AiW Guest: Kadiatou Keita. It was exhilarating at first. I cheered Professor Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o on like he was performing. The March 2021 installment of the University of Yale’s English Department organised ‘African Writers in Conversation Series‘ featured Ngũgĩ wa… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada AiW note: Yesterday we celebrated the African release of Wreaths for a Wayfarer (Narrative Landscape Press), published in honour of writer, academic, and esteemed beloved mentor and Nigerian public intellectual, Pius Adesanmi, who lost… Read More ›
AiW Guests: Nduka Otiono and Uche Peter Umezurike. AiW note: by way of introduction to our Guest post here, we are very pleased to be able to share with the editors news of the African release of Wreaths for a… Read More ›
By AiW Guest: Judyannet Muchiri.
[…]
Judyannet Muchiri: This is a heavy story and yet there are moments of stillness, joy, love, and tenderness, if you will. I wonder how it is for you as a writer to capture this human existence in its totality as you have done in Afterlives.
Abdulrazak Gurnah: My interest was not to write about the war or the ugliness of colonialism. Instead I want to make sure the context in which war and colonialism happened is understood. And that the people in that context were people with entire existences. I want to show how people who are wounded by the war and by life itself cope in these circumstances. Using the unexpected kindnesses in the story, I wanted to show that there is potential for kindness in people and sometimes circumstances can draw such kindness from us.
By AiW Guest: Judyannet Muchiri.
In the wake of a bad dream, one of the protagonists in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Afterlives, Hamza, laments: “such noise and screams and blood”. These words keep resounding when one thinks about the disruption caused by colonialism in Africa – how our grandparents and ancestors must have felt with the arrival of those who set themselves up as colonial masters.
AiW Guest: Tọ́pẹ́-ẸniỌbańkẹ́ Adégòkè. Iquo DianaAbasi’s debut collection of short stories, Efo Riro (Parresia 2020), puts meat on the bones of the observation that the sense of taste is somehow wired to things that we find delightful or repulsive. Consider psychiatry where… Read More ›
We are pleased to share the news from Modjaji Books that a new edition (the fifth) of the African Small Publishers’ Catalogue is in production and will be available in July 2021. There’s still time and space to list in… Read More ›
As we move through the changed circumstances, timelines and spaces of now, we catch up on our monthly round-up of ‘other words’ – news on AiW’s radar, collated from across our Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Festivals, Fairs, Salons | Readings – Books, Journals &… Read More ›
“Here are stories that are true … because they are windows that open into our contemporary African existence” (Editors’ Introduction, Limbe to Lagos, p. xi).” AiW note: Last week we published a review by Kwame Osei-Poku: A Sense of Africa… Read More ›
Ahead of Jacana Media’s launch of “They Called You Dambudzo: A Memoir” by Flora Veit-Wild, we are fully pleased to be able to share Mushakavanhu’s Words on the Times – an AiW Q&A series initiated as the early stages of the pandemic set in to connect us and our changing experiences of work and working.
Not only has Tinashe researched and written on Marechera extensively, and in a number of generative and connective ways and contexts, we are also delighted to be able to introduce Tinashe as a collaborator with us and member of our team here at AiW with these, his Words…
AiW note: This week, we bring you two reviews of Billy Kahora’s short story collection, The Cape Cod Bicycle Wars and Other Stories – originally published by Huza Press (Kigali) in 2019 and made available in the US with Ohio University Press in… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Ofonime Inyang. AiW note: This week, we bring you two reviews of Billy Kahora’s short story collection, The Cape Cod Bicycle Wars and Other Stories – originally published by Huza Press (Kigali) in 2019 and made available in the US… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Rashi Rohatgi. We’ve been a fan of Akwaeke Emezi’s writing since the pre-launch of their debut, Freshwater, at Africa Writes 2018; after that luminous novel and its YA successor, Pet, Emezi is back with what is perhaps 2020’s… Read More ›
After a difficult year for everyone, the holiday time is looking harder than before. A time to normally spend with family and relaxation has become one of stress and uncertainty. However, we hope that the holidays can still be a… Read More ›
AiW note: Dreams and Assorted Nightmares is Ibrahim’s third book and second story collection, newly released with Masobe Books. In the interview below, Umezurike and Ibrahim discuss the interconnecting fantastical short stories of the collection, their exploration of the “spaces… Read More ›
Today, we have the pleasure of sharing a Words on the Times, Outriders Africa with Kenyan writer Wanjiru Koinange, with an excerpt from her novel The Havoc of Choice. Wanjiru was raised on a farm on the outskirts of Nairobi,… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike AiW note: Ukamaka Olisakwe’s Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All Right was released with Indigo Press in September and from Masobe Books on the 27th October this year – marking itself as a “feminist classic in… Read More ›
AiW note: Posts over 5 days this week, have introduced the epic endeavour of the Keiskamma COVID-19 Resilience Tapestry being made by the Keiskamma Art Project in the rural hamlet of Hamburg, South Africa, through the place, the people –… Read More ›
AiW note: This week, we have been following and introducing the stories behind the Keiskamma COVID-19 Resilience Tapestry, an epic, ambitious response to the pandemic made by the Keiskamma Art Project in the rural hamlet of Hamburg, South Africa. As… Read More ›
AiW note: Yesterday, as part of our Keiskamma COVID-19 Resilience Tapestry series, we introduced four artists from Keiskamma, leading on from Monday’s introduction to the work, which is currently underway. Today, in the second of our “meetings” posts with the… Read More ›
