Kesso BARRY DECOSTER An author from Fouta-Djalon writing in French [Return to French — Page originale en français]

Kesso Barry-Decoster was born in the Mamou province (Guinea) in 1948. She is the daughter of the late Almamy of Fouta-Djalon. When she was about ten she went to the primary school in Mamou, after previously attending a Koranic school. In 1961 she boarded in Conakry and, the following year, she continued her secondary studies at the high school in Dakar. At the age of fifteen she married and had two children. Subsequently she left her husband and they were divorced. In 1966 she went to Paris where she became a model, remarried and had a third child, Sandra, to whom she has dedicated her autobiography.

Publications

Kesso par Kesso Barry, Princesse peuhle [Kesso by Kesso Barry, Princess Peuhle]. Paris: Seghers, 1988. (233p.). Novel. ISBN: 2 237 10097 9.

"Kesso by Kesso Barry" tells the story of a woman whose destiny leads her from Fouta-Djalon to the high life of Parisian society. It also describes a slice of history, the end of an epoch marked by the decline of the Peuhle nobility and the disintegration of the all-powerful Almamys. Finally, it tells of a woman's self-reflection and the way she critically assesses her own life.

Editor ([email protected])
The University of Western Australia/French
Created: 25 December 1995
Modified: 24 April 2001
Archived: 10 May 2013
https://aflit.arts.uwa.edu.au/BarryKessoEng.html