The Guardian of the Word
Laye spent years recording the traditionists of Upper Guinea and Mali, and set down here the telling he had from Babou Condé of Fadama: the buffalo-woman of Do, the hunchbacked child of Sogolon who does not walk until he is seven, the years of exile among neighbouring kings and the return against Soumaoro Kanté. A long opening essay argues that the griot is not a folk entertainer but the trained keeper of a state's memory, and names the men he worked from. Published two years before his death in Dakar, and the last book he finished.
Open The Guardian of the Word in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.
Lineage
- retells ↑ Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali
Attributes
Genre
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Plot structure
Hero's Journey (Campbell)
Emotional arc (story shape)
Quest object (Greimas)
Symbol / motif
Conflict
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 58% · 19 shared
- 47% · 15 shared
- 47% · 15 shared
- 43% · 13 shared
- 40% · 12 shared
- 37% · 13 shared