David Mandessi Diop was born in Bordeaux, France, in 1927.

He was educated at the Lycée Marcelin Berthelot in Paris and spent most of his childhood in France. At the age of 15, his poems began appearing in the literary journal Présence Africaine, with a collection of his poetry, Coups de pilon being published in 1956. The collection was later posthumously translated into English as Hammer Blows. Diop died in 1960.

Edited and translated from the French by Simon Mpondo and Frank Jones.

Simon Mpondo was a Cameroonian poet, translator, teacher, and an active figure in the Negritude movement alongside J.P. Clark. In 1971, he wrote a book about the movement, From Independence to Freedom: A Study of the Political Thinking of Negro-African Writers in the 1960's. His poetry has also been included in anthologies including the Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry (1963).

Frank Jones was one of the most prolific translators of francophone African literature and the winner of the National Book Awards 1971 for his translation of Saint Joan of the Stockyards by Bertoit Brecht.