The objective of this paper is to highlight and analyse the descriptions of the phenomenon of witchcraft in Burkinabe post-colonial literary works in the English language. The works under consideration include Malidoma Patrice Somé’s Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman (1994), Noélie Yaogo’s The Odds are against Cycling (2012), Mamadou Kousse’s Reap what you Sow and 28 poems (2012), Michel Tinguiri’s The Tribulations of a Sahelian Traveler (2014), Emmanuel Zoungrana’s The Ace of Spades in Disarray (2014), and Bali Nebié’s Secrets of the Sorcerer (2017). The last two are translations from original French versions. With the theory of post-colonial criticism, this paper posits that these writers show concern for witchcraft because they are not satisfied with how it has so far been handled by colonial white people who dismissed its existenceand so decide to give proofs of the reality of its existence even though the efficiency of its mystical powers remains debatable.

Witchcraft, sorcery, Burkinabe traditions, literature, post-colonialism, modernism.