Yambo Ouologuem
| Yambo Ouologuem | |
|---|---|
| Born |
August 22, 1940 Bandiagara, Mali |
| Pen name | Utto Rodolph |
| Occupation | Teacher, Marabout |
| Nationality | Malian |
| Citizenship | Malian |
| Education | Doctorate of Sociology |
| Alma mater | École Normale Supérieure, Paris |
| Period | 1968-1984 |
| Genre | Historical fiction, Essay, Poetry |
| Notable works |
Le devoir de violence (1968) Lettre à la France nègre (1969) Les Milles et un bibles du sexe (1969) |
| Notable awards |
Prix Renaudot 1968 'Le devoir de violence' |
Yambo Ouologuem (born August 22, 1940) is a Malian writer. His first novel, Le Devoir de Violence (English: Bound to Violence, 1968), won the Prix Renaudot. He later published Lettre à la France nègre (1969), and Les mille et une bibles du sexe (1969) under the pseudonym Utto Rodolph. Le Devoir de Violence was initially well-received, but critics later charged that Ouologuem had plagiarized passages from Graham Greene and other established authors. Ouologuem turned away from the Western press as a result of the matter, and even today remains reclusive.
Yambo Ouloguem was born an only son in an aristocratic Malian family in 1940 in Bandiagara, the main city in the Dogon region of Mali (then a part of French Soudan). His father was a prominent landowner and school inspector. He learned several African languages and gained fluency in French, English, and Spanish. After matriculating at a Lycée in the capital city of Bamako, he went to Paris in 1960, where he studied sociology, philosophy and English at Lycée Henry IV and from 1964 to 1966 he taught at the Lycée de Clarenton in suburban Paris, while studying for a doctorate in sociology at the École Normale Supérieure.
His major work, Le devoir de violence (1968), resulted controversy and a continuing academic debate over charges of plagiarism.
In 1969, he published out a volume of biting essays, Lettre à la France nègre as well as an erotic novel, Les Milles et un bibles du sexe, published under the pseudonym of Utto Rodolph.
After the plagiarism controversy over Le Devoir de violence, Ouloguem returned to Mali in the late seventies. Until 1984, he was the director of a Youth centre near Mopti in central Mali, where he wrote and edited a series of children's textbooks. He is reputed to have been leading a secluded Islamic life..
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