Waiting For The Wild Beasts To Vote

OVERVIEW

Ahmadou Kourouma’s novel Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote as narrated by Bingo, West African sora – storyteller and king’s fool over the course of five nights, tells the life story of Koyaga, President and Dictator of the Gulf Coast. Orphaned at the age of seven, Koyaga grows up to be a terrible hunter, who fights mythical beasts and is a shape-shifter, capable of changing himself into beasts and birds.

He fights in the French colonial armies, in Vietnam and Algeria, but on his return, he mounts a coup and becomes ruler and dictator of the Gulf Coast. For thirty years he runs a corrupt but ‘clean’ state, surviving repeated assassination attempts and gaining support and investment from abroad. But when the ‘First World’ decides it no longer wants to support dictatorships and call for democracy, he needs another ruse to maintain himself in power…