Experimental YA novel, representative and complex: When We Speak of Nothing. AiW note: Looking back to the seemingly different world of last March 2019, our #PastAndPresent post this week – a review of Olumide Popoola’s YA novel, When We Speak… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Charlott Schönwetter Zzz Zzzz. At the beginning and – as much shall be revealed – at the end, a swarm of mosquitoes speaks: “This is the story of a nation – not a kingdom or a people –… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Caitlin Bridget Shewell-Cooper. My friends have long heard my complaints that Helen Oyeyemi’s UK covers have never done the books justice. Too twee, too generic, chill out, Caitlin. The Riverhead Books US edition of Gingerbread, featuring a dark… Read More ›
With When We Speak of Nothing Olumide Popoola has created a contemporary young adult novel that addresses the strains of growing up in an economy ravaged by neoliberal economic policies and a community suffering from prejudicial social policies. Popoola’s experimental… Read More ›
“What does it mean when you don’t think you have a mythology?” Marlon James is increasingly preoccupied by legacy. “I return to Greek tragedy before every book I write. I look for answers and Greek tragedy provides them. Or, better… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Madhu Krishnan It’s difficult to know where to start with a text like Voices of Ghana: Literary Contributions to the Ghana Broadcasting System 1955-57. Edited by Victoria Ellen Smith, the second edition of this collection of plays, prose… Read More ›
Chris Abani‘s introduction to this strange and unsettling collection of noir shorts reveals the essence of the collection’s geographical inspiration: “the unsettled darkness that continues to lurk in the city’s streets, alleys, and waterways.” Lagos is the first African city… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Sam Naidu. Leye Adenle’s noir thriller, When Trouble Sleeps, is an excoriating critique of contemporary Nigerian society. From the prologue, with its melodramatic plane crash to the surprisingly satisfying conclusion, this novel is relentless in its examination of… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Akua Banful. I walked into the large room on the second floor of Albertine, the French consulate affiliated bookstore in New York, and immediately felt the energy and anticipation of the crowd. The old, the young, the francophone… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Karina M. Szczurek Trifonia Melibea Obono’s La Bastarda was first published two years ago in its original Spanish by Feminist Press and has now become the first novel by an Equatorial Guinean woman writer to be translated into… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Dominic Davies. A little over two years ago I travelled to Cape Town to attend FanCon 2016, an event that was then South Africa’s most attended comics convention to date. As a researcher interested in graphic narratives from… Read More ›
Supa Modo, Kenya’s submission to the 2019 Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Film category, tells a tale of terminal illness, community, and the power of pretending. When there is nothing more the doctors can do for her, Jo (Stycie… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Megan Ross. Before I write this review I’ll… Share my Open Book diet Too. Much. Caffeine. All the dry red at the Fugard bar. Half a bottle of single malt whiskey (and its accompanying hangover) that Helene Prinsloo… Read More ›
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