Malick Fall

Fall, Malick (1920-78). Malick Fall combined an interest in literature with work as a bureaucrat in Senegal's Department of Information; he later went on to pursue a career as a diplomat. In spite of the fact that he published very little, Fall's novel, La Plaie (1967), has justly earned him the reputation as one of Senegal's more important novelists of the post-Independence period.

Fall's first published work was a collection of poems, Reliefs (1964), which were composed over a long period spanning an eventful era in Senegalese history. Many of the poems reflect the preoccupations of the colonial period, while others offer a much more personal perspective on the conflicting hopes and fears of the independence process. In these poems, Fall rejects the stereotypical exoticism associated with négritude. La Plaie can be read as a satire on urban life and the various forms of disruptive influence which Western society has imposed upon traditional African ways. The protagonist, Magamou Seck, is drawn to the city to seek work but, injured in a lorry crash, he is reduced to a life of begging. Magamou's wound marks him as a social outcast. But it also has a symbolic significance which relates to the other possible reading of the novel as a quest for freedom, meaning, and a sense of identity.

[Patrick Corcoran]