Mariama B''s pioneering debut, So Long a Letter is an epistolary novel that captures the private lives of women in 1970s Senegal. It won the 1980 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa at the Frankfurt Book Fair and was recognised as one of Africa's 100 Best Books of the 20th Century by the Zimbabwe International Book Fair. 'To think that I gave him 30 years of my life, to think that 12 times over I carried his child. The addition of a rival to my life was not enough for him. In loving someone else, he burned his past, both morally and materially. Recently widowed, Ramatoulaye is required to take sole responsibility for the long mourning process of her late husband. A husband she has not seen in over four years - not after he married his second wife.In a letter to her friend, Ramatoulaye recalls both of their experiences as students impatient to change the world, as wives suffering in the private sphere of marriage, and as mothers witnessing the dangers of Westernisation.

Undaunted by topics of polygamy, social castes, and religion, So Long a Letter is a novel rich with poetic prose and profound wisdom.'Mariama B' is in a class of her own, conveying with real power and poetry a subtle, changing world of female experience.' Guardian 'One could not wish for a more politically alert and more passionately involved account of what life is like for educated Muslim women.' London Review of Books 'The most deeply felt presentation of the female condition in African fiction.' Abiola Irele.