Birago Diop

Birago Ismael Diop ( born December 11, 1906 in Ouakam, Dakar, Senegal; † November 25, 1989 in Dakar, Senegal) was a Senegalese writer, storyteller and playwright and well-known representative of the Francophone African literature and the literary- philosophical current negritude.

Life

Diop studied post-school veterinary medicine at the National Veterinary School in Toulouse, finished his studies in 1934 and was off on his return to his native worked as a veterinarian.

He was among the first who collected so far mostly unnoticed oral literature and translated into French and other fables and fairy tales were newly sealed after the pattern of the traditional. Among the best known examples include Les contes d' Amadou its collections Koumba (1947 ) and Nouveaux contes d' Amadou Koumba (1958), in which the boundary between its own seal and the tradition is no longer observed.

After the sovereignty of Senegal from France he became in 1960 the first ambassador of the country in Tunisia and has held this post until 1964. 1964, he was honored for Contes et Lavanes the Grand Prix littéraire de l' Afrique noire. 1974 appeared Les contes d' Amadou 's collections Kouma and Nouveaux contes d' Amadou Koumbaerstmals in a German translation.

1981 filmed the director Paulin Vieyra Soumanou Diop's life under the title Birago Diop, Conteur. Last published in 1998 a new edition of Amadou Kouma collections under the title daughters spirits: the stories of Amadou Koumba.