Waiting for Wild Beasts to Vote [Paperback]

Ahmadou Kourouma (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 6, 2004

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 mystical 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 distator of the Gulf Coast. For thrity years, he runs a corrupt but 'clean' state, surviving repeated assassination attempts and gaining support and investment from abroad. But, when the 'First World' decide they no longer want to support disctatorships and call for democracy, he needs another ruse to maintain himself in power ...

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 456 pages
• Publisher: Random House (May 6, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0099283824
• ISBN-13: 978-0099283829
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #388,525 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars worth the effort, February 1, 2007

By 

Doris Hasslocher (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Waiting for Wild Beasts to Vote (Paperback)

It took me a while to get into it, as the style is quite unusual. I found it off-putting at first, but once I got used to it, things flowed. It is a fascinating story, on the surface the life history of an African dictator, full of the expected atrocities, greed, corruption. I assume it is meant to be more globally directed at African dictators in general and gives a frightening perspective on Francophone Africa's politics. There are no characters one can really identify with, the view is too distant and objective for that, so it felt in some ways more like a work of non-fiction. If you are interested in African history or politics, this book is an excellent and unemotional expose of a certain type of governance.