The Fortunes of Wangrin by Amadou Hampaté Bâ

In this world of ours, however, bright days are followed by somber nights. And so it happened that great sorrow spread throughout the land. All the same, a particular event does sometimes bear different consequences for different people.

  Malian writer Amadou Hampaté Bâ in 1973 crafted The Fortunes of Wangrin from oral traditions. A biography of an African man called Wangrin and his machinations in the colonial French civil service and as a businessman gaining influence becoming a folk hero conning the rich to give to the poor. Albeit while still recruiting the latter for his own means and extensively lining his own pockets before a reversal of fortunes. Amadou Hampaté Bâ’s own forward and afterword giving context perhaps puts the answer to the question of who was Wangrin best: “A complex of contradictions”. The book artful in its entertaining storytelling is perhaps though most important for the experienced eye of the author on colonialism and traditional African cultures. As such the English edition translated by Aina Pavolini Taylor includes copious footnotes in the back. Useful also is the introduction by academic Abiola Irele. Yet it is too bad recognition of The Fortunes of Wangrin these days appears more relegated to college curriculum or global literature reading initiatives. As an award-winning classic African Francophone book, just the same neither could I pass it over for my own Francophone Writers from 50+ Lands project.

  The Fortunes of Wangrin by Amadou Hampaté Bâ is available in English, translated by Aina Pavolini Taylor, in print from Indiana University Press

The Fortunes of Wangrin Amadou Hampaté Bâ [note special accents on the “e” in Hampate and “a” Ba not correctly reproduced here―see ms.] Translated by. Click on map for a larger display; the map source is the Yale University Library In the novel “L’étrange destin de Wangrin ou les roueries d’un interprète africain”. The Fortunes of Wangrin. Translated by Aina. Pavolini Taylor. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.