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Writers

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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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie

The Danger of the Single Story

 

Writers:

 

Bibliography

Books by Dambudzo Marechera

 

 

Graceland: By Chris Abani

 

Synopsis

Abani's debut novel offers a searing chronicle of a young man's coming of age in Nigeria during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The vulnerable, wide-eyed protagonist is Elvis Oke, a young Nigerian with a penchant for dancing and impersonating the American rock-and-roll singer he is named after. The story alternates between Elvis's early years in the 1970s, when his mother dies of cancer and leaves him with a disapproving father, and his life as a teenager in the Lago ghetto, a place one character calls "a pus-ridden eyesore on de face of de nation's capital." Relating how an innocent child grows into a hardened young man, the novel also gives a glimpse into a world foreign to most readers-a brutal Third World country permeated by the excesses and wonders of American popular culture. Sprinkled throughout the book are recipes and entries from Elvis's mother's journal, as well as descriptions of the kola nut ceremony through which an Igbo boy becomes a man. These sections at first seem showy and tacked on, but by the end of the book their significance becomes clearer. The book is most powerful when it refrains from polemic and didacticism and simply follows its protagonist on his daily journey through the violent, harsh Nigerian landscape. Elvis must also negotiate troubles closer to home, including a drunk and ruined father and friends who cannot always be trusted. In this book, names are destiny, "selected with care by your family and given to you as a talisman." One of Elvis's friends is named Redemption, but in the end it is Elvis who claims this moniker, both literally and symbolically.

 

 

Palaver: Interviews with Five African Writers in Texas: Chinua Achebe, John Pepper Clark, Dennis Brutus, Ezekiel Mphahlele [and] Kofi Awoonor. Edited by Bernth Lindfors [and others]

By Bernth Lindfors

 

 

 

 

Conversations with History: WS

 

 

Dem-Say : Interviews with Eight Nigerian Writers : Michael J. C. Echeruo, Obi Egbuna, Cyprian Ekwensi, John Munonye, Gabriel Okara, Kole Omotoso, Ola Rotimi, Kalu Uka

By Bernth Lindfors

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt: An African Memoir

By Toyin Falola

Synopsis:

A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt gathers the stories and reflections of the early years of Toyin Falola, the grand historian of Africa and one of the greatest sons of Ibadan, the notable Yoruba city-state in Nigeria.

Redefining the autobiographical genre altogether, Falola miraculously weaves together personal, historical, and communal stories, along with political and cultural developments in the period immediately preceding and following Nigeria's independence, to give us a unique and enduring picture of the Yoruba in the mid-twentieth century. This is truly a literary memoir, told in language rich with proverbs, poetry, song, and humor.

Falola's memoir is far more than the story of one man's childhood experiences; rather, he presents us with the riches of an entire culture and community-its history, traditions, pleasures, mysteries, household arrangements, forms of power, struggles, and transformations.

About the Author
Toyin Falola is Frances Higginbothom Nalle Centennial Professor of History and Nelson Mandela Professor of African Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Author or editor of over fifty books and countless articles, he has written extensively on subjects ranging from political economy, nationalism, development, and violence to religion.

Prof. Chinua Achebe: A hero returns 1 (BBC)

 

Becoming Abigail: Chris Abani

Abani follows up GraceLand, his PEN/Faulkner Award–winning boy's coming-of-age novel, with a searing girl's coming-of-age novella in which a troubled Nigerian teen is threatened with becoming human trade. Abigail's mother died giving birth to her, leaving her, as she grows, with a crippling guilt that drives her to bizarre childhood mourning rituals and, later, with the responsibility of caring for her chronically depressed father. Repeated sexual violations by male relatives and the self-imposed expectation that she live up to her idealized image of her mother create unbearable pain and contradiction. When, at the halfway point of the book, Abigail's father sends her, at age 15 , to live with her cousin-by-marriage, Peter, in London, it's as much to free her from him as to give her more opportunities. But once she arrives, her "cousin" proves malevolent, and her dehumanization begins. Recalling Lucas Moodyson's crushing Lilya4Ever, this portrait of a brutalized girl given no control over her life or body, features Abani's lyrical prose (Abigail's father's armchair "smelled of the dreams of everyone who had sat in it") and deft moves between short chapters titled "Then" and "Now"—with the latter offering little promise.

 

 

 

 

Song for Night: Chris Abani

Synopsis:

In his latest novella, Abani renders the inner voice of mute 15-year-old My Luck, the boy leader of a platoon of mine sweepers in an unnamed war-torn African country. When he was 12, the then volunteer rebel had his vocal cords severed (the rest of his team received the same treatment), so that we wouldn't scare each other with our death screams. At the opening of the novella, My Luck awakens after an explosion to find that he has been separated from his unit. During his journey to find his platoon, he reflects on the events of his violent life. Abani is unafraid to evoke My Luck's dark side, and though My Luck's experience with killing is a singular joy that is perhaps rivaled only by an orgasm, his stock-taking also touches on guilt at witnessing his mother's murder, ambivalence about his imam father and tenderness for Ijeoma, a girl in his platoon killed by a mine. Initially, the present-tense narration is at odds with My Luck's inclination toward memory and reflection, but the story becomes more immersive and dreamlike (and, strangely, lucid) over the course of My Luck's quest. Abani finds in his narrator a seed of hope amid the bleak, nihilistic terrain.

 

 

 

Prof. Chinua Achebe: A hero returns 2 (BBC)

 

 

 

The Virgin of Flames: Chris Abani

Synopsis:

An L.A. artist's search for identity forms the core of the diffuse but haunting new novel by Nigerian-born poet and Graceland novelist Abani. Black is a 36-year-old muralist living hand to mouth behind the Ugly Store cafe in a bleak area of L.A. He's depressed and in an existential rut: engrossed in his latest work drawing on Catholic iconography (beaten into him as a child by his Salvadoran mother), and still smarting from the disappearance when he was a child of his African father (a NASA engineer) on a Vietnam-era space-related mission, Black feels he's being followed by ghosts—namely, the biblical Gabriel, the angel of annunciation. Sometimes he converses with Gabriel in the spaceship he has constructed in honor of his father above the cafe. Black is also deeply conflicted about his sexuality; a frequenter of female prostitutes, he has recently become obsessed with a local transvestite stripper, Sweet Girl. But Black's malaise may also stem from a curse—involving a malevolent spirit that kills male children—that his father wrote him about. It's a muddle, and it's difficult to care about the plot details. But Abani touches on the far reaches of psychic pain, religious and sexual, and creates a hallucinatory despair.

 

 

 

 

Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu

Winner: 2008 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa

Zahrah the Windseeker: By Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu

 

 

Who Fears Death: By Nnedi Okorafor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sefi Atta: Wiiner 2007 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa

Lawless

Swallow

Everything Good Will Come

 

News from Home

 

 

 

 

 

 


Sefi Atta

 

2007 Caine Prize Winner

Uganda's Monica Arac de Nyeko won the 2007 Caine Prize for African Writing, for Jambula Tree from ‘African Love Stories', Ayebia Clarke Publishing 2006. The Chair of Judges, Jamal Mahjoub from Sudan, announced Monica as the winner of the £10,000 prize at a dinner held on Monday, 9 July 2007 in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Jamal Mahjoub described her story as “a witty and touching portrait of a community which is affected forever by a love which blossoms between two adolescents”.

Monica Arac de Nyeko was born in Uganda . She studied at Makerere and Groningen universities for a degree in Education and an MA in Humanitarian Assistance. She is a member of the Uganda Women Writers Association (FEMRITE), was a literature and English language teacher at St Mary College, Kisubi, an Early Warning Consultant in Rome and later a Reports Officer in Khartoum. She has been a Fellow on the British Council's Crossing Borders programme and was also shortlisted for the Caine Prize in 2004 for Strange Fruit . Her short stories Jazz, Miracles and Dreams and City Link are soon to be published.

Also on the shortlist were:

U wem Akpan (Nigeria), ‘ My Parents Bedroom' The New Yorker June 12, 2006

E.C Osondu (Nigeria) ‘ Jimmy Carter's Eyes' , AGNI Fiction Online 2006

H enrietta Rose-Innes (South Africa) ‘ Bad Places', New Contrast vol 31 no4 Spring 2003

Ada Udechukwu (Nigeria) ‘ Night Bus' , The Atlantic Monthly, August 2006

Kenyan Billy Kahora's ‘ Treadmill Love' from ‘The Obituary Tango' Jacana/New Internationalist 2006, came in as highly commended by this year's judges.

 

 

 

 

 

Caine Prize 2006

Mary Watson from South Africa won the seventh Caine Prize for African Writing, Africa's leading literary prize, for Jungfrau , from Moss , Kwela Books, 2004. 

Caine Prize 2005

S.A. Afolabi from Nigeria won the sixth Caine Prize for African Writing for Monday Morning from Wasafiri, issue 41, spring 2004. His first collection of short stories, A Life Elsewhere , was published by Jonathan Cape earlier this year and his first novel is due to be published in April 2007."

Caine Prize 2004

Brian Chikwava , from Zimbabwe, won the fifth Caine Prize for African Writing for ‘Seventh Street Alchemy' from Writing Still, Weaver Press, Harare 2003.  Brian is the first winner of the Prize from Zimbabwe.

Brian has recently relocated to London and is working on his first projects outside Zimbabwe – Bubble Wrapping Artificial Shit , a novella that he has just started writing, and Jacaranda Skits , a music album of his unique and ‘whole-wheat' sound that blends his writing abilities with southern African township jazz, ska and blues.

Caine Prize 2003

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor was awarded the 2003 Caine Prize for African Writing, for her short story "Weight of Whispers", published in Kwani? in 2003 ( www.kwani.org )

Caine Prize 2002 

The Caine Prize 2002 was won by Binyavanga Wainaina, from Kenya, for his story "Discovering Home", published on the internet by G21Net in 2001. 

Binyavanga has gone on to found the highly successful internet magazine "Kwani?" which was established to support the work of young Kenyan writers, and has produced some of the subsequent entries for the Caine Prize, including Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, winner of the 2003 prize.

Caine Prize 2001

The winner of the 2001 Caine Prize for African Writing was the young Nigerian writer, Helon Habila, for his story "Love Poems" (taken from "Prison Stories", Epik Books, Lagos, 2000). Helon read literature at the University of Jos, and then lectured in English and Literature at the Federal Polytechnic, Bauchi, from 1997 to 1999.  He wrote for Hints Magazine, in Lagos, and his first book was a biography, Mai Kaltungo (1997). His poem, Another Age , came first in the MUSON Festival Poetry Competition 2000.  Love Poems appears in Prison Stories (Epik Books, Lagos, 2000) an anthology of his short stories. He is now Arts Editor of Vanguard Newspaper, Lagos.

 

 

Chimamanda Adichie at Middlesex University Dubai 3

 

 

Caine Prize 2000

The Caine Prize 2000 was won by Leila Aboulela , for her story "The Museum" (from "Opening Spaces", Heinemann, Oxford, 1999). Leila is a Sudanese writer living in Indonesia.Following graduation from the University of Khartoum in 1985, Aboulela travelled to Britain to study Statistics at the London School of Economics and she was living in Aberdeen at the time of her prize win, with her husband and three children. Aboulela's stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio and published in a number of anthologies, including ‘The Museum' in Opening Spaces (Heinemann). She has also co-written a play for Radio 4 and her first novel, The Translator (Polygon) was long-listed for the Orange Prize 2000.

 

 

  Interview with Ama Ata Aidoo

 

 

 

Books by Prof. Femi Euba:

 

Wole Soyinka Nadine Gordimer J.M. Coetzee Christopher Okigbo
Nobel Laureate 1986 Nobel Laureate 1991 Nobel Laureate 2003 Poet
Nigeria, West Africa South Africa South Africa Nigeria, West Africa

 

 

 

Nadine Gordimer at the 92nd Street Y: April 1961

 

 

Source: JL, Reference Department
Indiana University Libraries
September 1997

 

 

Chimamanda Adichie at Middlesex University Dubai 4

 

 

 

 

 

David Malouf with J.M. Coetzee, Adelaide Writers Week

 

 

Nadine Gordimer on racism

 

 

 

 

Ben Okri - Slavery in Starbook

 

 

 

Chinua Achebe

Presentation at the Christopher Okigbo International Conference at Harvard University

 

 

 

2008 NYU commencement (13/37) -- Ngugi Wa Thiongo degree

 

 

Diana Evans: 26a

The attic room at 26a Waifer Avenue in the lower-middle-class London neighborhood of Neasden is a sanctuary for identical twins Georgia and Bessi Hunter. It is a private universe where fantasy reigns as well as an escape from the sadness and danger that inhabit the floors below. Here the girls share nectarines and forge their identities -- planning glorious success as the Famous Flapjack Twins -- well removed from their Nigerian mother, Ida, who, devastated by homesickness, speaks to the spirits of the family she left behind on another continent. On occasion Georgia and Bessi's older sister, Bel, and younger sister, Kemy, are admitted into their broad, bright and fanciful realm, but never their English father, who nightly bathes the wounds of his own upbringing in far too much drink...

 

 

Abyssinian Chronicles : A Novel by Moses Isegawa

Like an African Midnight's Children or One Hundred Years of Solitude, this epic generational saga set in Uganda tells a story of the twentieth century that is seminal in its scope and vision. Moses Isegawa's unforgettable tale is centered around the coming-of-age of Mugezi, a charming and quick-witted young man who manages to make it through the hellish reign of Idi Amin and experiences firsthand the most crushing aspects of Ugandan society. He withstands his distant father's oppression, his mother's cruelty in the name of Catholic zeal, and the ravages of war, poverty, and AIDS. Through it all he is miraculously able to keep a hopeful and even occasionally bemused outlook on life. In the end his hard-won observations form a cri de coeur for a people shaped by the untold losses of the postcolonial African experience. Mugezi's odyssey, from a small rural community to the city of Kampala and, ultimately, across the borders of Uganda, is a riveting work from a powerful, passionate, and humorous new literary voice.--bn.com

 

WS

Keynote address at the Christopher Okigbo International Conference at Harvard University


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