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Reading the Ceiling
Dayo Forster
Novel, 2007
Follows three possible life paths of a young Gambian woman from the coast and Banjul, showing family, marriage and women's choices in contemporary Gambia.
Books set in the Gambia
Four books that put you in the Gambia. Two are by writers from the Gambia and set there: Reading the Ceiling and Chaff on the Wind. The other two are wider picks: books by long-time residents and outsiders who know the place well.
About the literature of the Gambia
Gambia's oldest literature is oral: Mandinka griots, professional praise-singers and storytellers, tell the epic of Sunjata, founder of the Mali empire. Few Gambian books are available in English, and much of the country's storytelling has been passed on by voice rather than in print. Gordon Innes's Sunjata: Three Mandinka Versions, translated from Mandinka, offers griots' tellings of it recorded in the Gambia.
Ebou Dibba's novel Chaff on the Wind portrays young people in Banjul and its surrounding towns, caught between the pressures of city life and tradition. Dayo Forster's Reading the Ceiling traces three possible life paths of a young woman from the coast, with family and marriage at its centre. Alex Haley's Roots, mostly set in America, opens with village life in Juffureh on the Gambia River and the events that lead to the slave trade.
By writers from the Gambia
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Chaff on the Wind
Ebou Dibba
Novel, 1986
A Gambian novel of young people in Banjul and its surrounding towns, showing the pressures of urban life and tradition.
Wider picks
By long-time residents and outsiders who know the place well, or folk tales, poetry and history with a strong feel for the Gambia.
Sunjata: Three Mandinka Versions
Gordon Innes
Folk tales, 1974. Translated from Mandinka by Gordon Innes
Wider pick: Translated oral epic, edited by a British linguist
Mandinka griots' oral tellings of the Sunjata epic, recorded in the Gambia and rooted in Mandinka tradition.
Roots
Alex Haley
Novel, 1976
Wider pick: Mostly set in America; Gambia is central only early on
Its opening chapters portray village life in Juffureh on the Gambia River, and the story that leads to the slave trade.
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