Those Who Wait - Fatou Diome
Arame and Bougna, mothers of two sons who had clandestinely left for Europe, no longer counted their springs; each was the sentinel dedicated and devoted to the protection of her loved ones, the pillar that held the home together on the galleries dug by absence. Coumba and Daba, the young wives, were smelling their first roses: thirsty for love, the future and modernity, they had thrown themselves, without reserve, on a path to happiness that had gradually become their way of the cross. Life does not wait for the absent: the circles vary, family secrets surface, small and large betrayals feed the social chronicle and determine the nature of the reunion. The face we find is not necessarily the one we expected...
288 pages
Author: Fatou Diome
Bibliography and information
Guinean franc prices
Nationality: Senegal
Born in: Niodior, 1968
Biography:
Fatou Diome was born on the small island of Niodior, in the Saloum Delta, in southwest Senegal. She was raised by her grandmother.
Out of step with the island's microcosm, she decides to go to school and learns French. It takes her grandmother a while to accept the fact that she can be educated: little Fatou has to go to school in secret until her teacher manages to convince her grandmother to let her continue. She then develops a passion for French-language literature.
At the age of thirteen, she left her village to continue her studies in other cities in Senegal while financing this nomadic life with odd jobs: she went to high school in M'bour, worked as a maid in Gambia and ended up starting university studies in Dakar. At that time, she thought about becoming a French teacher, far from the idea of leaving her native country.
But at 22, she fell in love with a Frenchman, got married and decided to follow him to France. Rejected by her husband's family, she divorced two years later and found herself in great difficulty, abandoned to her condition as an immigrant on French territory. To be able to survive and finance her studies, she had to do housework for six years, including when she could work as a lecturer during her DEA, a position that provided her with an income that was insufficient to live on.
In 1994, she moved to Alsace. She was a student at the University of Strasbourg where she completed her doctorate in modern literature on The Journey, Exchanges and Training in the Literary and Cinematographic Work of Sembène Ousmane, while also giving courses.
She also devotes herself to writing: she published La Préférence nationale, a collection of short stories, with Présence africaine in 2001. Le Ventre de l'Atlantique is her first novel, published in 2003 by Anne Carrière.
His second novel, Kétala, was published in 2006.
Since then, Fatou Diome has published "Inassouvies, nos vies" in 2008 with Flammarion, and in 2010, "Le vieux homme sur la barque" a story with very beautiful illustrations by Titouan Lamazou with Naïve, a novel "Celles qui attendre" and a story "Mauve" in 2010 with Flammarion.
In 2013, she published "Impossible de grandir", an autobiographical novel in which the author brings Salie, the heroine of her first novel, back to life. In March 2017, Fatou Diome published "Marianne porte plainte".
Source: www.babelio.com