Voltaique

These twelve stories are further examples of Ousmane's strong social conscience. He writes of ordinary people in Senegal and France with tenderness and a sense of realism, but often also with irony and humor. He cares deeply about the plight of women among the polygamous Muslims of Mali, and in some of these stories he speaks on their behalf -- one of the first writers to do so. Nor is he tender towards the new leaders of independent Africa; they are, he says, "black outside but just like the colonialists within."