For Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie readers in the UK, the film adaptation of Half of a Yellow Sun has been a long time coming. Widely anticipated by online forums including Adichie’s Facebook page, Half of a Yellow Sun’s world premier took… Read More ›
Reviews & Spotlights on…
Musing On The Etisalat Prize For ‘Fiction’ – Sorry ‘Literature’
AiW Guest Toni Kan Literary prizes are strange animals. As subjective as they often are, they usually confer immediate entrée into the rarefied heights of the literary canon. And because they are strange animals, one is almost never surprised when… Read More ›
Reviews: The Year Ahead in African Fiction
In my current capacity as Reviews Editor, I’d like to highlight in this post some of the new fiction that Africa in Words hopes to engage with in the coming months. While this list is by no means exhaustive and… Read More ›
‘Dust’ by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor – review
AiW Guest jalida scheuerman-chianda The second time I met Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor she was sitting at a round wooden table in the garden of the Kwani? office in Nairobi, waiting to be interviewed on the launch of her debut novel… Read More ›
Words on Teaching – “Book Review: Teaching Africa”
As a relatively new teacher of African history at universities, I am keen to find publications that will help me reflect upon, and develop my work. Unlike in most American PhD programmes (I understand) teaching isn’t part of the core… Read More ›
Images of Africa in Children’s Books
Last month I babysat a friend’s child. It was Friday night and there I was, sitting next to him in his bed: it was story telling time. I drew from a pile of books a colourfully covered one, with a… Read More ›
Perhaps you missed (Festive 2013 edition)
Following on from last week’s Mandela retrospective, here are some posts readers may wish to revisit – or discover for the first time from the AiW 2013 archive. If you’re a fan of the ‘best of’ lists that dominate publishing… Read More ›
Mandela, his legacy and its betrayals
Africa in Words will be taking a short break from posting new content over the Christmas period, but we will be back refreshed and raring to go in January. Meanwhile, so you can still get your Africa in Words fix,… Read More ›
Travelling and writing Africa from within
These are extremely interesting times for travel writing as a genre; a number of online- and print-based travel projects have been sprung up over recent years, all focusing on Africans travelling within Africa – some within their own countries, and… Read More ›
Publishing a ‘Double Negative’: And Other Stories’ UK/US publication of Ivan Vladislavić
Teju Cole introducing Ivan Vladislavic in Chelsea: “One of the best writers in the world… one of the great modern prose stylists.” Agreed. — Africa is a Country (@AfricasaCountry) November 5, 2013 (Tweeted from 192 Books in New York, where Teju Cole, author… Read More ›
Review – ‘Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”’: Prufrock, the Magazine
AiW Guest: Graham Riach. The first edition of new literary magazine Prufrock, which appeared in autumn this year, cuts quite a dash. The cover must be somewhere around a Pantone 2635c, I imagine, with a line drawing of J. Alfred’s… Read More ›
Ogbeni Femi, and the future of Yoruba oral performance
Femi Amogunla – also known as Femi Kayode and Ogbeni Femi, or ‘Mr Femi’ – is a spoken word poet based in Lagos. In 2012, Femi took part in 30 Nigeria House, a collaboration between Stratford East Theatre and New… Read More ›
African Photography Series: African Photography has always been International
by AiW Guest Jürg Schneider Between October 26 and November 16 of 2013 the fourth edition of the international photography festival LagosPhoto opened its doors to the public. The month long festival which includes exhibitions, workshops, artistic presentations and discussions is… Read More ›
Highlights: Year 2, Africa in Words
We’ve had a busy twelve months at AiW, one full of firsts – such as our linked ‘Series’ posts featuring Guest contributors, and the beginnings of our Q&As. The blog has now been running for two years, and we’ve gained new followers… Read More ›
Digital Futures: The changing landscape of African publishing – Review & Response
Earlier in the year Africa in Words editors and authors attended Africa Writes 2013 in London. This literature and book festival organized by the Royal African Society hosted some of the most exciting names in contemporary African literature at the… Read More ›
Saraba 14: Extracts from The Art Issue
Following our interview with Emmanuel Iduma, and his insights into the founding and evolution of Saraba Magazine, we are excited to now be offering a taster of the magazine by sharing some extracts from the latest Art Issue. Emmanuel Iduma and Dami… Read More ›
Chimurenga Chronic and Chronic Books II
By AiW Guest: Steffan Horowitz The latest issue (August 2013) of Chimurenga’s quarterly pan-African gazette, the Chronic, and its accompanying Chronic Books magazine are now available in print or for download. It features contributions from the likes of Akin Adesokan,… Read More ›
The Rise of the African Development Confessional?
AiW guest James Smith. Nina Munk’s The Idealist: Jeffery Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty (Random House) isn’t a book only about Jeffery Sachs. It’s a book about the world as we would like it to be, an uncomfortable… Read More ›
To write poetry after Pistorius is insufficient: rapture, rupture and narrative non-fiction in South Africa
By AiW Guest Anneke Rautenbach. Tom Wolfe, as early as 1973, spoke of a new form of writing that “consumes devices that happen to have originated with the novel and mixes them with every other technique known to prose. And… Read More ›
African Studies Classics: Lagosian Print Culture and Gilroy’s Black Atlantic
This is the first post of ‘African Study Classics’: a series about how intellectuals used key African history, anthropology, sociology and literature books in their own work. We are inviting writers (academics or not) to tell us about a book… Read More ›
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