The latest addition to my website is ariama Bâ‘s Une si longue lettre (So Long a Letter). Ramatoulaye Fall is writing to her friend Aissatou. Ramatoulaye’s husband of many years, Modou, (they have twelve children) had taken a second wife, who is a schoolfriend of his daughter. She is, of course devastated but, unlike Aissatou, who left her husband when he took a much younger second wife, she stays in the marriage. At the beginning of the book, Modou has just died of a heart attack and we follow the complex funeral ceremonies. The matter is complicated by the fact that the mortgage on his fancy new house is secured by the house Ramatoulaye is living in with the twelve children. We follow how Ramatoulaye and her children cope, how Aissatou has coped and the change in women’s role in Senegal from being totally subordinate to the male-dominated hierarchy to playing a far greater role in politics, education and life, though polygamy clearly exists and is very much condemned by Bâ.