Mambety adapts a timeless parable about human greed into a biting satire of Africa betraying the hopes of independence for the false promises of Western materialism. He brilliantly combines two seemingly unrelated stories. Years ago, in Dakar's port district, a proud and mysterious prostitute, Linguère Ramatou, appeared for a few years, and just as suddenly disappeared. Mambety imagined a history for this enigmatic figure as a beautiful young woman abandoned by her lover for a wealthier wife and, pregnant, driven away by the small-minded villagers of Colobane. Mambety discovered an ending for the story when he saw Ingrid Bergman in a Swiss play, The Visit. Now an old woman, "as rich as the World Bank," Linguère returns to the decaying backwater of Colobane and bribes the avaricious villagers to kill her former lover. Mambety creates a fabular universe structured around the implacable logic of the marketplace, the reign of the hyena. "A wicked tale told with wit and irony." (Village Voice)