Aminata Sow Fall is a Senegal

Senegal

Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...

ese-born author. While her native language is Wolof

Wolof language

Wolof is a language spoken in Senegal, The Gambia, and Mauritania, and is the native language of the Wolof people. Like the neighbouring languages Serer and Fula, it belongs to the Atlantic branch of the Niger–Congo language family...

, her books are written in French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

.

Life

She was born 1941 in Saint-Louis, Senegal

Saint-Louis, Senegal

Saint-Louis, or Ndar as it is called in Wolof, is the capital of Senegal's Saint-Louis Region. Located in the northwest of Senegal, near the mouth of the Senegal River, and 320 km north of Senegal's capital city Dakar, it has a population officially estimated at 176,000 in 2005. Saint-Louis...

 where she grew up before moving to Dakar

Dakar

Dakar is the capital city and largest city of Senegal. It is located on the Cap-Vert Peninsula on the Atlantic coast and is the westernmost city on the African mainland...

 to finish her secondary schooling. After this, she did a licence in 'Modern Languages' in France and became a teacher upon returning to Senegal.
She then worked for the National Reform Commission for the Teaching of French before becoming director of la Propriété littéraire (The Literary Property) in Dakar (1979-1988).

In 1997, Aminata Sow Fall was awarded an honorary degree by Mount Holyoke College

Mount Holyoke College

Mount Holyoke College is a liberal arts college for women in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It was the first member of the Seven Sisters colleges, and served as a model for some of the others...

, South Hadley, Massachusetts.

Writing

Her best known books include:

• Le Revenant, Nouvelles éditions africaines, 1976
• La Grève des bàttu (1979); Les Nouvelles éditions africaines, 1980; Serpent à plumes (paperback 2001), ISBN 2842612507
  • The Beggars' Strike, trans. Dorothy Blair, Longman (1986), ISBN 0582002435
• L'Appel des arènes (The Call of the Arena) (1982); Nouvelles éditions africaines, 1993
• Ex-père de la nation: roman, L'Harmattan, 1987
• Douceurs du bercail, Nouvelles Editions ivoiriennes, 1998
• Le jujubier du patriarche: roman, Serpent à Plumes, 1998

The film Battu (2000) by director Cheick Oumar Sissoko

Cheick Oumar Sissoko

Cheick Oumar Sissoko is a Malian film director and politician.-Biography:As a student in Paris, Cheick Oumar Sissoko obtained a DEA in African History and Sociology and a diploma in History and Cinema from the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales...

 is based on her novel La Grève des bàttu.

Further reading

• Simon Gikandi, Encyclopedia of African Literature, Routledge (2002), ISBN 0415230195 - pp.518-9
• Médoune Guèye, Aminata Sow Fall: Oralité et société dans l'oeuvre romanesque, Editions L'Harmattan (2005), ISBN 2747585573 - in French
• "An Interview with Aminata Sow Fall" African Affairs (Lond) (1988) 87(348): 419-430
• Ada Uzoamaka Azodo, Emerging perspectives on Aminata Sow Fall: the real and the imaginary in her novels, Africa World Press, 2007, ISBN 9781592215577