Short stories
Before the New Earth
Tijan Sallah · 1988
Synopsis
Sixteen short stories, preceded by a letter from Wole Soyinka, on Gambian life and the gap between North and South. A young Lebanese man shoots his family's Gambian cook, and the victim's son takes the case to court; Dumo is arrested for demanding democracy under the reign of the Great Peace; Europe pours radioactive milk into Africa in the name of aid; a villager from Saloum comes to look for work in Banjul. The book calls for a new earth with new values.
Context
The book appeared in 1988 in Calcutta from Writers Workshop, which had already published the author's first book in 1980, and Lynne Rienner distributed it in the United States. In his preface, Sallah presents these stories, rooted in the Gambian experience, as the moral tales of a society seeking to redefine itself, and they draw on Wolof and Mandinka proverbs. Global Hands Publishing reissued it in 2016.
Who it is for
Short stories in English, between moral fable and political satire, directly accessible and drawing on the oral tradition.
Prizes and reception
The critic Cherno Omar Barry sees in it one of the first prose books to depict Gambian life seriously.
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