Tierno Monénembo

Thierno Saïdou Diallo, usually known as Tierno Monénembo (born 1947 in Porédaka), is a Francophone Guinean novelist and biochemist. Born in Guinea, he later lived in Senegal, Algeria, Morocco, and finally France since 1973. He has written eight books in all and was awarded the 2008 prix Renaudot for The King of Kahel (le Roi de Kahel).

In 1969, this son of a government official left Guinea, fleeing the Ahmed Sékou Touré dictatorship on foot to neighboring Senegal. He then went to the Ivory Coast to pursue his studies. He went to France in 1973, again for his studies, and he obtained a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Lyon. Afterwards, he taught in Morocco and Algeria. Since 2007, he has been a visiting professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, USA.

Tierno Monénembo published his first novel in 1979. His novels often deal with the powerlessness of intellectuals in Africa, and the difficulties of the lives of Africans in exile in France. He is particularly interested in the history and connections of blacks with the forced immigrant diaspora in Brazil (Pelourihno). He recently devoted a novel to the Fula people and a fictionalized biography of Aimé Olivier de Sanderval, a French adventurer and explorer, originally from Lyon and Marseille (Pastré country), who admired their civilization and became a Fulani "king". He uses the opportunity to revisit colonial history in order to bring this controversial period into the fictional imagination. He is currently working on the life of a Guinean Fula, a hero of the Resistance in France, executed by the Germans, as well as on the links connecting the black diaspora of the Americas with Africa.

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