Reviews & Spotlights on…

Gilroy’s Black Atlantic: Samba, Jazz and Sambajazz in Brazil and the Black Atlantic.

By Africa in Words Guest on 28 April , 2013 • ( 7 )

This post is part of the series Gilroy’s Black Atlantic. Click here to read the first post of the series and here to read the third. AiW Guest Gabriel Improta I’m a musician and a social scientist from Rio de… Read More ›

Achebe remembered: thanks for your wahala*

By C E Hastings on 18 April , 2013 • ( 1 )

Wahala: OED ‘trouble, affliction, calamity’ (from the OUP Blog) The death of Achebe has seen a wide range of tributes: reprints of interviews, quotes, images but also reflections and memories from those who knew this great writer, and writers influenced… Read More ›

Travels in Noo Saro-Wiwa’s Transwonderland

By Africa in Words Guest on 12 April , 2013 • ( 2 )

AiW Guest Steve Haines Working in the world of ‘international development’ I’m easily tempted to measure a country by metrics and indices. What interests me is the percentage of the population with access to safe drinking water, the primary school… Read More ›

Review: Sowei Mask: Spirit of Sierra Leone at the British Museum

By Nara Improta and Katie Reid on 8 April , 2013 • ( 1 )

The exhibit is centred around one Sierra Leonean mask, a ‘sowei’ mask of the all-female Sande societies, worn at ritual public celebrations and ceremonies by the societies’ high officials when masquerading as the spirit of the Sande as ndoli jowei (‘the… Read More ›

Notes from the Kwani? Literary Festival

By Africa in Words Guest on 21 March , 2013 • ( 0 )

AiW Guest Dzekashu MacViban In December 2012, I travelled to Nairobi for the 2012 Kwani? Litfest as part of the Goethe Institut’s pan-African exchange programme ‘Moving Africa’. Of the various panels and readings I attended four stood out: our Moving… Read More ›

AiW live on SAfm’s ‘Word of Mouth’ feature prompts a revisit of our Q&A (Pt 2) with Jenna Bass – Editor and co-founder of African pulp fiction magazine Jungle Jim.

By Katie Reid on 5 March , 2013 • ( 0 )

Chatting to Nancy Richards about AiW on SAfm’s Word of Mouth feature, part of the Literature show, on Sunday (03/03), I was struck once again by the significance of the generative potential of literary and intellectual networks across the continent,… Read More ›

Review: William Kentridge – I am not me, the horse is not mine. (@ Tate Modern, until Jan 20.)

By Katie Reid on 14 January , 2013 • ( 2 )

For those who can get to the Tanks at Tate Modern, there is still just time to catch South African artist William Kentridge’s I am not me, the horse is not mine (2008) which closes on Jan 20th. This eight-channel video… Read More ›

Genre and the New Geographies of World Literature: A look at Jungle Jim’s “South African Sci-Fi” issue

By Stephanie Santana on 7 December , 2012 • ( 3 )

AiW Guest Stephanie Bosch Santana. The cover of Jungle Jim issue no. 16, the magazine’s “South African Sci-fi” edition, depicts Zulu warriors casting tiny, toothpick-like spears at the Goliath of an alien bearing down on them. Styled after the pulp magazines… Read More ›

From Roswell to Rosebank – South African SF and Jungle Jim

By Africa in Words Guest on 6 December , 2012 • ( 2 )

AiW Guest Graham Riach. On the front cover of issue 16 of Jungle Jim,a starry sky hangs low over two Zulu tribesmen, assegais held high behind their shields. Looming towards them is a muscle-bound giant with an insectoid robotic head,… Read More ›

‘Without warning, everything became possible’: pulp fiction and the rise of Jungle Jim

By Africa in Words Guest on 5 December , 2012 • ( 12 )

AiW Guest Alexander Howard. 1. As the author and editor Jenna Bass points out in the first instalment of her recent interview with Katie Reid of Africa in Words, the bi-monthly fiction magazine Jungle Jim arose out of a shared desire… Read More ›

Jim in the Urban Jungle – South African print culture and Jungle Jim

By Africa in Words Guest on 4 December , 2012 • ( 1 )

AiW Guest Ed Charlton. As an intervention into the formal space of South African print culture, Jungle Jim is certainly daring and distinctive. If not an entirely unique mode of literary production, its pulp ’zine format is, nonetheless, a marked… Read More ›

Concept-driven African pulp fiction – extracts from Jungle Jim magazine

By Katie Reid on 30 November , 2012 • ( 0 )

Has having heard so much about the African pulp fiction mag Jungle Jim from its co-creator and editor, Jenna Bass (part I of our interview is here), left you wanting, wondering what might be lurking between its distinctive blue and red covers? How the… Read More ›

Q&A: (Pt 2) Jenna Bass – Editor and co-founder of African pulp fiction magazine Jungle Jim.

By Katie Reid on 20 November , 2012 • ( 6 )

(Click here for part I.) This, part II of Katie’s interview with Jenna Bass at Jungle Jim, takes us further into the mag, opening up questions of genre – popular, pulp and science-fiction in Africa and South Africa – plus more on the… Read More ›

Q&A: (Pt 1) Jenna Bass – Editor and co-founder of African pulp fiction magazine Jungle Jim.

By Katie Reid on 13 November , 2012 • ( 5 )

(Part 2 of this interview is here…) Genre fiction and the rise of African sci-fi; the establishment of literary networks across the continent; the status of independent publishing and bookselling, as well as the significance of DIY ethics and aesthetics in… Read More ›

Genre, dystopia and the ‘African’ novel

By C E Hastings on 7 November , 2012 • ( 4 )

Recent discussions on H-Net literature and History logs have (re)debated the idea of ‘African’ literature. Labeling and pigeon-holing books clearly has advantages – although I hope I am not the only one who has moved a book from crime back… Read More ›