KOUROUMA, AHMADOU

born , after 1927, Boundiali, Cte d'Ivoire African novelist and playwright, one of the most prominent postindependence disillusionist writers. Kourouma spent his early years in Guinea and attended secondary school in Bamako, Mali, until he was expelled and was drafted into the army by the French. He was sent to Indochina and served in Saigon. Later he continued his education at Lyon, Fr., became an actuary in Algiers, and entered an insurance and banking career in France and Cameroon. Kourouma's novel Les soleils des indpendances (1968; The Suns of Independence) satirizes contemporary African politics. Narrated in a French flavoured with pungent Malinke folk aphorisms, the story follows the last of a line of tribal princes as he is mistreated by French colonial as well as postindependence African authorities. Kourouma's play Tougnantigui ou le diseur de vrit (Tougnantigui, or The Speaker of Truth) was first performed in Abidjan in 1972.