Mariamâ Ba’s award winning short story, originally written in French as Une si longue lettre, is an intriguing view of the way things are in a very different culture from ours.

The ‘letter’ is written by Ramatoulaye to her friend Aissatou and is, as the title tells us, a long letter – twenty-seven chapters, in fact. The events take place in Senegal. The letter begins when Ramatoulaye announces to her friend, Aissatou, that Moudu Fall, her husband, has died.

With Aissatou, who has had the courage to divorce her own husband when he took a second wife, we learn of Ramatoulaye’s struggle when, having borne her husband twelve children, she was told that he had married a second wife, the school friend of her daughter, Daba.

In the course of Ramatoulaye’s struggle to survive and piece together a life for herself and her children in a society that denies women a proper place, we visit educational and legal issues and see a society that is emerging from a traditional way of life, and coming to terms with the modern world.

This is a serious and valuable little text.

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