Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali

Part history, part legend, this is the story of Sundiata Keita: the heroic figure who founded the empire of Mali. A thirteenth-century oral epic, Sundiata sees the full-length tale captured in print for the first time.

Djibril Tamsir Niane was a historian, playwright, and short-story writer born in 1932 in Conakry, Guinea.

Niane graduated from the University of Bordeaux in France and was made an honorary professor of Howard University and the University of Tokyo. He also taught at Institut Polytechnique de Conakry before joining the Basic Institute of Black Africa in Dakar, Senegal.

Niane died in 2021.

Translated from French by G.D. Pickett.