Born I Kayes, Mali, Ibrahim Ly held a doctorate in Mathematics.He was a Malian Political Activist; and opposed the Moussa Traore Regime. As a student in Paris, he served as president of the Federation des Etudiants d’Afrique Noire en France. When he returned to Mali, Ly opposed the dictatorial government of Moussa Traore and was arrested for his political activities in 1974. He began a series of detentions that took him to the most notorious government jails in Mali. Eventually Ly was exiled to Senegal and taught mathematics at the Universite Cheick Anta Diop until his death in 1989. This mathematician gave a compelling testimony of the underworld of prison exploitation and lies created by postcolonial regime in Mali by weaving his work around his personal experiences as well as those of his family and friends. His works gave voice to the traumatic pilgrimage of ordinary people throught the labyrinth of police stations, military camps, prison and forced labor camps of the Republic; he saw his writings as a way of bearing witness to the sufferings of fellow prisoners and a way of exposing society’s own corruption and failures. It was most represented in his 1982 novel titled: Toiles D’Arraignees (Spiders’ Web), which was banned in Mali on its publication. In the novel, the main protagonist, a woman named Mariama, is sentenced to prison and thrown into the web of human cruelty for having refused to marry Bakary a member of the local elite. As an admirer of Ousmane Sembene and Mongo Beti, Ly wrote novels which were meant to mobilize what he considered to be the few uncorrupted members of society to actively work for a better Mali; which was a task he considered imperative if the new generation of Africans was to meet its historical responsibility. In his 1988 book a year before his death he wrote a book called Les Noctuelles Viven de larmes (The Nightlife of Tears), in this manuscript he decries the ills and evils of modern-day Africa, rich in rag-like flags and rogue leaders, but beset by corruption and ostracized from the community of modern nations. ^[1] Jean Ouedraogo Encyclopedia of African Literature http://books.google.com/books?id=M73RUGbFsCYC&pg=PA420&lpg=PA420&dq=IBRAHIMA+LY+(Mali)&source=bl&ots=pdrM8PfIZL&sig=no1tdYPYM6pRhmrYzvmV-vvs4VU&hl=en&ei=rEHFTta7Fqfh0QHc9rmlDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CEAQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=IBRAHIMA%20LY%20(Mali)&f=false