Fatou Diome

Allison Van Deventer (Harvard University)

Ed. by Nicki Hitchcott, University of Nottingham
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.07: French Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (University of Western Australia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Nicole Kennedy (University of Newcastle), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Dates

Born 1968

Places

Born in Senegal
Active in France

Activities

Primary

Novelist

Resources

Fatou Diome was born in 1968 on the island of Niodior in the Sine-Saloum region of Senegal. Since 1994, she has lived in Strasbourg, France. In addition to pursuing doctoral studies in literature at the University of Strasbourg, Diome has published four novels, a short-story collection, an illustrated book of poems and short prose, and several short stories. Her first novel, Le ventre de l’Atlantique [The Belly of the Atlantic], received wide critical and popular acclaim and has been translated into over a dozen languages.

Diome’s work, which often features protagonists who migrate from Senegal to France, follows a long tradition of Francophone sub-Saharan African literature that depicts travel between Africa and France. Le ventre de l’Atlantique, in particular, joins works of colonial and postcolonial literature by authors such as Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Ousmane Socé,...

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3214 words

Citation: Van Deventer, Allison. "Fatou Diome". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 March 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13167, accessed 15 December 2025.]