God's Bits of Wood Author:Ousmane Sembene In 1947-48 the workers on the Dakar-Niger railway came out on strike. Ousmane Sembene, in this vivid, timeless novel, evinces all the color, passion, and tragedy of those formative years in the history of West Africa. — Because the author is a perceptive documentarist and social critic as well as a fine writer, God's Bits of Wood doe... more »s more than recount a fictional version of the Senegalese workers who struggled for unionization. It also accurately describes the French West African institutional setting of that period and vividly conveys glimpses of native culture as it existed beneath the yoke of colonization. Traditional African values are dramatically portrayed as they conflict with the need for change and for acceptance of alien ideas in order to effect independence from oppression.« less