Epic
Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali
Soundjata ou l'Épopée mandingue
Djibril Tamsir Niane · 1960
Synopsis
The griot Mamadou Kouyaté tells the life of Sundiata, son of the king of Manding and of Sogolon, an ugly, hunchbacked woman endowed with powers. The child neither speaks nor walks until past the age of ten, and his mother becomes the laughingstock of the women of the court, until the day he stands up and uproots a baobab. When the king dies, Sogolon and her children are driven out: a long exile from court to court begins, while the sorcerer-king Soumaoro Kanté seizes Manding. Envoys then come to fetch Sundiata.
Context
Mamadou Kouyaté's account, collected at Siguiri in the fifties, appeared with Présence africaine in 1960 in a short, reworked version, in French prose. The book aroused wide interest in the epic, in Africa and elsewhere, and played a decisive role in the research devoted to it. G. D. Pickett translated it into English for Longmans in 1965, under the title Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali, and other versions, collected from other griots, have followed.
Who it is for
For those who want to discover the great epic of medieval Mali in a short, lively account, drawn from the speech of a griot.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as a major work of African literature, the book made the epic known throughout the world.