The Nobel Prize for literature 2021 was announced last month, and in parallel to the event another prestigious literary award was declared late October 26. It was the 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature which is often referenced as “American Nobel”. This time it went to Senegalese Francophone writer Boubacar Boris Diop. He is the 27th laureate of the Prize, and interestingly, the both prizes, the Nobel and the “American Nobel”, have gone to Black Africans for this year – Nobel literary prize went to Tanzanian (Abdulrazak Gurnah) and this prize went to Senegalese.
Who is Boubacar Boris Diop?
Boubacar Boris Diop was born on October 26, 1946 in Dakar, Senegal. He is a prolific novelist, journalist, and a screenwriter, thereby is a household name in the country. He has eight novels, one collection of short stories, two plays, six major political writings and three scholarly essays to his credit. As a bilingual writer, critic, thinker and a professor, he is a prominent voice in Senegal, and writes in French and Wolof, the most used language in the country.
Currently Diop is teaching Wolof literature at Gaston Berger University in Senegal. In 2004 and 2008 he was a visiting professor at Rutgers University and in 2014 was working as a lecturer at ETH Zürich. He has also become a guest writer in Mexico City’s Casa Refugio and a technical advisor at the Cultural Ministry of Senegal.
Literary life
At the very early age Diop developed an interest in writing and finished an unpublished novel describing the experience of racism prior to leave school. He studied in French schools, and thereby French became his written language, though his mother tongue is Wolof.
Following graduation, Boubacar Boris Diop went on to earn degrees in literature and philosophy. Then he taught grammar school in the northern Senegal town of Saint Louis. From the outset, he became a politically active person and an anti-colonialist. Aware of the cultural and racial divisions all around, he was heavily influenced by his readings of Marxist philosophy. At this time he founded a club, whose purpose was to protest colonialism by organizing various events, such as dances, where attendees were also treated to political speeches.
While working as a professor of literature and philosophy, he began to write fiction. His first novel, ‘Le temps de Tamango: suivi de Thiaroye Terre Rouge’ (Tamango’s Time), written in French, was published in 1981 in France. It earned him the Prix du Bureau Sénégalais du Droit d’Auteur. His second book, ‘Les Tambours de la mémoire’ (The Drums of Memory), also written in French and published in 1987, won the Senegalese Republic Grand Prize. The third novel of his, ‘Les Traces de la meute’ (The Pack’s Traces) was launched in 1993, and the fourth novel ‘Le Cavalier et son ombre’ (The Horseman and His Shadow) won the Prix Tropiques in 1997.
His masterpiece
Diop’s best-known work to date is the novel ‘Murambi, Le livre des ossements’, published in 2000 (translated to English as ‘Murambi: The Book of Bones’ in 2006). It is based on the Rwanda’s Tutsi genocide in 1994. To write this book he spent several months with the survivors, in Rwanda in 1998 and learnt of the atrocities. It has been translated into many languages, and was called “a miracle” by Toni Morrison, the late Black American Nobel Prize winning author. It also featured on the Zimbabwe International Book Fair’s list of the 100 best African books of the twentieth century.
Writing in Wolof
In 2003, Diop opted to use his native language Wolof for his novel ‘Doomi Golo’. The book deals with the life of a Senegalese Wolof family and was published by Papyrus Afrique, Dakar. That was translated into English by Vera Wülfing-Leckie and El Hadji Moustapha Diop, and published in 2006 as ‘Doomi Golo: The Hidden Notebooks’ by the Michigan State University Press in the series African Humanities and the Arts. It is the first novel to be translated from Wolof into English. It was also translated into French, but by the author himself, under the title ‘Les Petits de la guenon’ (The Guenon’s Children). Thereafter, Diop wrote a few novels in Wolof, and the most recent novel in French is ‘Kaveena: L’Impossible innocence’ (Kaveena: The Impossible Innocence), published in 2006.
The main characteristic of his fiction is that they all combine history with African legends. It is regarded that the major reason for winning him the 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature is his novel ‘Murambi, The Book of Bones’.
What the Neustadt prize means to him
The Neustadt Prize is the first international literary award of its scope to originate in the United States. It is also one of the very few international prizes for which poets, novelists and playwrights are equally eligible. Winners are awarded $50,000, a replica of an eagle feather cast in silver and a certificate. Comparing to the Nobel Prize which was started by Alfred Nobel with own money, this was endowed by the Neustadt family of Dallas, Denver and Watertown, Massachusetts, ensures the award in perpetuity.
Robert Con Davis-Undiano, executive director of ‘World Literature Today’, the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture, notes that “it is a high honor that a senior African writer of Diop’s stature has won the Neustadt Prize. This is a landmark for the prize and for Diop’s growing and much-deserved renown in the West.”
The jury of the Neustadt Prize is composed of acclaimed international authors, and that fact helps shield the award from external pressure by booksellers, publishers and others who may have interest in influencing the outcome.
Anyway, Diop was nominated for the Prize by writer and translator Jennifer Croft who won the Man Booker International Prize in 2018 for her translation from Polish of Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights.
His journalistic career
As said earlier, Boubacar Boris Diop is not only a fiction writer, but also an accomplished journalist. He began his journalistic career in 1991 when he was 45 years old. But he dedicated himself fully to journalism and gradually flourished in it. Thereafter, he joined many newspapers such as Swiss magazine ‘Neue Zürcher Zeitung’ and the Paris-based magazine ‘Afrique’. In addition to his regular contribution to the French and Senegalese newspapers, he is the founder of the first independent newspaper in Senegal which is ‘Sol’. In Diop’s journalistic life also includes his participation as an essayist in collective works such as ‘Le Temps des aveux’ (Time for Confession, 1993) and ‘Négrophobie’ (Negrophobia, 2005). He is always fond of journalism, and thereby his writing oscillates between fictional and journalistic writing.
He also writes for the cinema and theatre and contributes to numerous publications, including Internazionale and Chimurenga. And he is writing for the radio as well. He produced a few plays apart from poetry, scripts, and essays.
Unlike other prizes a literary prize symbolizes an imaginary world because there is a fiction behind it. Therefore, with the 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature readers would encounter not only a new literary figure who is Boubacar Boris Diop, but also a new imaginary world through his work. However, if we can translate those works into local languages, it will be a remarkable thing, because with that we would feel, though we have divisions within our national boundaries, we are one family on the whole. That feeling will definitely help to develop a new peaceful world.