Abasse Ndione

Abasse Ndione (born 16 December 1946) is a Senegalese author and nurse.

Life

Abasse Ndione was born on 16 December 1946 in the village of Bargny, close to Dakar, the son of a shopkeeper. He attended the local Koranic school at first, then with pressure from his father he and his brother attended French school. He studied nursing and got his first job in 1966, staying in this profession until his retirement. In 1968 he married Meriem, a teacher, and has 7 children. Abasse Ndione lives in Rufisque, a fishing town about twenty kilometers from Dakar. The New African said of him, "It would be safe to bet that Abasse Ndione has seldom earned more than a pittance from any publisher. So he has made his living working full time as a hospital nurse."

Work

It took eight years for Abasse Ndione's first novel, La Vie en spirale (Life in a Spiral) to be released in Senegal. The book discusses the use and trafficking of "yamba" (marijuana) by unemployed youth, police officers and whites in Senegal, discussing yamba as a social metaphor. It caused a stir and attracted the attention of the Parisian publishing house Éditions Gallimard, who published it in 1998. The novel is now studied in Senegal schools.

Ramata (2000) was also translated into Spanish. This novel tells of a beautiful and wealthy Senegalese woman who, aged 50, discovers the pleasures of the flesh in the arms of a little thug 25 years younger. The encounter causes her life to unravel. Ramata was the basis for a 2007 feature-length film directed by Léandre-Alain Baker and starring the model Katoucha Niane in the title role. Abasse Ndione's latest work, the novella Mbëke mi, talks about the emigration of young Senegalese in pirogues trying to reach the Canary Islands and Europe.

His novels show that Ndione thinks first in Wolof and then transcribes into French.