Ebou Dibba

Ebou Dibba, MBE (10 August 1943 – 29 December 2000), was a Gambian novelist and a teacher.

Biography Ebrima "Ebou" Dibba was born in Bathurst (now Banjul), capital of the Gambia, where he was raised in the prevalent Wolof culture to which his mother belonged, although his father's family was from Baddibu, a Mandinka area up-river. Dibba studied French classical literature, and took a year out teaching English in Toulon, France, before graduating with a B.A. in French Literature. He earned his M.A. degree from King's College London, and subsequently worked as a teacher at an adult education centre in Muswell Hill, north London, in the early 1970s, and at a drug clinic, as well as helping at a youth club in Kilburn. His literary career was marked by the publication in 1980 by Longmans of his 40-page novella for young adults, Olu and the Smugglers.

His first novel, Chaff on the Wind, was published in 1986. Set in the Gambia in the 1930s, as World War 2 approaches, it has been called "a tenderly written portrait of a time and a place hardly ever represented in African literature". The story of some of the characters in Chaff on the Wind is continued in Dibba's second novel, Fafa.

Selected works

Olu and the Smugglers – young adult novella (Longmans, 1980) Chaff on the Wind (Macmillan Education, 1986) Fafa (Macmillan Education, 1989) Alhaji (Macmillan, 1992)