Mariama Bâ’s pioneering debut, So Long a Letter, captures the private lives of women in 1970s Senegal. Recently widowed, Ramatoulaye is required to take sole responsibility for the long mourning process of her late husband. A husband she has not seen in over four years – not after he married his second wife. In a letter to her friend, Ramatoulaye recalls both of their experiences as students impatient to change the world, as wives suffering in the private sphere of marriage, and as mothers witnessing the dangers of Westernisation. Undaunted by topics of polygamy, social castes, and religion, So Long a Letter is a novel rich with poetic prose and profound wisdom. ’Mariama Bâ is in a class of her own, conveying with real power and poetry a subtle, changing world of female experience.’ Guardian ‘The most deeply felt presentation of the female condition in African fiction.’ Abiola Irele