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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:

 

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.

Reviews


"... a rich and often profoundly beautiful book.... There's little doubt that within the growing body of African autobiographical literature, this book is going to stand high." - Sunday Independent (South Africa)"


"Toyin Falola has given us what is truly rare in modern African writing: a seriously funny, racy, irreverent package of memories, and full of the most wonderful pieces of poetry and ordinary information. It is a matter of some interest, that the only other volume A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt reminds one of is Ake , by Wole Soyinka. What is it about these Yorubas?"
-Ama Ata Aidoo

"A splendid coming-of-age story so full of vivid color and emotion, the words seem to dance off the page. But this is not only Falola's memoir; it is an account of a new nation coming into being and the tensions and negotiations that invariably occur between city and country, tradition and modernity, men and women, rich and poor. A truly beautiful book."
-Robin D. G. Kelley

"More than a personal memoir, this book is a rich minihistory of contemporary Nigeria recorded in delicious detail by a perceptive eyewitness who grew up at the crossroads of many cultures."
-Bernth Lindfors

"The reader is irresistibly drawn into Falola's world. The prose is lucid. There is humor. This work is sweet. Period."
-Ngugi wa Thiongo'o


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)

 

 

 

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

 

 

Bibliography

Books by Dambudzo Marechera

 

 

Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu

Winner: 2008 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa

Zahrah the Windseeker: By Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conversations with History: Wole Soyinka

 

 

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

Lawless

Swallow

Everything Good Will Come

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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.

 

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  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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