Literatures
WELCOME TO INDIGOKAFE
THE PORTAL FOR AFRICAN LITERATURES, WRITERS, AND FILMS
African continent is replete with brilliant writers, filmmakers, and artisans that are world-renowned. The main objective of indigokafe is to showcase and present African writers and filmmakers worldwide.
“Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to those who seek to suppress the truth.” -Wole Soyinka, The Man Died: The Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka.
Research in African Literatures:
Book Launch Event
Phoenix Author : Souleymane B. Diagne
Title of the Book : Comment Philosopher en Islam
In June 2010 Phoenix organized a book tour for author Souleymane Bachir Diagne in Montreal. Editorial Director Lamine Sagna accompanied Diagne and was part of the discussion panel for the event at Montreal's Maison de l'Afrique.
Coconut: By Kopano Matlwa
Winner 2010 Wole Soyinka Prize for African Literature
Synopsis:
An important rumination on youth in modern-day South Africa, this haunting debut novel tells the story of two extraordinary young women who have grown up black in white suburbs and must now struggle to find their identities. The rich and pampered Ofilwe has taken her privileged lifestyle for granted, and must confront her swiftly dwindling sense of culture when her soulless world falls apart. Meanwhile, the hip and sassy Fiks is an ambitious go-getter desperate to leave her vicious past behind for the glossy sophistication of city life, but finds Johannesburg to be more complicated and unforgiving than she expected. These two stories artfully come together to illustrate the weight of history upon a new generation in South Africa.
About the Author:
Kopano Matlwa is the chairperson and founding member of Waiting Room Education by Medical Students, a nonprofit health promotion organization that uses students' talents to educate patients on common health conditions in the waiting rooms of clinics. She was awarded the Goldman Sachs Global Leaders Award in 2005 for academic excellence and leadership potential.
Tenants of the House: By Wale Okediran
Winner 2010 Wole Soyinka Prize for African Literature
Synopsis:
TENANTS OF THE HOUSE is a skillful fictional delineation of the ugly colours of Nigerian politics with its seeming intrigues, base motives, 'win-at-all-cost' motivations, and money as the great leverage. With its rich mix of love and politics, TENANTS OF THE HOUSE presents, with gripping suspense, a shrill voice of a nation in urgent need of political renewal and rebirth.
About the Author:
Wale Okediran was born in April, 1955, in Oyo State Nigeria. He qualified as a medical doctor from Obafemi Awolowo University in 1980.
He had worked in government an private hospitals for several years befor he went into private practice in 1987. He remained active in private practice untill 1999 when he went into active politics and was appointed Chairman, Oyo State Hospitals Managment Board. He later contested for a seat in the Federal House of Representatives, where he repreesented his constituency from 2003 to 2007.
Binyavanga Wainaina Book Reading - Part 1 of 4
By the Sea: By Abdulrazak Gurnah
Dense, accomplished and sharply conceived, this novel by Anglo-African writer Gurnah (Paradise; Admiring Silence) tells the story of 65-year-old Saleh Omar, a merchant refugee from Zanzibar who applies for asylum in England. A present-day Sinbad, Omar is fleeing a land where the evil jinn are the larcenous rulers equipped with all the accoutrements of contemporary authoritarianism concentration camps, rifles, kangaroo courts, etc. Upon arrival at Gatwick Airport, Omar presents an invalid visa, made out to his distant cousin and most hated enemy, Rajab Shaaban Mahmud. Advised not to demonstrate that he knows English, he puts on a charade of incomprehension for his caseworker, Rachel Howard, until uncomfortable circumstances force him to speak. In the meantime, Rachel contacts the English expert on Kiswahili, Latif Mahmud, who just happens to be the real Rajab Shaaban's son. Inevitably, the two men get together in a little seaside English town. Latif long ago cut off all relations with his Zanzibar family, having taken refuge in England in the '60s and gone on to become an English professor and poet, and a rather lonely single man. Saleh, he learns, has been pursued vindictively by Rajab and his wife, Asha, the mistress of a powerful minister. Due to recriminations over an inherited property, Saleh was eventually dispossessed of his house, arrested and imprisoned in various camps. Getting out, he starts over, only to be threatened by Latif's brother, Hassan. Gurnah's novel is a painful, unapologetically literate probe into the tragedy of the postcolonial world, where refugees are always emerging, "stunned, into the light of yet another gathering shambles." (June) Forecast: Paradise was short-listed for the Booker Prize, which should draw some critical attention to Gurnah's latest, though sales will likely be strongest at university bookstores.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author:
Novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in 1948 on the island of Zanzibar off the coast of East Africa. He came to Britain as a student in 1968 and now teaches literature at the University of Kent. He is associate editor of the journal Wasafiri .
The Carrier: By Jamal Mahjoub
Synopsis:
This is a beautifully evocative novel with a compelling central theme - man's quest for knowledge - and some magical ingredients - the double storyline (past and present), the 16th-century Mediterranean setting, the optical device, the 'twins', Jutland, physics, astronomy, archaeology, destiny, superstition and legend. Jamal Mahjoub has an extraordinary imagination and uses language in a striking way (he is particularly good at evoking all the sounds and smells of the different places in the novel). This book heralds the arrival of an extremely distinctive young novelist.
Artisans:
Nigerian Artists of the Oshogbo School: Paintings by Layi Orogun Ademoinore, Ademola Oyelami, and Bayo Ogundele
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
Binyavanga Wainaina Book Reading - Part 2 of 4
Mary Watson biography
Mary Watson (South Africa), for Jungfrau , from Moss , Kwela Books, 2004 |
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Mary Watson was born in Cape Town, South Africa. Her collection of interlinking stories, Moss (Kwela 2004), explores themes of innocence, human cruelty, loss and belonging, distorted through the prism of apartheid Cape Town. Watson is currently lecturing Film Studies at the University of Cape Town where she received a Meritorious Publication award for Moss. She completed her Master's degree in Creative Writing under the mentorship of Andre Brink in 2001, and studied Film and TV production at Bristol University in 2003. Her film, writing and research interests all arise from an obsession with stories and with alternative ways in which reality can be represented through art. She has contributed several short stories to published anthologies (including in translation in Afrikaans and German). She is currently working on her first novel and on a collaborative novel together with a group of other South African authors.---http://www.caineprize.com/biographies.htm |
Go tell the Generals: By Odia Ofeimun
A boiling Caracas and Other Poems
Odia Ofeimun reciting two poems at the first AAF reading
9 Writers, 4 Cities: The Book Tour in Lagos
The Thing Around Your Neck
Half of a Yellow Sun
Purple Hibiscus 
About the Author:
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria in 1977. She is from Abba, in Anambra State, but grew up in the university town of Nsukka where she attended primary and secondary schools and briefly studied Medicine and Pharmacy. She then moved to the United States to attend college, graduating summa cum laude from Eastern Connecticut State with a major in Communication and a minor in Political Science. She holds a Masters degree in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins and a Masters degree in African Studies from Yale.
Purple Hibiscus won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. It was also short-listed for the Orange Prize and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and long-listed for the Booker Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in Granta , Prospect , and The Iowa Review among other literary journals, and she received an O. Henry Prize in 2003. She was a 2005-2006 Hodder Fellow at Princeton, where she taught Introductory Fiction. She divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.
Chimamanda Adichie at Middlesex University Dubai 2
Sefi Atta biography
Sefi Atta (Nigeria), for The Last Trip , from Chimurenga 8 , 2006 |
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Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Sefi Atta trained as an accountant in London and began to write while she was working in New York. She is a graduate of the creative writing program at Antioch University, Los Angeles, and has won prizes from Zoetrope (3 rd prize, Short Fiction Contest, 2002), Red Hen Press (1 st prize, Short Story Award, 2003) and the BBC (2 nd prize, African Performance for plays, 2002 & 2004). In 2005, she was awarded PEN International's David TK Wong Prize and her debut novel entitled Everything Good Will Come was published (by Arris Books, England, Interlink Publishing, USA, Double Storey Books, South Africa, Farafina Books, West Africa). She has just written her second novel, entitled Swallow . She lives in Mississippi with her husband Gboyega Ransome-Kuti, a medical doctor, and their daughter, Temi, and teaches at Mississippi State University.-- http://www.caineprize.com/biographies.htm |
Binyavanga Wainaina Book Reading - Part 3 of 4
Research in African Literature and Culture (IRCALC ):
Project Muse: Research in African Literatures:
Dangerous Love: By Ben Okri
Review
'One of the world's finest writers ... a life-affirming, lyrical book' -- Options
Product Description
An epic of daily life, Dangerous Love is Ben Okri's most accessible and most disarming novel yet. It is a story of doomed love, of star-crossed lovers, separated not by their families, but by the very circumstances of their lives.
About the Author
Ben Okri has published many books including The Famished Road , which won the Booker Prize in 1991, Songs of Enchantment , Astonishing the Gods and Dangerous Love . He has also published two books of poems, the most recent being Mental Fight , and a collection of non-fiction, A Way of Being Free . He has been a Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts, at Trinity College, Cambridge and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Ben Okri's books have won several awards including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa, the Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, the Chianti Rufino-Antico Fattore International Literary Prize and the Premio Grinzane Cavour Prize. He is a vice-president of the English Centre of International PEN and was presented with the Crystal Award for outstanding contribution to the Arts and to cross-cultural understanding by the World Economic Forum. In addition, the University of Westminster awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Literature. Ben Okri was born in Minna, Nigeria and lives in London.
Binyavanga Wainaina Book Reading - Part 4 of 4
Bibliography of African Writers: Not in alphabetical order
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Books by Kofi Anyidoho |
Books by Wole SoyinkaBooks by Toyin Falola |
Reading of an excerpt of Cesaire's poetry by Harvard professor Abiola Irele and translated by Sunny Salibian
Mary Watson , winner of the Caine Prize 2006
Bibliography of African Writers: Not in alphabetical order
Books by Niyi Osundare |
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Toni Kan reads at the first AAF reading
| A Mouth Sweeter than Salt: By Toyin Falola | Cairo Trilogy: By Naguib Mahfouz | Painting: Facing Streets Ahead: By David Chinyama | |
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Canción / Song (Odia Ofeimun, Nigeria)
Darrel Bristow-Bovey
Darrel Bristow-Bovey (South Africa), for A Joburg story , from African Compass – New Writing from Southern Africa 2005 , Spearhead, 2005 |
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Darrel Bristow-Bovey was born in Durban, South Africa, in the 1970s. He studied at the University of Cape Town under JM Coetzee and Andre P. Brink and worked for three years as editor of children's fiction at a publishing house in Cape Town. He moved to Johannesburg in 1997, where he became television columnist for The Sunday Independent , and a popular columnist in a range of publications and on the radio. He has won four Mondi Awards for Best South African Columnist, and has published four books: two books of humour, titled I Moved Your Cheese (2001) – which was translated into four languages - and The Naked Bachelor (2002); a collection of his columns titled But I Digress (2003), and his first book for younger readers, SuperZero (2006), which won a 2006 Sanlam Prize for Youth Literature. He currently writes for television, having been head writer on the first three series of the popular South African drama series, Hard Copy . -- http://www.caineprize.com/biographies.htm |
Introduction to the First Reading of 9 Writers, 4 Cities: The Book Tour
Muthoni Garland biography
Muthoni Garland (Kenya), for Tracking the Scent of My Mother , from Seventh Street Alchemy: A Selection of Writings from the Caine Prize for African Writing 2004 , Jacana Media, 2005 |
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Born and bred in Kenya, Muthoni is married to an Englishman, and between them they have four children. She writes stories for children and adults. Her work has been published in Kwani?, Chimurenga (SA), Absinthe Review (USA), Memories of Sun (anthology for children published by HarperCollins - USA) and is forthcoming in The Reading Room (USA), and Sex and Death - an anthology edited by Mitzi Szereto (UK). She was highly commended in the 2002 BBC Commonwealth radio competition. Muthoni is working on her first novel.---http://www.caineprize.com/biographies.htm |
Nuruddin Farah in Seattle
Laila Lalami biography
Laila Lalami (Morocco), for The Fanatic , from Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits , Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005 |
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Laila Lalami was born and raised in Morocco. She earned her B.A. in English from Université Mohammed-V in Rabat, her M.A. from University College, London, and her Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Southern California. Her work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times , The Oregonian , The Boston Globe , The Nation , and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an Oregon Literary Arts grant and a Fulbright Fellowship for 2007. Her debut book of fiction, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits , was published by Algonquin in October 2005. She is also the founder and editor of Moorishgirl.com, a blog about books and culture.---http://www.caineprize.com/biographies.htm |
Ben Okri
Do you see your books being translated into film?
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| Nervous Conditions: By Dangarembga, Tsitsi | The Concubine: By Elechi Amadi | Everything Good Will Come: By Sefi Atta | Zahrah the Windseeker: By Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu |
A day with Wole Soyinka I
A day with Wole Soyinka II
Artisans:
Paintings: By John Okot, Kola Adeyemi, and Isaac Akindele
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
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
- Achebe, Chinua
- Adiaffi, Jean Marie
- Aidoo, Ama Ata
- Alkali, Zainab
- Amadi, Elechi
- Armah, Ayi Kwei
- Ba, Mariama
- Bebey, Francis
- Beyala, Calixthe
- Breytenbach, Breyten
- Brink, Andre
- Buenga, Bolya
- Bugul, Ken
- Chraibi, Driss
- Coetzee, J.M.
- Dangarembga, Tsitsi
- Diop, Birago Ismail
- Djebar, Assia
- Edgell, Zee
- Emecheta, Buchi
- Ekwensi, Cyprian Odiatu Duaka
| Publisher: Xlibris Corporation | Publisher: Anchor | Publisher: Kachifo |
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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
To purchase Swallow: Go to amazon.com
- Farah, Nuruddin
- Fugard, Athol
- Gibbon, Perceval
- Gordimer, Nadine
- Hatatah, Sharif
- Head, Bessie
- Hove, Chenjerai
- Iyayi, Fetus
- Jelloun, Tahar Ben
- Karodia, Farida
- Kourouma, Ahmadou
- Krog, Antjie
- Kuzwayo, Ellen
- Lachmet, Djanet
- Ladipo, Duro
- Laye, Camara
- Lewis, Ethelreda
- Liking, Werewere
- Lopes, Henri
| Publisher: Penguin Group | Publisher: Perseus Publishing | Publisher: Ubu Repertory Theater Publications |
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| Knots: By Nuruddin Farah | Dreams of Trespass : Tales of a Harem Girlhood: By: Fatima Mernissi | Parentheses of Blood: By Sony Labou Tansi |
- Marachera, Dambudzo
- Mashinini, Emma
- Mahfouz, Najib
- Mernissi, Fatima
- Miller, Ruth
- Millin, Sarah Gertrude
- Mokhoere, Caesarino Kona
- Mugo, Micere
- Muhando-Mlama, Penina
- Ngcobo, Lauretta
- Ngema, Mbongeni
- Ngugi wa Thiong'o
- Nkosi, Lewis
- Nwapa, Flora
- Nzekwu, Onuora
- Ogot, Grace
- Ogundipe-Leslie,
Uzodinma Iweala on "Charlie Rose Tomorrow"
- Okigbo, Christopher
- Omotoso, Kole
- Osofian, Femi
- Ouologuem, Yambo
- Onwueme, Tess
- Reddy, Jayapraga
- Rif'at, Alifah
- Roberts, Sheila
- al Sa'dawi, Nawal
- Sadji, Abdoulaye
- Salih, al Tayyib
- Samir, Lili
- Schreiner, Olive Emilie Albertina
- Sebbar, Leila
- Sembene Ousmane
- Senghor, Leopold Sedar
- Serhane, Abdelhak
- Smith, Pauline
- Sofola, Zulu
- de Sousa, Noemie
- Sow Fall, Aminata
- Soyinka, Wole
- Sutherland, Efua
- Tansi, Sony Labou
- Thiam, Awa
- Tlali, Miriam
- Walters, Joseph Jeffrey
- Warner-Vieyra, Myriam
- Yacine, Kateb
- Al-Zayat, Latifa
- General (by geographic region)
- Other Bibliographies
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
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
Oral History Association of South Africa:
Books by Prof. Oyekan Owomoyela:
African Literature |
Kofi Anyidoho, Ghana |
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| Ama Ata Aidoo: Ghana | Sefi Atta: Nigeria | Wole Soyinka: Nigeria: Nobel Laureate 1986 |
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| Amos Tutuola: Nigeria | Chinua Achebe: Nigeria | Naguib Mahfouz: Egypt Nobel Laureate 1988 |
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| The Palm Wine Drinkard | Things Fall Apart | Palace of Desire |
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Yoruba Gurus: Indigenous Production of Knowledge in Africa: By Prof. Toyin Falola
Samuel Johnson: The Pioneer and Patriarch
M.C. Adeyemi: The Historian of Oyo
King Isaac Babalola Akinyele: The Scholar of Ibadan
Kemi Morgan: Another Reconstruction of Ibadan History
Chief Samuel Ojo Bada: The Frontier City of Ilorin
Theophilus Olabode Avoseh: Major and Minor Works on Epe and Badagry
Unsung Authors of the Modern Era: The Histories of Igbomina
