Five books that put you in Mali. Three are by writers from Mali and set there, starting with Amkoullel, the Fula Boy and The Fortunes of Wangrin. The other two are wider picks: books by long-time residents and outsiders who know the place well.
Mali's most famous story is the epic of Sundiata Keita, founder of the thirteenth-century Mali Empire, told by Mande griots. Griots are oral historians and musicians who keep genealogies and history alive through performance. Twentieth-century Malian writers such as Amadou Hampâté Bâ and Yambo Ouologuem wrote in French, the colonial language. Colonial rule, slavery and the memory of old Sahelian empires recur in their pages.
D. T. Niane's Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali sets down a griot's telling of the hero's rise. John William Johnson's The Epic of Son-Jara presents another griot's performance, by the bard Fa-Digi Sisòkò. Amadou Hampâté Bâ's Amkoullel, the Fula Boy recalls his childhood in Bandiagara under early French colonial rule. Yambo Ouologuem's Bound to Violence is a savage novel of Nakem, a fictional Sahelian empire, shaped by slavery and colonial complicity.
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Memoir of childhood in Bandiagara and the Niger bend under early French colonial rule, with Fula and Bambara customs and oral tradition.
Picaresque novel of a cunning interpreter working the colonial administration in 1900s–1930s French Soudan, full of Malian oral storytelling and spiritual beliefs.
Savage novel of a fictional Sahelian empire, Nakem, drawing on Mali's Songhai and Saharan history, slavery and colonial complicity.
By long-time residents and outsiders who know the place well, or folk tales, poetry and history with a strong feel for Mali.
A griot's telling of Sundiata Keita's rise and the founding of the thirteenth-century Mali Empire, rooted in Mande oral tradition.
A scholarly edition of a griot's performed telling of the Mande hero, with the original text and English translation.
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