Camara Laye was born in 1928 in Kouroussa, Guinea in the current, then a French colony. His father, a blacksmith Malinke deemed Laye encourages the young to pursue studies in French schools (note also that, as Sembene Ousmane , Camara Laye has reversed his full name, true to the traditional French school ), and soon after received his graduation certificate, the boy leaves for Kouroussa capital Conakry, where he attended the Technical Education School Georges Poiret. There CAPE Wins mechanic and in 1947, left for France with a view to becoming an engineer. There remain then odd jobs at Les Halles and the Simca factory. There he began writing and, in 1953, she published her first novel, quite autobiographical L'Enfant Noir, in which he discusses his childhood in Guinea. This novel was very popular in France but in the African anti-colonial struggles, he was sometimes criticized for giving too sympathetic a picture of colonial Africa. This did not publish Camara Laye's Le Regard following year the king , allegorical tale of initiation and whose hero, a white man rejected by his countrymen, is trying to access the deep wisdom of Africa.
In 1956, Camara Laye returns to Africa, Dahomey and Ghana, where he teaches and befriends Kwame Nkrumah . In 1958, Guinea achieved independence and Camara Laye became ambassador in Ghana. Subsequently, it also has important functions in the Ministry of Information, before taking his distance from the regime of Ahmed Sekou Toure which he denounced the dictatorial drift in Dramouss (1966). Camara Laye
immigrates to Dakar, where he worked at the Institute fundamental of Black Africa (IFAN). As Amadou Ba Hampâté few years earlier (the work and the course of the two authors are not without common points), he conducts research on oral traditions. Which result in the publication of his latest novel, The Master speech (1978), transcripts of oral histories about the emperor Sundiata Keita Mandingo (1190-1255). Camara Laye died in Dakar in 1920, while working on a biography of Ivorian President Felix Houphouet-Boigny .
Read:
L'Enfant Noir , Plon, 1953
Gaze King , Plon, 1954
Dramouss , Plon, 1966
Master speech, Plon, 1978
Sources: Laye.com -Camara, Valerie Thiers-Thiam
