I am leaning toward a prediction that Namwali Serpell will be the winner of this year’s Caine Prize for a number of reasons. For starters, a win for Serpell would go some way to deflecting one of the major criticisms… Read More ›
Reviews & Spotlights on…
Blogging the Caine Prize: Masande Ntshanga’s ‘Space’
Masande Ntshanga’s title invites the reader to consider multiple conceptions of space. It conjures up stories of exploration, which promise adventure, excitement and fear. At the same time, it evokes the spaces we occupy, and suggests ways of thinking, reading… Read More ›
Blogging the Caine Prize: F.T. Kola’s ‘A Party for the Colonel’
AiW Guest: Doseline Kiguru Writing in 2000, only six years after the end of apartheid, Sarah Nuttall and Cheryl-Ann Michael in Senses of Culture decried that South African cultural and literary imaginings have been based mainly on the following frames:… Read More ›
Is your reading really ‘useful’? Maryse Conde in Cape Town
I’ve recently picked up Tim Parks’ collection Where I’m reading from,. The essay, Writing Adrift in the World critiques post-colonial literature studies I tutor students from England, studying, or practising, creative writing. They too now move in an international world… They too have taken… Read More ›
The Way We Lived – A Review of Chinua Achebe’s ‘There Was a Country’
AiW Guest: Pelu Awofeso After the dust raised in Nigeria by its publication had settled, I finally read There Was a Country, Chinua Achebe’s last published book, which centres on the Nigeria-Biafra civil war and Achebe’s personal experiences of and participation… Read More ›
Saah Millimono’s ‘Boy, Interrupted’: The Love Story from Liberia
AiW Guest Bwesigye bwa Mwesigire Today, I want to tell you a story. It is not my story. It is Saah Millimono’s story. Maybe it is actually not his story, it is the novel’s protagonist Tarnue’s story. And not just… Read More ›
‘Ratnakara’ (the creator of gems): photography across the Indian Ocean
I’m a big fan of the digitisation projects going on around universities and archives to make historical photographs accessible to everyone. Whilst it’s amazing to see an original daguerrotype, beautifully preserved and framed (or even in a special collection room… Read More ›
“What’s Happening Over There?”: World Literature from the Global South – Man Booker International Public Panel, 26.03.2015
AiW Guest: Sarah Middleton. It has become hard to imagine living in a place where there’s a constant supply of electricity. In Cape Town we experience load-shedding, like the rest of the country, as a measure to prevent the collapse… Read More ›
The Valentine’s Day Anthology: a snapshot of the possibilities and challenges of African publishing
February 14th 2015 marked the publication of the Valentine’s Day Anthology, a collection of short romance stories by seven leading African authors, translated and recorded in different African languages and published by Ankara Press. AiW author Emma Shercliff reflects here… Read More ›
A brief introduction to South African house music
AiW guest: Tom Simmert In the end it’s all DJ Lunga’s fault. Without the feature about him and his label Baainar Records in the German magazine BEAT, I’d never (or at least much later) have thought about South African House… Read More ›
Read more! On lists, labels and limits for ‘African women’s writing’
Inspired by Dele Meiji Fatunla and Zahrah Nesbitt-Ahmed‘s list of 50 women writers they believe ‘everyone’ should read, I’m hoping to complete their list of recommendations in 2015. It includes exciting developments in publishing over recent years, as well as many of’the… Read More ›
Compelling narratives: stretching ‘memoir’ in ‘African lives’
Geoff Wisner sets himself a sizeable task in ‘African Lives’, to introduce the life-writing of the continent: I don’t envy this anthologist. His introduction makes the case for the long history of autobiographical writing in Africa. Wisner argues it needs to be rescued, to be… Read More ›
Review – Jacob Dlamini’s Askari: A Story of Collaboration and Betrayal
AiW Guest: James Smith. On Jacob Dlamini’s Askari: A story of collaboration and betrayal in the anti-apartheid struggle (Jacana Media, 2014). To many the mere notion of an askari challenges. In the South African context it denotes someone who does… Read More ›
Review: Alex Mvuka Ntung’s autobiography Not My Worst Day
When I first sat down to review this book I felt resistant. Not My Worst Day is an autobiography that narrates Alex Mvuka Ntung’s childhood and young adulthood in the Great Lakes Region, describing his experiences during the Rwandan Genocide… Read More ›
Words on Teaching – “The Great War in Africa”
Africa in Words Guest Anne Samson: Ready packaged resources for those who want to explore the Great War in Africa are scarce. However, that shouldn’t put teachers and other educators off doing so as the amount of useful material on… Read More ›
Review: ‘Africa39’ – The Anthology and the Reader
In her Editor’s Note to the recently published Africa39 anthology, Ellah Allfrey asserts, “There is no danger of ‘a single story’ here.” She is referencing, of course, Chimamanda Adichie’s TED Talk, in which Adichie argues that a singular narrative about any… Read More ›
A year of African literature and film – in lists
Africa in Words is taking a break from our regular content over the festive season, but we’ll be back from next week. In the meantime, it’s that time of year for best-of lists, and the African literature and arts blogosphere… Read More ›
Review: Transition Magazine’s Special Issue on Nelson Mandela (116)
AiW Guest Kristen Roupenian A surprising number of essays in Transition’s special issue on Nelson Mandela share the same basic argument: in the ongoing transformation of Mandela into a global icon, something important is being lost. Therefore, those who wish… Read More ›
The Supreme Price: Thinking about ‘wives’ and the gender of political leadership
For me ‘The Supreme Price’ reflects a conflict many working with questions of gender and politics in history will recognise. How to measure the significance of women who attain power through men (husbands, fathers, sons)? How important is it to distinguish between women as figureheads… Read More ›
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s ‘Kintu’ Made Me Want to Tell Our Stories
AiW Guest Nyana Kakoma When upcoming writers like me hear that Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi started writing Kintu in 2003, we despair. We reach into that part of our brain that always doubts that we will make it at this writing… Read More ›
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