Birago Diop

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Birago Ismael Diop (born December 11, 1906 in Ouakam, Dakar , French West Africa ; † November 25, 1989 in Dakar, Senegal ) was a Senegalese writer , storyteller and playwright and well-known representative of Francophone African literature and the literary-philosophical trend Négritude .

Life

Veterinarian diploma Diops from 1934

After attending school, Birago Diop studied veterinary medicine at the École Nationale Vétérinaire in Toulouse , graduated in 1934 and worked as a veterinarian on his return home .

He was one of the first to collect the previously neglected oral literature and translate it into French , and to rewrite other fables and fairy tales based on the traditional ones. Among the best-known examples of this are his collections Les contes d'Amadou Koumba (1947) and Nouveaux contes d'Amadou Koumba (1958), in which the boundary between his own poetry and tradition can no longer be determined.

After the sovereignty of Senegal from France , he became the country's first ambassador to Tunisia in 1960 and held this office until 1964. In 1964 he was awarded the Grand Prix littéraire de l'Afrique noire for Contes et Lavanes . In 1974 the collections Les contes d'Amadou Kouma and Nouveaux contes d'Amadou Koumba appeared for the first time in a German translation.

In 1981 the director Paulin Soumanou filmed Vieyra Diop's life under the title Birago Diop, Conteur . A new edition of the Amadou Kouma collections was last published in 1998 under the title Ghost Daughters: The Stories of Amadou Koumba .

bibliography

  • The stories of Amadou Koumba (preface by LS Senghor ): Contes d'Amadou Koumba: Geistertöchter ed Fasquelle - 1947; ed.Présence africaine- 1960
  • The new stories of Amadou Koumba: Les Nouveaux Contes d'Amadou Koumba ed.Présence africaine - 1958
  • Leurres et Lueurs , poems from 1925. ed.Présence africaine- 1960
  • La plume raboutée: ed.Presence africaine 1978

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