Life

Born in what was then Dahomey

Dahomey

Dahomey was a country in west Africa in what is now the Republic of Benin. The Kingdom of Dahomey was a powerful west African state that was founded in the seventeenth century and survived until 1894. From 1894 until 1960 Dahomey was a part of French West Africa. The independent Republic of Dahomey...

, Pliya was educated at the University of Dakar

Cheikh Anta Diop University

Cheikh Anta Diop University , also known as the University of Dakar, is a university in Dakar, Senegal. It is named after the Senegalese historian and anthropologist Cheikh Anta Diop and has an enrollment of over 60,000.-History:...

 and then the University of Toulouse

University of Toulouse

The Université de Toulouse is a consortium of French universities, grandes écoles and other institutions of higher education and research, named after one of the earliest universities established in Europe in 1229, and including the successor universities to that earlier university...

. He graduated from the second in 1957 and in 1959 returned to his homeland to teach. He went on to hold ministerial positions in the Benin government.

Work

His work often considers colonial history and issues of values. He has also attempted to translate the Fon people

Fon people

The Fon people, or Fon nu, are a major West African ethnic and linguistic group in the country of Benin, and southwest Nigeria, made up of more than 3,500,000 people. The Fon language is the main language spoken in Southern Benin, and is a member of the Gbe language group...

's tales for a French speaking audience.