Mongo Beti, a pseudonym for Alexandre Biyidi-Awala, was born in Cameroon in 1932 and was exiled for years in France, where he taught in Rouen. In addition to writing novels and essays, he was also the founder and editor of the journal Peuples noirs, peuples africains.
Beti has been called among the most perceptive of the French-African writers in his presentations of African life from an African perspective. He died in 2001 at the age of 1969. In their obituary, The Guardian remarked that "Beti must be counted as one of the foremost African writers of the independence generation. His biting satires of the colonial period still rank among the best African novels. He also acquired the status of an icon, as a brilliant political polemicist who never gave up on his radicalism."
