The “grand old man” of Senegalese film and, to a large extent, literature as well. He’s nothing if not prolific and I think his work takes some sorting through since, as with many (most?) prolific authors, not everything is worth a reader’s time. A number of the stories here relate to the expatriate experience in France, including a particularly moving one about a young woman who accompanies a family as their maid/cook and general servant. Indeed, a number of the stories involve his championing of women’s rights. My greatest disappointment, I think, is with the variable quality of the stories. Any collection will inevitably have stronger stories and weaker ones. What distressed me here was the significant difference between stronger and weaker with some of the weaker ones being particularly pointless. In fact, I am almost inclined to say that some of them were just this side of silly.* All in all, I continue to enjoy his work but I don’t think I would particularly recommend this collection as a whole—just a small handful of stories from it (including “Her Three Days” and “The Promised Land.”) ( )

This collection of short stories is deceptively simple at first glance. Ousmane Sembene, clearly drawing from his own life experience in both Senegal and France, paints a poignant portrait of the isolation and destructive nature of colonialism. The stories look at the distortion of dreams and the destruction of culture in a variety of instances. Sembene also writes about gender issues in Africa. I think he is creating a parallel vision of women submitting to men and Senegal submitting to France, and the demeaning situation which insinuates itself into the very fiber of the people and the culture. ( )