The purpose of this article is to give some evidence of the kind of understanding we can win through reading African prose writers, and of the misconceptions we can clear up in so doing; and to make some suggestions as to what authors and what books we might begin by reading. A good deal of the prose writing done by Africans is biographical, either directly or derivatively. One of the best known examples is Camara Laye’s autobiography The African Child. In it he tells the story of his childhood and youth until the time he leaves Guinea, his home country, to go to France for higher studies. The extract below, which must be about a time when he was six or seven years old, shows the warmth and charm of the book. At that time he lived in Kouroussa, a large up-country town, and the incident described is a visit to his relatives at Tindican, a small village to the west of Kouroussa.