Born: Togbala, French West Africa (now Ivory Coast), c. 1927. Education: Attended Ecole Technique Superieure, Bamako (now Mali), 1947-49; Institut des Actuaires, Lyon, France, 1956-59. Military Service: Enlisted in French army in present-day Mali; was sent to Abidjan (now Ivory Coast); service in Indochina, interpreter in Saigon, 1951-54. Family: Married; four children. Career: Returned to Ivory Coast, 1960; jailed, then exiled, 1963; actuary, Algeria, 1964-73; returned to Ivory Coast, exiled, 1974; Director General of the International Insurance Institute Yaounde, Cameroon, then of the Compagnie Commune des Reassurances des Etats de l’Afrique Francophone, Lome, Togo, 1974-93; retired 1994. Lives with family in France, travels frequently to Ivory Coast. Awards: Prix litteraire de la Francite, University of Montreal, Canada, 1967; Grand Prix Litteraire de l’Afrique Noire, Lifetime award, 1990; Prix Tropiques 1999, and Prix du Livre Inter 1999, Paris, France; Prix Renaudot 2000, Paris, France; Commandeur dans l’Ordre National de la Cote d’Ivoire, Abidjan, Ivory Coast, 2000.
Publications
Fiction
Les Soleils des independences. 1970; as The Suns of Independence, translated by Adrian Adams, 1981.
Monne: outrages et defies. 1990, as Monnew, translated by Nidra Poller, 1993.
Yacouba, chasseur africain [Yacuba, African Hunter] (juvenile).1998.
En attendant le vote des betes sauvages. 1998; as Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Beasts, translated by Carrol Coates, 2001.
Une Journee avec le Griot [A Day with a Praise-singer] (juvenile). 1999.
Allah n’estpas oblige [Allah Is Not Obliged]. 2000.
Plays
Tougnantigui, ou le diseur de verite [Tougnantigui, or the Speaker of Truth]. 1974.
Critical Studies:
”End of the Line: Time in Kourouma’s ‘Les Soleils des Independances”’ by H.R. Ireland, Presence Francophone, no. 23, 1981; Comprendre ‘Les Soleils des Independances’ d’Ahmadou Kourouma by Jean-Claude Nicolas, 1985; ”La confrerie des chasseurs Malinke et Bambara” in Mythes, rites et recits initiatiques by Youssouf Cisse, 1994; ”Independence Acquired—Hope or Disillusionment” by Mildred Mortimer, in Research in African Literatures, vol. 21, Summer 1990; ”Bound to Textual Violence: Gabriel Okara and Ahmadou Kourouma” in The African Palimpsest: Indigenization of Language in the West African Europhone Novel by Chantal Zabus, 1991; La Langue d’Ahmadou Kourouma, ou Le Frangais sous le soleil d’Afrique by Makhily Gassama, 1995; The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa by Peter Geschiere, 1997; ”Kourouma’s ‘Monne’ as Aesthetics of Lying” by Karim Traore, in Callaloo, vol. 23. no. 4, 2000; ”Ahmadou Kourouma: Fiction Writer” by Carror F. Coates in, Callaloo, vol. 23, no. 4, 2000; ”Entretien avec Ahmadou Kourouma” by Jean Ouedraogo, in French Review, no. 74, March 2001.
Ahmadou Kourouma’s artistic talent and originality have attracted worldwide attention to his urgent message: corruption, dictatorship, and ethnic strife must end for Africans to be free and take their proper place in the world community. This, Kourouma believes, can happen only if Africans face the unvarnished truth of their history.
For Kourouma, truth must be spoken about the present as well as the past: an ancient past of contributions to human development, traditions, glories, and magic; a more recent past of victimization by slavery, colonialism, and cold war rivalries; and a present of disorientation, discord, and exploitation by power and money greedy post-independence African leaders. Yes, Kourouma says, Africa has been abused, but it must accept its own share of responsibility and move on. La parole [the word] will set Africa free. To this project he dedicates his writings, combining modern ideas with traditional images in a highly personal language he creates.
He began writing in mid-life. His first novel, Les Soleils des independences (Suns of Independence), reflects the values and knowledge he has acquired growing up in the tradition-steeped, educated Malinke hunter elite as well as his own disappointments under colonialism and post-colonialism, but is not autobiographical. Like all his fiction it is highly imaginative, though supported by thorough historical research.
The novel’s protagonist is Fama, a fallen Malinke prince shaken first by colonialism, and then reduced to begging by the post-independence ruling tyrant. Fama’s distress is compounded by family problems. His wives appear to be barren, notwithstanding recourse to Allah and magic alike. This condemns him to the worst fate of all, that of dying without progeny. Actually, Fama is the sterile one. He, the great prince, has lost all power. Unable to accept the truth, he makes a last desperate attempt to recapture his past by fleeing to his former Malinke lands, but is senselessly shot for illegally crossing a border that did not exist in his youth.
Back in the Ivory Coast, Kourouma staged a play hoping that the spoken word would bring his message to a wider audience in the essentially non-reading country. In Tougnantigui ou le diseur de verite [Tougnantigui, or the Speaker of Truth], two groups evoke a happy past when they were united. They are now disunited and unsure of their very identity. Foreigners have disrupted their society with alien concepts, but Africans have allowed this to happen. Kouroma indicates that accepting responsibility for the past and adopting an independent and more rational approach to problems will lead to better days. The success of the play in Abidjan in 1972 caused Kourouma to be exiled again.
Years of professional activity went by before Kourouma, the actuarian, wrote his second novel, entitled Monne (Monnew), a Malinke word signifying outrage, defiance, contempt, and humiliation. Here he shows myth and history as inseparable. He portrays Djigui, who has been ruling the African Kingdom of Soba for 100 years, losing control when confronted with the French conquest. Suffering is widespread in Soba, yet neither Djigui nor religious leaders are of any help and therefore they share responsibility for the disasters. All are subjected to the author’s biting irony.
After another long hiatus, Kourouma wrote what is probably his most important work to date, En attendant le vote des betes sauvages (Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Beasts); an Orwellian satire of African dictatorships spawned and supported by foreign powers during the cold war with consequences which persist to this day. The novel is the story of Koyaga, the Malinke hunter with magic powers, narrated against the historical background of colonialism and post-colonialism. After World War II, Koyaga, a decorated veteran, overthrows the first president of the fictional independent Republic of the Gulf and rules it for 30 years thanks to his supernatural capabilities. Kourouma clearly indicates that while to understand Africa one must also understand its belief in magic, magic is useless: it has not prevented any of the ills which have befallen the population.
In the novel reality catches up with Koyaga when the sources of his powers, his mother and his main fetishist, both mysteriously disappear and he can no longer control the inhabitants of the Republic. The only solution left to him appears to be to persuade wild beasts to vote for him in the next election—a possibility made to seem almost realistic in that atmosphere of magic. The book, Kourouma explains, is a donsonoma, a traditional Malinke epic about a hunter’s extraordinary deeds. Donsonoma are sung to purify the protagonist of the deeds, participants, and audience alike; but for them to work, the protagonist must listen and hear the truth presented. Koyaga does gather his hunters and praise-singers to truthfully celebrate his life. The irony and criticism of the praise-singers are stinging, but Koyaga is too vain to realize this. Purification does not occur.
Kourouma selected the Malinke format because he finds western narrative techniques ill suited to write about a continent where magic is a component of everyday life. Similarly he writes in a French which is close to Malinke. Ever since The Suns of Independence his fiction illustrates his concept that standard French cannot express African thought and experience adequately. His style is improvisational, as is the oral literature from which his writings derive. The narrator intervenes to address both characters and readers. Repetition, rhetorical questions, redundancy, Malinke words, images, proverbs, unusual sentence structures, and neologisms all reflect indigenous speech. Aphorisms convey African philosophy. He creates a language meant to strike a responsive chord in his fellow Africans, while also helping foreigners understand Africa better.
Consistent with Kourouma’s goals is his recent novel, Allah n’est pas oblige [Allah Is Not Obliged], the story of children who soldier in the civil wars which continue to ravage West Africa. These child-soldiers have lost everything; they rob, maim, and kill at random, without really understanding their own actions. They play with machine guns, ruthlessly and naively at the same time. The picture is horrifyingly brutal, but Allah is not obliged to be just on the earth he created, hence the child protagonist, Brahima, has no such obligation either. The facts presented are historically correct; it is fiction only because everything is seen and told by a twelve-year-old as he perceives it. To relieve the horror the author lends him an ironic tone. Kourouma tells us that he wrote this topic to keep a promise made to child soldiers he met in Ethiopia, who asked him to write about tribal wars. As all of Kourouma’s fiction, this topic is not merely good literature, but also a participatory act.
