Waiting For The Wild Beasts To Vote

Ahmadou Kourouma, Frank Wynne

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English

Vintage
15 May 2004

Fiction & Literature; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

A magical, blackly funny tapestry of a book, which, through the rise and fall of its central character - the dictator of a small imaginary former French African colony - tells the story of modern Africa.

Ahmadou Kourouma's remarkable novel is narrated by Bingo, a West African sora - storyteller and king's fool. Over the course of five nights he tells the life story of Koyaga, President and Dictator of the Gulf Coast. Orphaned at the age of seven, Koyaga grows up to be a terrible hunter; he fights mythical beasts, and is a shape-shifter, capable of changing himself into beasts and birds. He fights in the French colonial armies, in Vietnam and Algeria, but on his return he mounts a coup and becomes ruler and dictator of the Gulf Coast. For thirty years he runs a corrupt but 'clean' state, surviving repeated assassination attempts and gaining support and investment from abroad. But when the 'First World' decides it no longer want to support dictatorships and call for democracy, he needs another ruse to maintain himself in power...

Part magic, part history, part savage satire, Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote is nothing less than a history of post-colonial Africa itself.

By: Ahmadou Kourouma
Translated by: Frank Wynne
Imprint: Vintage
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm, Spine: 27mm
Weight: 319g
ISBN: 9780099283829
ISBN 10: 0099283824
Pages: 456
Publication Date: 15 May 2004
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Ahmadou Kourouma was born in the Ivory Coast in 1927. He fought in the French army in Indochina and studied in France. After independence, he spent many years in exile before returning to the Ivory Coast in 1993. He is regarded as one of the leading African writers in French.

Reviews for Waiting For The Wild Beasts To Vote

This is a tour de force - original, irreverent, brutal, funny, poetic - in which history and myth are brilliantly evoked -- Margaret Busby * Independent * A brilliant, often hilarious, political satire * Daily Telegraph * A thoroughgoing indictment of the African way of leadership * Guardian * Witty and wholly authentic chronicle of black African atrocity... Spellbinding * Spectator * One of the most powerful, funniest and richest novels written in French this decade * Le Nouvel Observateur *