Letras Africanas: Vamba Sherif y Agnès Agboton en Tenerife

The writers Vamba Sherif and Agnès Agboton, will take part in the 2014 edition of the International African Book Fair (SILA as part of African Letters, a Casa África programme that was created in 2009  to bring the Spanish public closer to the main voices of contemporary African literature

Now it is the turn of these two writers, Vamba Sherif (Liberia) and Agnès Agboton (Benin) who will participate in both literary dialogues on 14th and 15th November as part of SILA.

Agnes Agboton was born in Benin. She writes in her native languages, Fon and French, and in the languages ​​she learned in her youth when arriving in Barcelona at 17: Catalan and Spanish.

Vamba Sherif was born in northern Liberia in 1973 and spent part of his youth in Kuwait, where he completed his secondary education. He speaks many languages, including Arabic, French, English, Dutch and some African languages ​​such as Mande, Bandi, or Mende.

After the first Gulf War, Vamba settled in the Netherlands and studied law. He has written four novels. The first, The land of the parents deals with the foundation of Liberia with the return of the slaves freed from the United States in the nineteenth century. This novel was published with great success, both critically and commercially. The second, The Kingdom of Sebah, is about the life of an immigrant family in the Netherlands, told from the son's perspective, who is a writer.

His third novel, Secret Links (Tenerife, 2014), has been published in the Netherlands, England, France, Germany and Poland. The fourth, The Witness, deals with an old white man, Onno, who is fascinated by a black woman with a mysterious past and which has the Liberian civil war as its background.

In addition to his love of writing and books, Vamba has also developed a passion for cinema.