibadan, where the Heinemann series published most of the major names. The languages of the region, Wolof, Yoruba, Bambara, Hausa, are written mainly in school and religious publishing, rarely in the novel.

Limits of this grouping

The division follows the borders drawn in Berlin in 1885, which cut across language areas: Hausa is spoken in Niger and Nigeria, Manding from Senegal to Ivory Coast. It also separates the Sahel from the coast, whereas the empires of Ghana, Mali and Songhai held both. Cape Verde, a Lusophone archipelago, shares with the mainland only the slave trade that peopled it.

Works cited

• TaleTales of Amadou KoumbaLes Contes d'Amadou KoumbaBirago Diop · 1947The Wolof villages and the Sahelian bush, as a veterinarian on his rounds heard them told in the evening by the griots.Literature
• TheatreMonsieur Thôgô-gniniBernard Dadié · 1970not translated into EnglishA servant of the king becomes the go-between for the European traders who have come to open up commerce, and grows rich at the expense of his own people.Literature
• NovelThe Suns of IndependenceLes Soleils des indépendancesAhmadou Kourouma · 1968A Malinke prince ruined by independence, in a French bent to the syntax of his own language.Literature
• NovelThe Palm-Wine DrinkardAmos Tutuola · 1952The country has more than five hundred languages and English is the only official one: to write in 1952 in an English that is not the English of the schoolroom first passes for a mistake.Literature
• Short filmBorom SarretOusmane Sembène · 1963Dakar in the aftermath of independence, where the colonial city has kept its boundaries and where the small trade no longer feeds the man who plies it.Cinema