Birago diop biography samples

Writer

At the time of his death in , Birago Diop was one of Senegal's most prominent writers, and had been since he first rose to fame in the s.

Though he wrote in the French language, Diop's works drew upon the folktales of his West African nation's indigenous Wolof culture. An obituary in the Times of London praised his "deceptively simple stories" with their "many memorable animal-people and master-tricksters."

Born on December 11, , Diop came from the Ouakam area just outside of Dakar, Senegal's largest city and later its capital.

Birago diop biography samples pdf

At the time, Senegal was part of French West Africa. The country was situated on the African bulge on the Atlantic Ocean coast, and it had once been a major slave-trading center in centuries past. Slaves were captured from the Wolof, its largest ethnic group, and from the Fula, Serer, Jola, and Mandinka ethnic groups.

Though animist beliefs were still strong, Islam had dominated Senegal's culture since the eleventh cent