The Somono are an ethnic group specialized in fishing on the river Niger. Somono Bala is an epic story. This is the first ever translation of this narritive from the Maninka language into English.

On 20th January 1886, the first installment of what is probably the first West African novel in English was published in a Ghanaian newspaper, the Western Echo, by a male author using the pseudonym 'A. Native'. Preceded by a proud editorial which welcomed the arrival of this 'work of "local effort"' by 'a native gentleman', Marita: or the Folly of Love was serialised in 40 episodes, ending two years later in January 1888. It describes the disastrous consequences for African men of uniting according to the colonial Marriage Ordinance of 1884: this ordinance enshrined the Christian, Victorian...

The text in this volume covers a large period. It runs from the intensification of Islamic teaching during the reign of Alu Maana, to the struggles and intrigues at the court when Seeku Aamadu reigned over the neighbouring Islamic emirate of Maasina, to the French colonial regime. During the latter episode, a lot of attention is given to the manipulation of the appointment of rulers and the subsequent decline of their power under Modibo Keita and Moussa Traore in independent Mali. This interference of the French has resulted in doubts about the legitimacy of the kings, which is symbolized by...

In this collection of ethnic group histories, written by authors from the Mara Region of Tanzania, local people tell their stories as a way to inspire development that builds on the strengths of the past. It combines histories from the small, but closely related, ethnic groups of Ikizu, Sizaki, Ikoma, Ngoreme, Nata, Ishenyi and Tatoga in South Mara, east of Lake Victoria and west of Serengeti National Park. Many of the authors compiled their stories by meeting with groups of elders. They were concerned to preserve history for the next generation who had not taken the time to learn the stories...

In the late 1920s the Gold Coast businessman Charles Francis Hutchison published the first volume of his book titled The Pen-Pictures of Modern Africans and African Celebrities. The book contains 162 biographical sketches of Ghanaians that were important in business, in society and the church, in government, and in (nationalist) politics, both from Hutchison's own time and from the nineteenth century. The text of the biographies is in blank verse, and portrait photographs accompany most sketches. Additional photographs of houses and special events, and added biographical information in...

This book is a bilingual (Maninkakan Malinke] - French) presentation of narratives by an old blacksmith, Bala Kante. The narratives are strikingly coherent in the sense that they use use indigenous models for historic causation to recount of the changes Mali has gone through in the 20th century. Though the narratives often recount well-known oral traditions, Bala Kante embeds them in an argument which is highly original. Hence, the texts are of great interests for both historical and literary research. Moreover, the book contains archival material about the Sobara region where Bala Kante...

Ce tome presente le Ta: rikh Mandinka, un manuscrit redige en Arabe et en Mandinka, originaire du village de Bijini en Guinee-Bissau. Inedit jusqu'a present, le manuscrit consiste en une compilation structuree et tres originale sur le Kaabu, reunissant divers recits et chroniques focalisant les debuts mythiques et la chute de cet empire paien au milieu du 19ieme siecle. Deux versions du manuscrit et plusieurs interpretations (lectures) du Ta: rikh sont reproduites, transcrites, traduites et analysees en tenant compte de questions philologiques, historiques et anthropologiques. L'analyse...

Based on the Gikuyu-language pamphlet literature of the 1940s, the family history of the writer Henry Muoria, and a daughter's memory, this book illuminates the political challenges faced by Kenya's first nationalists and the domestic sacrifices that politics demanded

This volume is an interpretive analysis of a collection of 335 song texts treated as primary historical sources. The collection highlights the cultural practices that link music with labor in Sukuma communities in northwestern Tanzania. These linkages are evident in the music of the elephant, snake, and porcupine hunting associations that flourished in the precolonial epoch, in the nineteenth-century regional and long-distance porter associations, and in the farmer associations that have proliferated since the beginning of the twentieth century. Acting primarily as an interpretive editor, the...

First appearing as a series of letters to a local newspaper, "The Life Story of Me, Segilola" caused a sensation in Lagos in the late 1920s. The lifelike autobiography of a repentant courtesan, it regaled the reader with risque escapades, pious moralising and vivid evocations of urban popular culture. The narrative and the commentary that sprang up around it in the Yoruba press offer a unique view of life in colonial Lagos. Today it is recognised as I.B.Thomas's work and hailed as the first Yoruba novel in a major African literary tradition. This volume presents the edited Yoruba text with...