AiW Guest Shadreck Chikoti I get afraid, very afraid, when somebody, anybody, prescribes to me which books to read and not to read. When somebody gives me a template of what African literature ought to look like. And boy! You… Read More ›
Reviews & Spotlights on…
Reading Lessons: The Chronic (“New Cartographies,” March 2015)
AiW Guest: Ed Charlton. When it comes to alliances and accords, Africa is full of them. Whether it is bilateral extradition treaties, regional trade agreements, or the pan-continental constitution of the African Union, there are everywhere traces of the extranational… Read More ›
Ẹ jẹ́ k’á sọ Yorùbá: Yoruba language resources online
The online space offers important opportunities to develop resources for African-language documentation and learning, whether drawing on the power of apps and online games to make language learning fun, or on social media, online databases and crowdsourcing as tools to… Read More ›
Review: Bearing Heavy Things by Liyou Libsekal
This month, Guest Reviewer Rehaana Manek continues our deep dive into the Eight New Generation African Poets. Libsekal writes as though she has witnessed. Witnessed violence, witnessed empathy, witnessed intimacy and has witnessed the bearing of heavy things. Chris Abani,… Read More ›
Review: ‘Do Not Go Gentle’
AiW Guest: Danielle Faye Tran. “It is my wish […] that people should know I died of AIDS” (27) -from a letter written by character Zola to be read aloud at her vigil The spread of HIV creates a tense… Read More ›
A Curated New Generation: Review of ‘Eight New-Generation African Poets’
First: these chapbooks are beautiful. Even on an e-reader, sapped of gravitas, Ibibio artist Imo Nse Imeh’s cover art adds a Chagall-ian layer of both modernism and ethnic nostalgia to this box set, to which Peter Akinlabi, Viola Allo,… Read More ›
Africa in Words’ highlights of 2015
Africa in Words has been taking a break over the holiday season, but we couldn’t resist taking a look back over the memorable year that has been 2015. Here, some of our Editors reflect on their highlights of 2015. We’d… Read More ›
Review: Ebola ’76 by Amir Tag-Elsir
AiW Guest: Réhab Abdelghany Ebola ’76 is a short novel by acclaimed Sudanese writer Amir Tag-Elsir, whose The Grub Hunter (2010) was short-listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2011 and long-listed for the Arab Booker. Published originally… Read More ›
Ethiopia in Transition at Film Africa 2015
AiW Guest: Mike Thomas Four years after Lindiwe Dovey and Namvula Rennie founded Film Africa in 2011, in association with the Royal African Society (RAS) and SOAS, the 2015 edition of the film festival offered the Ethiopia in Transition strand,… Read More ›
Review: poetry from Modjaji Books – ‘Now the World Takes These Breaths’ by Joan Metelerkamp and ‘The Attribute of Poetry’ by Elisa Galgut
AiW Guest: Tom Penfold. Now the World Takes These Breaths by Joan Metelerkamp Joan Metelerkamp is one of the most consistent and articulate poets of South Africa’s post-apartheid literary landscape. Alongside other contributors to the New Coin journal that she… Read More ›
Review: Giving Thanks – Natasha Soobramanien’s ‘Genie and Paul’
As a second-generation American, Thanksgiving seemed to me a less-accessible holiday than, say, Halloween: my grandparents weren’t always available and, frankly, turkey and football still both seem pointless. After leaving the country of my birth behind, though, I’ve started to… Read More ›
Review: Lara Pawson’s ‘In the Name of the People: Angola’s Forgotten Massacre’
AiW Guest: John Spall. English language books on Angola aren’t published very often, or indeed, many books at all written by non-Angolans. Despite Angola’s civil war ending over 13 years ago, comparatively few researchers visit Angola due to the various… Read More ›
Review: Lusaka Punk and Other Stories – the Caine Prize Anthology 2015
AiW Guest: Madhu Krishnan In the just sixteen years that it has existed, the Caine Prize for African Writing has made an indelible mark, if not on African literature itself, then certainly on the critical discourses which surround it. With… Read More ›
Review: Binders Full of Story-telling Women – Pede Hollist’s ‘So the Path Does Not Die’
By AiW Guest Rashi Rohatgi. So the Path Does Not Die (Jacaranda Press, 2014), the African Literature Association’s Book of the Year by Caine Prize 2013 shortlisted author Pede Hollist, promises to be an ‘issues’ book: its protagonist, Finaba, loses her… Read More ›
A Question of Power: Ben Okri’s “Meditations on Greatness” at Africa Writes
AiW Guest Réhab Abdelghany I first saw Ben Okri in a photograph that the Africa Centre had sent me back in 2000 to accompany an interview with the first Caine Prize winner, Leila Aboulela, which I published later in Egypt. In… Read More ›
Review: Reneilwe Malatji’s ‘Love Interrupted’ (Modjaji, 2012)
Reading Reneilwe Malatji’s Love Interrupted in the build up to women’s month in South Africa this August places the text’s significance in particular focus. Marie Claire’s #MCInHer Shoes campaign against gender based violence put male celebrities in high heels in… Read More ›
Review: Nadia Davids’ ‘An Imperfect Blessing’ (Umuzi, 2014)
AiW Guest: Ed Charlton. In the same way as the vicissitudes of the weather—sudden hailstorms, raucous gales, sweltering humidity—often mark our experience of a place more vividly than any of the customary variations in climate, it is the petty familial… Read More ›
Review: SJ Naudé, ‘The Alphabet of Birds’.
By AiW Guest: Carli Coetzee. AiW note: this review is accompanied by a Q&A between Carli Coetzee and S J Naudé here. S J Naudé’s collection of short stories appeared in an Afrikaans language version (Alfabet van die Voëls, Umuzi) in 2011,… Read More ›
Blogging the Caine Prize: Elnathan John’s ‘Flying’
AiW Guest Madhu Krishnan Elnathan John’s ‘Flying’ opens with a dream and ends with a limping chicken. If that sentence sounds incongruous, it, like the story itself, is deliberately so. Throughout its course, ‘Flying’ – at only just over 4200… Read More ›
No Ordinary House: a review of E.C. Osondu’s ‘This House is Not For Sale’
‘— That house is no ordinary house. Ordinary house, indeed — […] — People say that at night you could hear voices and sometimes cries emanating from that house. Even though no one lives there anymore. — It casts a… Read More ›
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