Williams Sassine
Williams Sassine (1944 in Kankan, Guinea – February 9, 1997 in Conakry, Guinea) was a Guinean novelist who wrote in French. His father was Lebanese Christian and his mother was a Guinean of Muslim heritage. Sassine was an expatriate African writer in France after leaving Guinea when it received independence under Sékou Touré. As a novelist he wrote of marginalized characters, but he became more optimistic on Touré's death. His 1979 novel Le jeune homme de sable has been regarded as among the best 20th-century African novels. Few of his works have been translated into English, but Wirriyamu was published in an English translation in 1980. As an editor he remained critical of Touré as chief editor for the satirical paper Le Lynx. Some of Sassine's works have been translated into English, Spanish and Russian. Selected works Saint Monsieur Baly (1971) Wirriyamu (1976) (in 1980, an English language translation by Clive Wake and John Reed was published) Le jeune homme de sable (1979) L'Alphabête (1982) Le Zéhéros n'est pas n'importe qui (1985) L'Afrique en Morceaux (1994) Mémoire d'une peau (1998) Critical studies of Sassine's fictional work Asaah, Augustine, "L'inscription du corps dans quatre romans postcoloniaux d'Afrique". Présence Francophone 66 (2006),