AiW Guest: David Borman This week, we are featuring reviews of the five stories shortlisted for the 2017 Caine Prize for African Writing. The prize winner will be announced on Monday 3 July. The fifth and final review of the… Read More ›
Reviews & Spotlights on…
Caine Prize Shortlist Reviews, Part 4: ‘The Virus’ by Magogodi Makhene
AiW Guest: David Reiersgord This week, we will feature reviews of the five stories shortlisted for the 2017 Caine Prize for African Writing. The prize winner will be announced on Monday 3 July. Today’s review is of South African author Magogodi… Read More ›
Caine Prize Shortlist Reviews, Part 3: ‘Bush Baby’ by Chikodili Emelumadu
AiW Guest: Iquo DianaAbasi This week, we will feature reviews of the five stories shortlisted for the 2017 Caine Prize for African Writing. The prize winner will be announced on Monday 3 July. Today’s review is of Nigerian author Chikodili Emelumadu’s story… Read More ›
Caine Prize Shortlist Reviews, Part 2: ‘Who Will Greet You At Home’ by Lesley Nneka Arimah
AiW Guest: Kufre Usanga This week, we will feature reviews of the five stories shortlisted for the 2017 Caine Prize for African Writing. The prize winner will be announced on Monday 3 July. Today’s review is of Nigerian author Lesley Nneka… Read More ›
Caine Prize Shortlist Reviews, Part 1: ‘The Story of the Girl Whose Birds Flew Away’ by Bushra al-Fadil
AiW Guest: Rebekah Bale This week, we will feature reviews of the five stories shortlisted for the 2017 Caine Prize for African Writing. The prize winner will be announced on Monday 3 July. Our first review is of Sudanese author… Read More ›
‘”It’s a passport!” my inner voice yells’. Review of Lola Akinmade Åkerström’s Due North
AiW Guest: Janet Remmington With Nigerian passport in hand, fifteen-year-old Lola crossed the Atlantic to study in the US. The ‘little green book’ soon accumulated visas, each costing hundreds of dollars, as she took to traversing borders in different continents…. Read More ›
Woe and Womb: A Review of Stay With Me by Ayòbámi Adébáyò
AiW Guest: Sana Goyal When asked about the seeds of her novel Stay With Me, Ayòbámi Adébáyò likes to tell the tale of how Yejide and Akin—two characters she created for a short story—persistently stayed in the corners of… Read More ›
Review: Introduction to the filmmaker Tunde Kelani and review of his film Pyrolysis or Paralysis
AiW Guest: Babatunde Onikoyi Tunde Kelani is the preeminent Nigerian filmmaker and one of the most distinguished in Africa. His cinematographic endeavours, under the stables of Mainframe Television and Film Production and situated in the heart of the city of… Read More ›
Betwixt and between: A review of Mitu’s Spice Tour by Blessing Musariri
AiW Guest: Joanna Skelt This month, Joanna Skelt continues our deep dive into Eight New Generation African Poets with a review of Blessing Musariri’s Mitu’s Spice Tour. With a title evocative of a culinary travelogue, dreamcatcher-esque cover iconography and powerful series… Read More ›
South African author, Henrietta Rose-Innes, on cityscapes, self-contained stories, and Cape Town
AiW Guest: Sana Goyal Edited excerpts from the Conversations in Bloomsbury event (March 10, 2017), held at SOAS, London, and which hosted Henrietta Rose-Innes and Brian Chikwava. When Brian Chikwava and Henrietta Rose-Innes found themselves at SOAS for a… Read More ›
Review – Film about South African struggle hero Solomon Mahlangu opens in local cinemas
AiW author: Heather Walker. A long-awaited South African film about struggle icon Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu opened in cinemas across South Africa this weekend. It will also be screened in London at the BFI on Thursday 6th April. Kalushi: The Story of… Read More ›
Ake Review 2015: interviews, short fiction and art
AiW Guest: Tọ́pẹ́ Salaudeen-Adégòkè Tọ́pẹ́ Salaudeen-Adégòkè continues his in-depth discussion of the Ake Review 2015. Read Part I, which discusses poetry, here. Ten Questions: African writers discuss their work The Ten Questions section of the Ake Review features festival guests… Read More ›
How to Write (and Draw) History in Africa: A Review of Abina and the Important Men
AiW Guest: Tamara Moellenberg The second edition of Trevor R. Getz’s and Liz Clarke’s Abina and the Important Men (OUP, 2016) creates a scholarly ‘forum’ around Abina, a nineteenth-century Ghanaian woman who sought her freedom from slavery through the British… Read More ›
Ake Review 2015: Engaging the Fringe Through Literature
AiW Guest: Tọ́pẹ́ Salaudeen-Adégòkè The official annual Ake Arts and Book Festival journal, Ake Review, gives insights into the festival guests’ takes on many issues, from the mundane to the atypical, and features creative works from other writers. A journal of… Read More ›
76 – a beautifully-told film about Nigeria’s pre-democracy years
AiW Guest: Yemisi Arowosafe Telling a historical tale as authentically and accurately as possible is one that every good story teller strives to attain. The Nigerian pre-democracy story is one that has been told in a myriad of fictional texts,… Read More ›
Review of Amid the Chaos by Nathan H. Mogos
AiW Guest: Allison Shelton Early in Nathan H. Mogos’s novel, Amid the Chaos (CreateSpace Publishing, 2016), best friends and partners in crime Misghe and Chenkelo express their opposing views regarding life in Asmara, capital city of Eritrea: “‘It is just not… Read More ›
African literature and the next generation of writing back
AiW Guest: Rashna Batliwala Singh In his now iconic essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” T. S. Eliot famously says “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his… Read More ›
Film Review: Hissene Habré: A Chadian Tragedy by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
AiW Guest: Dare Dan Have you seen Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing (2012), the gruelling tale of the annihilation of communists in 1965/66 Indonesia? Well, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s Hissene Habré: A Chadian Tragedy is such a story; no less provoking,… Read More ›
Review of The Chameleon House: Short Stories by Melissa de Villiers
AiW Guest: Anu Kumar In the title story in Melissa de Villiers’ collection The Chameleon House (Modjaji Books, 2015), Dena, the one who seemingly holds the group together, is always the outsider. As the unnamed narrator reveals, Dena tastes the… Read More ›
Book Review: Writing the Nigeria-Biafra War, a new critical volume edited by Toyin Falola and Ogechukwu Ezekwem
AiW Guest: Matthew Lecznar To sum up the varied literary legacies of the Nigeria-Biafra War (1967-70) in a single volume is no easy task. The conflict, which ended in the deaths of an estimated 1-2 million people, has produced a… Read More ›
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