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by Ahmadou Kourouma (1981)

The Suns of Independence, a short novel of early post-colonial Africa, tells the story of Fama, the prince of Horodugu region, ‘the last of the Dumbuya’ who had reigned over the Malinke. Inheriting the respect of the position title yet stripped from the power of the pre-Independence world, Fama and his wife, Salimata, struggles to fit in this ill-fitted world, “his efforts had brought about his ruin, for like aleaf that’s just been used to wipe somebody’s arse, once Independence had been won Fama was thrown to the flies and forgotten.” Salimata, Fama’s beautiful wife, is exploited and taken advantage of from her desperation to bear a child.

Kourouma writes the volatile clash of cultures, the complex culmination of independence and the violently imposed nation state with its disorientation and loss of identity, interwoven with frank, humane details rich in Malinke lives and folklore without excessive romanticism.

It was as clear as the palm of a frog. He’d been warned. The people of Independence know neither truth nor honour; they are capable of anything, even swwallowing a bee. He’d been told: where thorns pierce the guinea-fowl’s eggs, there the sheep must not go. He had gone ahead, he had wanted to overthrow the suns of Independendce, and he had been defeated. Now he was like the hyena tha fell down a well; there was nothing for it but to await God’s will; to await death.

Much thanks to Danny Yee for giving me this book.

Tags:Africa, culture, fiction