Ahmadou Kourouma

Ahmadou Kourouma, who has died aged 76, was perhaps the most remarkable African novelist writing in French. He revised French ideas about Francophone policies, which had sought to justify colonialism by attempting to convert Africans and others into respectable speakers and writers of French, a civilised procedure far removed from exploitation. Instead, Kourouma used the language as he saw fit, and said what he wanted, irrespective of its syntax and other controls.

His first novel, Le Soleil Des Indépendances (1968), translated as The Suns Of Independence (1981), was set in two African countries, easily identifiable as the Ivory Coast and Guinea. They have become independent, and a Malinké prince is reduced to the state of a beggar under the single-party governments of, respectively, Felix Houphouet Boigny and Sekou Touré. Thus is the pre-independence ruler brought before the great men of independence.

The book is notable for its style and, with its comic sides, was a presentation of African history. Kourouma claimed he knew nothing of classical French, and could only bring together the Malinké language and ordinary French, although he did confess to a knowledge of Louis Ferdinand Céline's novel Voyage Au Bout De La Nuit (Journey To The End Of The Night, 1932), and of Céline's original and forceful style.

Kourouma was born near Boundiali, in the northern Ivory Coast, and was brought up by a Guinean uncle, who was a civil servant. Educated in Mali, he served with the French army in Indo-China from 1950 to 1954, during which time he learned that many Frenchmen opposed colonialism. He then went to Paris and Lyon, where he studied mathematics and other subjects regarded as suitable for a future administrator. He also married a French woman and joined the Communist party.

When the Ivory Coast be came independent in 1960, Kourouma returned home, only to find that the Houphouet Boigny government regarded him as an enemy, and put him in prison. He moved to Algeria, returning in 1969 when Houphouet Boigny appointed him to administrative posts in Cameroon or in Togo - well away from the Ivory Coast. Kourouma attempted to produce a play, but it was banned and never published.

In 1990 he published his second novel, Monné, Outrages Et Défis (translated as Monnew, 1993), which described the French conquest of Africa and sought to show that the continent's ills came from that period. Though not a great success, it won the annual Nouveaux Droits de l'Homme prize, the harbinger of some 18 further book prizes.

In 1998, En Attendant Le Vote Des Bêtes Sauvages (Waiting For The Wild Beasts To Vote, 2003) enjoyed an unusually large sale in Africa. Two years later, Allah N'Est Pas Obligé, which told the story, in violent street language, of the child soldiers of the west African wars and their brutality, won the Prix Renaudot in Paris.

When internal troubles led to civil war in the Ivory Coast last year, Kourouma returned to Lyon. Already the author of some nine children's books, he promised his daughters he would write more about the fate of children in his country. His wife and three children survive him.

· Ahmadou Kourouma, writer born 1927; died December 11 2003

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