Ahmadou Kourouma

Ahmadou Kourouma (* November 24, 1927 in Togobala or Boundiali, Ivory Coast ( Côte d' Ivoire), † 11 December 2003 in Lyon) was an Ivorian writer.

Biography

Ahmadou Kourouma is 1927 in Togobala or Boundiali - born to a Muslim merchant family - in the north of Ivory Coast. He attended the French School in Bamako (Mali). He is expelled from school by participating in a student protest. When Kourouma refuses to do his military service in Algeria, he is demoted to Indochina. After his military service, studied Kourouma in Lyon mathematics and working after graduation as an actuary again in the Ivory Coast.

1963 Kourouma writes his first and only theater piece Le diseur de vérité. However, it is deducted after the first performance in Abidjan immediately. Kourouma 's fall from grace with the President of Côte d' Ivoire, Félix Houphouët- Boigny, first comes a few months in jail and must then in exile in Algeria (1964-1969), Cameroon (1974-1984) and Togo (1984-1994) live before he can return.

In 1970 he published his first novel: Le Soleil des indépendances which immediately brings him a lot of attention. But not until the early 1990s Kourouma turns back to the letter and confirms the reputation to be a critical witness of modern Africa with this and its subsequent works. In 1990, he is the second novel: MONNE, outrages et défis awarded the Grand Prix littéraire de l' Afrique noire and receive the 2000 Prix Renaudot and the Prix Goncourt des lycéens for Allah n'est pas obligé. On 11 December 2003 Kourouma dies at the age of 76 years in Lyon. His unfinished work: Quand on refuse, on dit non, in which he deals with the internal conflicts of his home country, appears posthumously in 2004.

Since 2004, an annual prize is awarded under the name Ahmadou Kourouma from the International Salon of the book and of the press in Geneva. Excellent is a fictional novel or essay with the sub-Saharan Africa is concerned.

Literary work

Ahmadou Kourouma is selected by its literary themes and his style an important author of contemporary Africa.

He is one of the first African writer who does not belong to the negritude. Not the positive emphasis on African values ​​is the subject of Kouroumas work, but the mirroring of the contemporary problems of Africa from its past to the present, up to their inner from their external polluters. Thus, for example, the novel: En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages inspired by the bloody biography of the former head of state of Togo, Gnassingbe Eyadema. In: Allah n'est pas obligé he tells of a child who participates in the ethnic conflicts in Sierra Leone and Liberia. The author is doing critical with all current African identities apart, be it the African tradition or the accepted Western norms.

The second important feature in Kouroumas work is language. He described his task as follows: ". I translate Malinke in French and give it the French on to find the African rhythm and restore " Deeply rooted in the origins of the people of the Malinke he resorts to the stylistic devices of African narrative traditions such as the Griots. Thus flow proverbs into his stories. The literary language is close to the oral speech.

Works

  • The Prince of Horodougou. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1978. (Original Les Soleils of indépendances, German edition in 2004 as The Last Prince ).
  • MONNE: shame and anger. Diaphanes, 2013, ISBN 978-3-03734-323-4. ( Original title: MONNE, outrages et défis, Seuil, Paris, 1990, ISBN 2-02-034964-7. )
  • Le Diseur de vérité. Acoria, Paris 1998, ISBN 2-912525-14-4. (Play)
  • Yacouba, le chasseur africain. Gallimard Jeunesse -, Paris 1998, ISBN 2-07-052168-0.
  • Le chasseur, héros africain. Grandir, Orange 1999, ISBN 2-84166-124-5.
  • Le Griot, homme de paroles. Grandir, Orange 1999, ISBN 2-84166-125-3.
  • The nights of the great hunter. Union Verlag 2002, ISBN 3-293-20236-5. ( Original title En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages, Paris 1998, ISBN 2-02-033142- X. )
  • Allah does not have to be just. Goldmann, 2004, ISBN 3-442-45732-7. (AKA Allah n'est pas obligé. Paris 2002, ISBN 2-02-052571-2. )
  • Quand on refuse, on dit non. Seuil, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-02-068022- X. ( Unfinished)

Essays and reviews

  • Kian -Harald Karimi: African passages between yesterday and today: urban life in the footsteps of Mongo Betis ' La ville cruelle ' to Alain Mabanckous 'Black Bazar '. In: Ursula Hennigfeld (ed. ): Not only Paris. Metropolitan and urban spaces in the French literature of the present. Transcript, Bielefeld 2012, ISBN 978-3-8376-1750-4, pp. 125-152 (also to 'En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages ' Ahmadou Kourouma of ).
  • Kian -Harald Karimi: 'La nuit mais le temps dure long jour par finite arriver. ' Tropical dictators on trial hybrid linguistic Add: 'En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages ' Ahmadou Kourouma and of ' El otoño del patriarca ' by Gabriel García Márquez In: René Ceballos, Cornelia Sieber et al ( eds ): Passages: Hybridity, Transmédialité, Transculturalidad. Olms, Hildesheim 2010, pp. 557-571.
35948
de