God’s Bits of Wood - by Ousmane Sembene By Muniini K. Mulera My Kind of BooksJanuary 9, 20190 Back to Home This is my top choice among the great novels from Africa. “The last rays of the sun filtered through a shredded lacework of clouds,” reads the first sentence of the novel. What follows is a brilliant telling of a story, based on the 1947-48 strike by the workers on the Dakar-Niger railway. Ousmane Sembene brings to life the epic struggle of a colonized people, their triumphs and tragedies and the outstanding role played by women in that seminal event that galvanized Senegalese in a political struggle for freedom. Sembene himself participated in the strike in 1947. Ousmane Sembene, who was best known for his celebrated film production, was a man of very little formal education (he dropped out of primary school) but a giant among the intellectuals. If I had to choose only one novel for my stay on a desert island, it would be God’s Bits of Wood. Back to Home