Kane was born to a noble Fulani family in Matam on April 2nd, 1928, where he was educated in a Kuranic School until the age of 10, before being sent to the French school. He passed his baccalaureat in 1948 and moved to France to attend courses in Philosophy and Law at the Sorbonne. He also entered the Ecole Nationale de la France d’Outre-Mer and, on his return to Senegal, he worked as a highly qualified administrator, before he joined the United Nations International Children’s Relief Fund (UNICEF) organization. At the end of his carrier, he worked for the Senegalese government and became the president of an industrial lobby in Senegal until he retired.
He published only two novels: The Ambiguous Adventure (1961) and, more recently, Les gardiens du temple [The Guardians of the Temple] (1995), but his first narrative actually made him famous and is considered to be a masterpiece of African Literature (Grand Prix Littéraire de l’Afrique Noire 1962).
The Ambiguous Adventure, which has...
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Mangeon, A. (2021). Kane, Cheikh Hamidou. In: Mudimbe, V.Y., Kavwahirehi, K. (eds) Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-2068-5_198
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