Boubacar Boris Diop

Boubacar Boris Diop (born 26 October 1946) is a Senegalese novelist, journalist and screenwriter. His best known work, Murambi, le livre des ossements (translated into English as Murambi: The Book of Bones), is the fictional account of a notorious massacre during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. He is also the founder of Sol, an independent newspaper in Senegal, and the author of many books, political works, plays and screenplays. Doomi Golo (2003) is one of the only novels ever written in Wolof; it deals with the life of a Senegalese Wolof family. The book was published by Papyrus Afrique, Dakar. He was awarded the 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Quotes I am trained as a journalist, but when I went to Rwanda in 1998, I had already published four novels. So I was familiar with both forms. I was invited to visit Rwanda by some of my friends who live in Northern France. I said, ”OK, I’ll go, but I won’t write about it.” I just wanted to make a simple report of what I saw and heard. I didn’t want to be involved with all these killings. Maybe I was afraid because I knew it would be very, very hard. So I went there as a journalist, but after a week, I knew that the only way to deal with the genocide was to write a novel. When you feel such strong emotions, the best way to deal with them is not to pretend like it’s not your business. I had to get involved because of the scale of the killings. About ten thousand people [were] killed every day for one hundred days. It was horrible. There were so many different stories I needed to tell. But I wrote the novel as a journalist. It’s not the novel of a novelist. It’s a novel of a journalist. Boris interview response the question 'Your background is in journalism, but when you wrote about the genocide in Rwanda, you chose to write about it as a novel. What can fictional accounts do that journalistic accounts cannot?' When you are a journalist, you go find out what happened and you write your story. The facts command the story. When you are a novelist, it’s exactly the opposite. Your imagination commands the facts. It’s a big difference. When I wrote this novel, I was commanded by the facts. But if I had decided to write a journalistic account, I would have to check everything—numbers, dates, who said what. I wouldn’t be free to tell the story. For me, the most important thing was to underline the human side of the story. After genocide, it is important to give a face, to give a name, to give blood and flesh to the people who were killed. I felt I could do this better as a novelist, but I also wanted to be trusted by my readers. I didn’t want them to see my novel as something fake. I wanted readers to confront reality. The story wasn’t just from my imagination. I wanted people to read the book and know that everything I had to work with in the novel was true. I wanted human beings to ask questions about themselves, about human nature, and about Africa, where there is so much violence. Boris interview response the question 'How has your work in journalism affected your writing style as a novelist?' It was very difficult. It wasn’t the process of writing that was difficult, but the research was difficult. The most horrible thing for me was to watch documentaries and read histories about Africa. In many of these books, what you see is a universal racism. People don’t want to have to think about Africa. When you have killings in Africa, it’s seen as “business as usual.” It’s considered normal. They are killing each other for tribal reasons, and they will stop, but they will start again. When you see that so many children and innocent people have been killed because of these attitudes, you feel angry. Boris interview response the question 'When you’re writing about subjects that are so violent in nature, how do you deal with your own emotions?' I won’t say that everybody in the West has that attitude. And I won’t say that everybody in Africa has a certain attitude. This feeling about Africans killing each other, it’s also the way people think in Senegal, Gabon, Cameroon, and Ivory Coast. I don’t think it’s changed. Writing about Africa didn’t used to be very fashionable. Nobody knew what happened there. But books opened the way for artists to talk about Rwanda. Now, even people who don’t know what happened exactly in Rwanda at least know there was genocide. It’s a huge victory for literature, cinema, and theater. Murambi was published in France in 2000. Some people were interested, but there was no media coverage. But it was republished in April, and now there is a lot of interest. In France, unfortunately, the government was deeply involved with the genocide and sided with the killings. The French government supported the killers. So in France, they didn’t want to talk about it, but now they accept it. It’s a big victory for artists. Boris interview response the question 'Do you hope your writing changes these apathetic attitudes?' External links Boubacar Boris Diop Category:1946 births Category:Living people Category:Philosophers Category:Socialists from Africa Category:Pan-Africanists Category:Journalists Category:Essayists Category:Writers Category:Novelists