Segu | Maryse Condé | Translated by Barbara Bray

The year is 1797, and the kingdom of Segu is flourishing. The people of Segu, the Bambara, are guided by their griots and priests while their lives are ruled by nature. But change is about to come: from the east comes a new religion, Islam, and from the West, the slave trade.

Segu follows the life of Dousika Traore, the king's most trusted advisor, and his four sons: Tiekoro, who embraces Islam; Siga, a merchant; Naba, who is kidnapped by slave traders; and Malobali, a mercenary and half-hearted Christian. Based on historical events,

Maryse Condé was born at Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, in 1937 and spent most of her life in West Africa (Guinea, Ghana and Senegal), France and the US, where she taught at the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA and Columbia. The publication of her bestselling third novel, Segu (1984), established her pre-eminent position among Caribbean writers. She won Le Grand Prix Littéraire de la Femme in 1986 as well as Le Prix de L'Académie Française in 1988 and was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2015. In 2018 she was awarded the alternative Nobel prize for literature and described as 'grand storyteller who belongs to world literature'.