Camp de Thiaroye by Sembene Ousmane

Abstract

The Senegalese filmmaker Sembene Ousmane died in 2007 at the age of 84.¹ Referred to as the “Father of African cinema,” he nevertheless started his career as a writer and continued until the 1980s to be a prolific novelist. Among his early novels are Le Docker noir (The Black Docker, 1956), Ô Pays, mon beau peuple! (Ô Country, My Beautiful People!, 1957), and Les Bouts de bois de Dieu (God’s Bits of Wood, 1960). In these books, he tackles economic, social, and racial issues in what critics have characterized as a social realist mode, in the tradition of Zola and Brecht. In his later books, Le Mandat (The Money Order, 1965), Xala (1973), Le Dernier de l’empire (The Last of the Empire, 1981), and Niiwam et Taaw (Niiwam and Taaw, 1987), Sembene addresses issues related to the corruption of the African elite in newly independent states.