Literatures

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African continent is replete with brilliant writers, filmmakers, and artisans that are world-renowned. The main objective of indigo kafe is to showcase and present African writers and filmmakers worldwide.

Nuruddin Farah in Seattle

Ben Okri

Do you see your books being translated into film?

A Mouth Sweeter than Salt: By Toyin Falola	Cairo Trilogy: By Naguib Mahfouz	Painting: Facing Streets Ahead: By David Chinyama


Nervous Conditions: By Dangarembga, Tsitsi	The Concubine: By Elechi Amadi	Everything Good Will Come: By Sefi Atta	Zahrah the Windseeker: By Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu

Painting: By John Okot

Chris Abani: Learning the stories of Africa

Literatures:

Africa's 100 Best Books of the 20th Century

World Literatures in English: Africa

Research in African Literatures:

Plumas en alquiler (Wole Soyinka, Nigeria)

Death and the King's Horseman: By Prof. Wole Soyinka (Nobel Laureate 1986)

Synopsis:

This Norton Critical Edition of Death and the King's Horseman is the only student edition available in the United States. Based on events that took place in 1946 in the ancient Yoruban city of Oyo, Soyinka's acclaimed and powerful play addresses classic issues of cultural conflict, tragic decision-making, and the psychological mindsets of individuals and groups. The text of the play is accompanied by an introduction and explanatory annotations for the many allusions to traditional Nigerian myth and culture.

Included are a map of Yorubaland, discussions of Yoruban religious beliefs and cultural traditions. Soyinka on the various forms that theater has taken in African culture in order to survive, and Anthony Appiah on Soyinka's struggle with the problem of African identity in the creation of Death and the King's Horseman. Commentary on the play as both a theatrical production and a classroom text is provided.---bn.com

Disgrace: By J.M. Coetzee (Nobel Laureate 2003)

Synopsis:

From the author of Waiting for the Barbarians and the Booker-Prize-winning Life & Times of Michael K , a dazzling new novel--his first in five years

Disgrace--set in post-apartheid Cape Town and on a remote farm in the Eastern Cape--is deft, lean, quiet, and brutal. A heartbreaking novel about a man and his daughter, Disgrace is a portrait of the new South Africa that is ultimately about grace and love.

At fifty-two Professor David Lurie is divorced, filled with desire but lacking in passion. An affair with one of his students leaves him jobless and friendless. Except for his daughter, Lucy, who works her smallholding with her neighbor, Petrus, an African farmer now on the way to a modest prosperity. David's attempts to relate to Lucy, and to a society with new racial complexities, are disrupted by an afternoon of violence that changes him and his daughter in ways he could never have foreseen. In this wry, visceral, yet strangely tender novel, Coetzee once again tells "truths [that] cut to the bone." ( The New York Times Book Review ) ---bn.com

Beasts of No Nation: By Uzodinma Iweala

Synopsis:

In this stunning debut novel, Agu, a young boy in an unnamed West African nation, is recruited into a unit of guerrilla fighters as civil war engulfs his country. Haunted by his father's own death at the hands of militants, which he fled just before witnessing, Agu is vulnerable to the dangerous yet paternal nature of his new commander.

While the war rages on, Agu becomes increasingly divorced from the life he had known before the conflict started -- a life of school friends, church services, and time with his family still intact. As he vividly recalls these sunnier times, his daily reality spins further downward into inexplicable brutality, primal fear, and loss of selfhood. His relationship with his commander deepens even as it darkens, and his camaraderie with a fellow soldier lends a deceptive sense of normalcy to his experience.

In a powerful, strikingly original voice that vividly captures Agu's youth and confusion, Uzodinma Iweala has produced a harrowing, deeply affecting novel. Both a searing take on coming-of-age and a vivid document of the dark face of war, Beasts of No Nation announces the arrival of an extaordinary new writer. --bn.com

The Famished Road: By Ben Okri

Synopsis:

In the decade since it won the Booker Prize, Ben Okri's Famished Road has become a classic. Like Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children or Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude , it combines brilliant narrative technique with a fresh vision to create an essential work of world literature.

The narrator, Azaro, is an abiku , a spirit child, who in the Yoruba tradition of Nigeria exists between life and death. The life he foresees for himself and the tale he tells is full of sadness and tragedy, but inexplicably he is born with a smile on his face. Nearly called back to the land of the dead, he is resurrected. But in their efforts to save their child, Azaro's loving parents are made destitute. The tension between the land of the living, with its violence and political struggles, and the temptations of the carefree kingdom of the spirits propels this latter-day Lazarus's story.--bn.com

Feminist and Womanist Criticism of African Literature: Bibliography

Source: JL, Reference Department
Indiana University Libraries
September 1997

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation	Publisher: Anchor	Publisher: Kachifo

Camwood at Crossroads: By Femi Euba	Wizard of the Crow: By Ngugi wa Thiong'o	Swallow: Sefi Atta

To purchase Camwood at Crossroads: Go to amazon.com

Books by Prof. Femi Euba:

To purchase Swallow: Go to amazon.com

Publisher: Penguin Group	Publisher: Perseus Publishing	Publisher: Ubu Repertory Theater Publications

Knots: By Nuruddin Farah	Dreams of Trespass : Tales of a Harem Girlhood: By: Fatima Mernissi	Parentheses of Blood: By Sony Labou Tansi

Uzodinma Iweala on "Charlie Rose Tomorrow"

African National Congress Oral History Transcripts Collection: Established in 1912, the African National Congress was created to provide a political avenue for the struggle for equality of Blacks in South Africa. Working in exile from 1960 until 1990, members of the ANC established foreign offices to continue the political work necessary to end apartheid in South Africa. The governing party since 1994, the ANC has established its archives at the University of Fort Hare, an historically Black institution. In March 1999, the ANC and the University of Connecticut signed a Memorandum of Understanding establishing a partnership to foster training, assistance and cooperation based on the principle of reciprocal learning and consultation. One of the projects resulting from the collaboration between the University of Connecticut and the ANC was the ANC Oral History Project, which conducted and transcribed 133 oral histories of ANC leaders in South Africa between 2000 and 2006.-ANC

Books by Isidore Okpewho:

Africa Online Digital Library: AODL benefits a wide variety of scholars, students, and institutions by producing multilingual, multimedia materials for both scholarly research and public viewing audiences. AODL serves scholars and students conducting research and teaching about West and South Africa as well as teachers and students of African languages in both the United States and Africa. It also provides a valuable model for creating and distributing a diverse array of materials in a region with very limited electronic connectivity.-AODL