They travel to Guiana and much of northern and Eastern Africa. They are pursued by the stepmother, who continually tries to have them murdered. Being only ten he flees with his mom and half brother Manding Bory. That first wife, an evil stepmother of sorts, understands Sundiata as a danger to her own son Dankaran Touman, who has taken the throne, so she plots Sundiata's death. His immense strength reminds you of Cu Chulainn, the hero of the Irish epic The Tain. Finally, when he realizes that his dead father's first wife is humiliating his mom about it, he gets a huge iron rod and struggles mightily to his feet.

When other kids get near him he punches them without even getting off his ass. Sundiata is super lazy: at seven he still isn't walking, just sitting around eating. Here's the story: this one king is ordered by prophecy to marry this ugly lady, the ugliest hunchback in the land, which he does but she refuses to fuck him until finally he says whoops my bad I'm actually supposed to sacrifice you, not fuck you, and she gets so scared she passes out and then he fucks her while she's passed out, so, like, good plan? This is gross but no grosser than a bunch of stuff from the Edda. It's the 800-year-old story of Sundiata (pronounced Soonjata), the greatest king of Mali and the greatest conqueror since Alexander. What paltry learning is that which is congealed in dumb books!says Mamadou Kouyaté, the griot, or oral storyteller, who's reciting this story. The prophets did not write and their words have been all the more vivid as a result. With them everybody thinks he knows, whereas learning should be a secret.

They do not feel the past any more, for writing lacks the warmth of the human voice. Other peoples use writing to record the past, but this invention has killed the faculty of memory among them.

Sundiata by Djibril Tamsir Niane