Ahmadou Kourouma was born in 1927 in a village near Boundiali in northern Côte d’Ivoire. His family, part of the noble guerrier, or warrior, caste, traces its lineage to one of the generals who fought alongside Samory Touré, founder of the 19th century West African Muslim empire that united the Malinke people and resisted European colonisation (see Borgomano 1998:7). In the 1930s and 40s when Kourouma was growing up, Samory’s Wassoulou empire had long been dismantled, and the borders drawn up by the French within the vast territory of French West Africa split the Malinke area across several different territories including Côte d’…
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Citation: Batchelor, Kathryn. "Ahmadou Kourouma". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 January 2013 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13171, accessed 22 November 2024.]
