African Literature

[Colette Jones]

If you can easily get to London, you may be interested in this.

 

[Stewart]

For years the African Writers’ Evening has filled the air with loud whoops and ethereal words, keeping African writing on the map at times when it wasn’t the new cool thing. To celebrate its fifth anniversary, Ghanian writer Nii Ayikwei Parkes brings the event to Southbank Centre, mixing emerging voices with more established names. Join us to experience a fabulous night where Africa speaks and the world listens.

It would be nice if they gave a list of the names, both emerging and established.

As you can tell by the content of the forum, African literature isn't the most popular. I can count on my hands the number of African books I've read and/or attempted. And most of these are South African: Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee.

But there are others I've picked up and, to some degree been happy with. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart was a good read and one I may consider revisiting. I've enjoyed Nuruddin Farah's From A Crooked Rib (Somalia) but I couldn't get into Tayeb Salih's Season Of Migration To The North (Sudan). I have a couple of Egyptian novels (Alaa Al Aswany's The Yacoubian Building and Naguib Mahfouz's Midaq Alley) that I want to read, too.

Other than that there's a couple by Nigerian novelists, in addition to the aforementioned Achebe: Becoming Abigail by Chris Abani and Beasts Of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala, although I think both of them are more Nigerian-American. Kole Omotoso came to my attention recently, his The Combat being recently published in the South African Penguin Modern Classics range.

The old Heinemann African Writers' Series, which I've mentioned on Luis Bernardo Honwana's We Killed Mangy-Dog, has a list of many books in the series with loads of names worth mentioning and I'll post them up when I have the book to hand.

And let's not forget Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o.

 

[saliotthomas]

There is in Dark star Safari by Paul Theroux a very interesting part about Nadine Gordimer.She is a very good friend of his. It's nice to spend some time in her intimacy as well as her explaination about her choices.This book is full of reference to African literature,starting with Mahfouz and his birth place.

I am half way through the Attack by Yasmina Khadra(Algeria) and i shall try to do a review about it.The book is fasinating so far,by far the best i read from a North african writer.I read a book from Tahar ben Jelloun,by far the most popular Morrocain writer but found it miserabilist and did not like it.My parent asured me that is early work is much better.I shall have to give it another chance(but i'm in not ruch)
http://www.taharbenjelloun.org/accueil.php

 

[Stewart]

There is in Dark star Safari by Paul Theroux a very interesting part about Nadine Gordimer.

I may be interested to one day get to it. As it is I have two Theroux travelogues (The Great Railway Bazaar and The Old Patagonian Express) which I will be travelling first.

I am half way through the Attack by Yasmina Khadra(Algeria) and i shall try to do a review about it.

Thanks. I have a copy of that on loan from the library. I had an aborted attempt at Khadra's The Swallows Of Kabul early last year. I don't remember why I set it aside (perhaps just reading block) as it wasn't the most difficult of reads.

 

[Heteronym]

I'm more familiar with the Portuguese-language African literature.The Angolan writer Jos? Eduardo Agualusa has written a book I've enjoyed a lot: The Book of Chameleons. It won the 2007 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. It's a funny little book, narrated by a chameleon, about a man who invents and sells new pasts for people who want to disappear.

I'd also recommend Mozambican author Mia Couto, who has an extensive ouevre ranging from poetry to short-fiction to novels. His writing is quite unique in that he constantly creates new words. I've always wanted to know how his translators negotiate that problem.

 

[abecedarian]

I'd also recommend Mozambican author Mia Couto, who has an extensive ouevre ranging from poetry to short-fiction to novels. His writing is quite unique in that he constantly creates new words. I've always wanted to know how his translators negotiate that problem.

I read Voices Made Night by Couto, and while I felt the stories were too bleak for my personal tastes, I was impressed by his poetic imagery.

 

[Stewart]

Was just out at lunch there and spotted the new AWS Classics series from Heinemann. Basically, it's a selection of eight books - I'm sure more will add to the range in time - of African novels from their well known African Writers Series. The new site can be found at African Writers. Apart from the bewildering prices (I'll never understand book prices!) where a book half the size of another comes in more expensive, they look quite nice, coming in a classy black with a patterned edge, shot through with a stylised section of African art.

​

The initial titles are:

• Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
• No Longer At Ease, Chinua Achebe
• So Long A Letter, B? Mariama
• The Joys Of Motherhood, Buchi Emecheta
• Maru, Bessie Head
• When Rain Clouds Gather, Bessie Head
• Season Of Migration To The North, Tayeb Salih
• A Grain Of Wheat, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

I've already got Things Fall Apart and the Tayeb Salih novel in the Penguin Modern Classics range, but I think I'll be getting them again to ensure a complete set of these.

 

[abecedarian]

Snazzy cover! All those names seem so familiar that I had to double check my list..I read a different book for Botswanna so I missed Bessie Head, but thankfully that's fixable. I read The Wedding of Zein by Tayeb Salih and my eyes glazed over-not sure if that was the author's fault or mine..So Long a Letter sounds very familiar; I wonder if I read it and didn't get it written down..will have to see about that. The cover I saw of A Grain of Wheat just now at amazon looks highly familiar too.. I can't place the synopsis though. Perhaps I received it through interlibrary loan and didn't have time to read the book..and adding to the confusion is the fact I read another book by the same title for Japan. I'll definately have to read The Joys of Motherhood; it looks great.

You rescue any of these lovely books from the bookstore? You ok?

 

[Stewart]

I read a different book for Botswanna so I missed Bessie Head, but thankfully that's fixable.

From the bio, she was South African but wrote about Botswana, eventually dying there.

You rescue any of these lovely books from the bookstore?

Of course.

• So Long A Letter, B? Mariama
• When Rain Clouds Gather, Bessie Head

 

[abecedarian]

From the bio, she was South African but wrote about Botswana, eventually dying there.


Of course.

• So Long A Letter, B? Mariama
• When Rain Clouds Gather, Bessie Head

For the challenge, she might have counted for both places. In fact, for the person who issued the challenge, Botswana might hold more weight as that's where she spent most of her life... that definition was always somewhat vague for this whole process as it is so difficult to know where an author's citizenship lies. Sometimes it shouildn't matter.


I saw your post in Recent Purchases after I posted... glad to know we don't need to check your pulse

 

[Eric]

I am always eager to know what has been written within the past 20 years in any given country, plus the names of up-and-coming names new authors. It strikes me that Stewart's list lists the old guard:

Chinua Achebe (born 1930)
B? Mariama (born 1929)
Buchi Emecheta (born 1944)
Bessie Head (1937-1986)
Tayeb Salih (born 1929)
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (born 1938)

The youngest of these authors is now 64 (!) years old. Do any of you know of African authors that are under the age of 40? Because in our postcolonial times, we in Europe can surely not have abandoned younger African writers.

 

[Heteronym]

Eric, have you ever heard of the Angolan writer Ondjaki?

 

[Eric]

No, Heteronym. Five minutes ago, I'd never heard of him. But I can Google:

Angolan author Ondjaki to launch his latest book in UK Sociolingo’s Africa

Ondjaki

ondjaki

His "The Whistler" is evidently translated by ther South African journalist Richard Bartlett;

The Whistler - Ondjaki

 

[Heteronym]

Now you know an African writer under the age of 40

 

[Mirabell]

I am reading a novel by Fatou Diome, who has turned 40 this year or will turn 40 (I fail to find the month on the web). Female senegalese writer,


speaking of which. it makes me deeply uneasy that we have a section "african literature" instead of one on nigerian, senegalese, etc. literature.

 

[Stewart]

I am reading a novel by Fatou Diome, who has turned 40 this year or will turn 40 (I fail to find the month on the web). Female senegalese writer,

I have one by her too. It's called The Belly Of The Atlantic.

speaking of which. it makes me deeply uneasy that we have a section "african literature" instead of one on nigerian, senegalese, etc. literature.

That's only because nobody has thought to start one.

 

[Mirabell]

I have one by her too. It's called The Belly Of The Atlantic.

Got that one too, now. Ordered both at the same time, apparently took one longer than the other...

 

[Bjorn]

Here's a list of the 100 best African books of the 20th century, as compiled at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair (which has apparently since ceased to exist) in 2002.

The top 12:

1. [FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]Chinua ACHEBE - [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]Things Fall Apart [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica](Nigeria, 1958)[/FONT]
2. [FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]Meshack ASARE - [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]Sosu's Call [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica](Ghana[/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica], 1997)[/FONT]
3. [FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]Mariama B? - [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]So Long A Letter [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica](Senegal[/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica], 1980)[/FONT]
4. [FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]Mia COUTO - [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]Terra Sonambula [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica](Mozambique[/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica], 1992)[/FONT]
5. [FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]Tsitsi DANGAREMBGA - [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]Nervous Conditions [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica](Zimbabwe[/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica], 1988)[/FONT]
6. [FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]Cheikh Anta DIOP - [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]Ant?riorit? Des Civilisations N?gres [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica](Senegal[/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica], [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]1967)[/FONT]
7. [FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]Assia DJEBAR - [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]L'Amour La Fantasia [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica](Algeria,[/FONT] [FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]1985)[/FONT]
8. [FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]Naguib MAHFOUZ - [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]The Cairo Trilogy [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica](Egypt,[/FONT] [FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]1956)[/FONT]
9. [FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]Thomas Mokopu MOFOLO - [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]Chaka [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica](Lesotho,[/FONT] [FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica] 1925)[/FONT]
10. [FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]NGUGI wa Thiong'o - [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]A Grain Of Wheat [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica](Kenya,[/FONT] [FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica] 1967)[/FONT]
11. [FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]L?opold S?dar SENGHOR - [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]Oeuvre Po?tique [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica](Senegal,[/FONT] [FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica] 1990)[/FONT]
12. [FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]Wole SOYINKA - [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica]Ake: The Years of Childhood [/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica](Nigeria,[/FONT] [FONT=verdana, geneva, helvetica] 1981)[/FONT]

 

[Heteronym]

I knew Mia Couto's Sleepwalking Land was on the first twelve, but I had no idea it was so high up on the list.

 

[Jan Mbali]

One of South Africa's greatest writers has just died, Ezekial Mphahlele. As the cutting below indicates, he is widely known for Down Second Avenue - one of our 5 best literary works in my opinion. His descritpions of schooling are powerful - I used it it as a potent source in teaching the sociology of education, from the hidden curriculum to labelling theory. But he has a large body of work, including poetry, essays and criticism, which I should know more about.
**********************************
Mphahlele died Monday evening at a hospital near his home in Lebowakgomo, in northern South Africa, said Raks Seakhoa, a close family friend.
The cause of death was not given, but Seakhoa said in an interview on Tuesday that the writer had been in poor health for some time.
Mphahlele is best known for "Down Second Avenue," an autobiography published in 1959 that describes his early years in rural northern South Africa and later in a bustling Pretoria black township. The book ends with the writer's exile from apartheid South Africa in 1957.
Mphahlele lived in Kenya, Zambia, France and the United States, earning a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Denver.
He returned to South Africa in the 1970s.
With the end of apartheid, the writer emerged as an eloquent proponent of the need to nurture the arts to feed a culture traumatized by colonization and oppression.
Achmat Dangor _ another South African writer whose resume includes anti-apartheid campaigning and censure by the former white government _ told The Associated Press that Mphahlele was "a remarkable person, wise, creative and fearless. His writing and its ethical roots inspired so many of us."
Seakhoa said a memorial service would be held Thursday or Friday, and that Mphahlele would be cremated in northern South Africa on Saturday.
Mphahlele and his wife, Rebecca Nnana Mochedibane, who died in 2004, had five children. Mphahlele is survived by four of his children.