The Lieutenant of Kouta is the first novel in Massa Makan Diabat 's award-winning trilogy. Featuring an introduction by leading Diabat scholar Cheick M. Ch rif Ke ta and Shane Auerbach, it tells the story, part tragicomic and part hagiographic, of an African lieutenant in the French Army who returns as a decorated hero from the battlefields of Europe to Kouta, a fictionalized version of the author's own birthplace, the Malian town of Kita...