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The Goddess of Mtwara and Other Stories
Brief Summary
The leading African literary award, known as the African Booker, named after the Booker Prize founder, Michael Caine. Now entering its eighteenth year, the Caine Prize for African Writing is Africas leading literary prize, and is awarded to a short story by an African writer published in English, whether in Africa or elsewhere.
This collection brings together seventeen short storiesthe five 2017 shortlisted stories, along with stories written at the 2017 Caine Prize Writers Workshop that took place in Tanzania. The collection showcases young writers who go on to publish successful novels, for instance: Leila Aboulela, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sefi Atta, Brian Chikwava and Helon Habila.
The shortlisted writers include: Gods Children are Little Broken Things by Arinze Ifeakandu (Nigeria); The Story of the Girl Whose Birds Flew Away by Bushra al-Fadil (Sudan), translated by Max Shmookler; Bush Baby by Chikodili Emelumadu (Nigeria);Who Will Greet You at Home by Lesley Nneka Arimah (Nigeria); The Virus by Magogodi oa Mphela Makhene (South Africa).
The collection also includes stories written by the following authors at the workshop that took place in Tanzania: Last years winner, Lidudumalingani (South Africa), Abdul Adan (Somalia/Kenya), Lesley Nneka Arimah (Nigeria) Tendai Huchu (Zimbabwe), Cheryl Ntumy (Botswana/Ghana), Daniel Rafiki (Rwanda), Darla Rudakubana (Rwanda), Agazit Abate (Ethiopia).
ISBN:9781566560344
Author:Various and Lizzy Attree
The Daily Assortment of Astonishing T...
Brief Summary
Now entering its seventeenth year, the Caine Prize for African Writing is Africas leading literary award (named for the Booker Prize founder Michael Caine), and is awarded to a short story by an African writer published in English.
This collection brings together eighteen short stories -- the five 2016 shortlisted stories, along with stories written at the 2016 Caine Prize Writers Workshop in Zambia.
The shortlisted writers include Abdul Adan (Somalia/Kenya), Lesley Nneka Arimah (Nigeria), Tope Folarin (Nigeria), Bongani Kona (Zimbabwe), and Lidudumalingani (South Africa).
ISBN:9781566560160
Author:Various
Critique of Black Reason by Achille M...
Brief Summary
In Critique of Black Reason eminent critic Achille Mbembe offers a capacious genealogy of the category of Blackness—from the Atlantic slave trade to the present—to critically reevaluate history, racism, and the future of humanity. Mbembe teases out the intellectual consequences of the reality that Europe is no longer the world's center of gravity while mapping the relations among colonialism, slavery, and contemporary financial and extractive capital.
Tracing the conjunction of Blackness with the biological fiction of race, he theorizes Black reason as the collection of discourses and practices that equated Blackness with the nonhuman in order to uphold forms of oppression. Mbembe powerfully argues that this equation of Blackness with the nonhuman will serve as the template for all new forms of exclusion.
With Critique of Black Reason, Mbembe offers nothing less than a map of the world as it has been constituted through colonialism and racial thinking while providing the first glimpses of a more just future.
ISBN:9780822363439
Author:Achille Mbembe
Going to the Mountain Life Lessons fr...
Brief Summary
During the Second World War over half-a-million African troops served with the British Army as combatants and non-combatants in campaigns in the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, Italy and Burma - the largest single movement of African men overseas since the slave trade. This account, based mainly on oral evidence and soldiers' letters, tells the story of the African experience of the war.
It is a 'history from below' that describes how men were recruited for a war about which most knew very little. Army life exposed them to a range of new and startling experiences: new foods and forms of discipline, uniforms, machines and rifles, notions of industrial time, travel overseas, new languages and cultures, numeracy and literacy.
What impact did service in the army have on African men and their families? What new skills did soldiers acquire and to what purposes were they put on their return? What was the social impact of overseas travel, and how did the broad umbrella of army welfare services change soldiers' expectations of civilian life? And what role if any did ex-servicemen play in post-war nationalist politics?
In this book African soldiers describe in their own words what it was like to undergo army training, to travel on a vast ocean, to experience battle, and their hopes and disappointments on demobilization. DAVID KILLINGRAY is Professor Emeritus of History, Goldsmiths, and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London.
ISBN:9780316486576
Author:Ndaba Mandela
My Life My Camera by Mohinder Dhillon
Brief Summary
The remarkable life-story of Mohinder Dhillon, a frontline news cameraman on the world stage, from his start as a budding photojournalist in Kenya. His story covers many of the seminal African and world events from the 1950s, documenting the changing face of an Africa liberated from colonial rule. His reporting covers many of the following internal conflicts including the Zanzibar Revolution of 1964, the Simba Rebellion in the Congo, the Siege of Stanleyville, the Aden War, the rise and fall of Idi Amin and the expulsion of the Asian minorities, and was on the frontline recording the fall of Ian Smith’s Rhodesia and the birth of Zimbabwe.
He was the official cameraman to Haile Selassie, and later recorded the Ethiopian famine in the 1980s, footage that shocked the world, raising millions of dollars in famine relief. After this golden age of television news, the waning of foreign interest in Africa, and rapidly advancing video technology, he focused on making full-length television documentaries.
In this period, he recorded the grim ecological impacts post the Vietnam war; and also undertook another news assignment to film the shattered, war-torn country of Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion. He recalls the horrific events of the 1988 US Embassy bombing in Nairobi and the 2013 terror attack on the city’s Westgate Mall.
Reflecting on the triumphs and tragedies of his life, his story is imbued with passion and gentle humour, a love of his adopted Kenya from his Sikh roots in the Punjab. It is a moving story of what it means to be human in the face of unspeakable suffering and violence.
ISBN:9789987753604
Author:Mohinder Dhillon
My Gorilla Journey Living with the Or...
Brief Summary
Helen Attwater met her husband Mark while they were working at London's Royal Festival Hall. Little did they realize then that they would soon be heading off to set up an orphanage for baby gorillas in the heart of Africa, and become embroiled in a bloody tribal power struggle.
This is the story of life with fifty or more of the most endearing animals in the world, and survival through incredible adversity.
It is a story of how an intimate bond can form between humans and gorillas, of compassion set against brutality, and of hope and endurance.
ISBN:9780330370455
Author:Helen Attwater
Jalada Transition Fear The Magazine o...
Brief Summary
From fear as weaponzed terror, to the fear of the Other, the fear of love, the fear of death, the fear of failure, of success, of spiders, crowds, heights, closed spaces etc., fear is such a primal and inescapable part of living.
Our phobias, the things that make us human or, indeed, inhuman, are as diverse and as peculiar as the varied lives that we lead. Our fears, and the dance between fear and fearlessness, shape how we live, how we interact, and how we conceptualize ourselves and others.
The conversations of our day on immigration, race and integration, and terrorism, among others, point to the timelessness of the basic question of how fear influences human beings and our struggle to live together in the world.
ISBN:JaladaTransition001
Author:Jalada Transition
Pioneers and Transformers The Journey...
Brief Summary
The book, which will feature over 200 women, is meant to shine like stars in an indigo sky, stirring up individual glimmers of hope in a landscape often marred by bad news. These women are driven by the conviction that by drawing from what lies within them – no matter their sphere of endeavor – they can make a difference in the lives of others.
The book will cover the period before independence right up to present-day Kenya spanning various fields – from freedom fighting to the corporate world; aviation to governance; the arts and health to business and justice; education and sports to politics and human rights. Their noteworthy achievements will be captured as an important part of the Kenyan story.
Each woman who will be honored in this book will have been motivated to use her talent(s), abilities and unique opportunities to build a legacy beyond mere career; this is what separates success from relevance. Celebrating the spirit of the transformer through an examination of what makes these great women tick is our way of encouraging more Kenyans to sacrificially offer what they carry within, and walk in their footsteps.
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ISBN:KenyaYearBook001
Author:Kenya Year Book
Remembrance by Lily Mabura
Brief Summary
The novel delves into the lives of Naomi and Daniel Dassa, a young Kenyan couple, who
dwell in the small college town of Pullman, WA, USA. Naomi works and studies at a local university, while Daniel is a member of a popular marimba band.
Their life seems peaceful, but the couple’s marriage is troubled by the fact that they are both dealing with traumatic events in their past lives. Naomi narrowly escaped death during the 1998 US Embassy bombing in downtown Nairobi, which killed hundreds of people and wounded thousands. Her brother Guba lost his fiancée in the incident.
Soon after this, Guba, a small charter plane pilot, went missing over Lake Turkana in Northern Kenya leaving Naomi without closure. Daniel, a former political prisoner, tries to help his wife through this trying time by hiring a teenage babysitter called Ayana for their two-year old son, Pascal.
However, an attraction develops between Daniel and Ayana, a refugee from Ethiopia, and the resulting affair threatens to forever tear apart the already fragile foundations of the Dassa household.
ISBN:9789966315717
Author:Lily Mabura
Nyerere The Early Years by Thomas Molony
Brief Summary
Julius Kambarage Nyerere (1922-1999), the first President of Tanzania, was a man whose political life was uniquely and inextricably bound into the history of the nation he created.
This book presents the first truly rounded portrait of Nyerere's early life, from his birth in 1922 until his graduation from Edinburgh in 1952, enabling us to see his later political achievements in a new light. It was after returning to Tanganyika that "Mwalimu" (the teacher) formally entered politics, and led efforts to deliver Tanganyika to independence.
Drawing on interviews with his contemporaries and archival sources including his letters as a student and colonial authorities files on him, this biography brings a new perspective on how the scholarship that Nyerere engaged with as a young man influenced his ideas of the uhuru movement against colonial rule and, later, the ujamaa policy of African socialism that so defined his leadership of an independent Tanzania. Thomas Molony is Senior Lecturer in African Studies at the University of Edinburgh.
ISBN:9781847011503
Author:Thomas Molony
The Enough Moment Fighting to End Afr...
Brief Summary
Had Enough?
Join activists, organizations, and celebrities to fight human rights crimes in Africa.
Human rights activist John Prendergast and Oscar-nominated actor Don Cheadle bring us an empowering and hopeful new book, as they reveal the steps being taken by engaged citizens—"Upstanders"—famous and unknown, here and abroad, to combat genocide, rape, and child soldierdom in Africa, and show how you can be a part of the movement.
Learn how a high school student in Chicago rallied fellow students all over his city to raise awareness of genocide... a former child soldier in Uganda formed a group of others like him to aid in reconciliation... and a mother and teacher gang-raped by soldiers in Congo found strength to help other survivors. John and Don present ways for you to form alliances, contact Congress, alert the media, enlist corporations, and use social media to become part of the solution.
Featuring testimonies and interviews with:
• Ben Affleck • Madeleine Albright • Emmanuelle Chriqui • Sheryl Crow • Ann Curry • Annie Duke • Dave Eggers • Mia Farrow • Ryan Gosling • Mariska Hargitay • Emile Hirsch • Iman • Angelina Jolie • Nicholas Kristof • Joel Madden • Nicole Richie • Martin Sheen • Robin Wright • As well as a number of members of Congress and many others making a difference
ISBN:9780307464828
Author:John Prendergast and Don Cheadle
Heads of the Colored People by Nafiss...
Brief Summary
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction and Kirkus Prize Finalist
Calling to mind the best works of Paul Beatty and Junot DÃaz, this collection of moving, timely, and darkly funny stories examines the concept of black identity in this so-called post-racial era.
A stunning new talent in literary fiction, Nafissa Thompson-Spires grapples with black identity and the contemporary middle class in these compelling, boundary-pushing vignettes.
Each captivating story plunges headfirst into the lives of new, utterly original characters. Some are darkly humorous—from two mothers exchanging snide remarks through notes in their kids’ backpacks, to the young girl contemplating how best to notify her Facebook friends of her impending suicide—while others are devastatingly poignant—a new mother and funeral singer who is driven to madness with grief for the young black boys who have fallen victim to gun violence, or the teen who struggles between her upper middle class upbringing and her desire to fully connect with black culture.
Thompson-Spires fearlessly shines a light on the simmering tensions and precariousness of black citizenship. Her stories are exquisitely rendered, satirical, and captivating in turn, engaging in the ongoing conversations about race and identity politics, as well as the vulnerability of the black body. Boldly resisting categorization and easy answers, Nafissa Thompson-Spires is an original and necessary voice in contemporary fiction.
How to Love a Jamaican by Alexia Arthurs
Brief Summary
From a magnetic new voice, a debut story collection set in Jamaica and America for readers of Zadie Smith, Helen Oyeyemi, and Imbolo Mbue.
"There is a way to be cruel that seems Jamaican to me.”
Tenderness and cruelty, loyalty and betrayal, ambition and regret—Alexia Arthurs navigates these tensions to extraordinary effect in her debut collection about Jamaican immigrants and their families back home. Sweeping from close-knit island communities to the streets of New York City and midwestern university towns, these eleven stories form a portrait of a nation, a people, and a way of life.
In "Light Skinned Girls and Kelly Rowlands,” an NYU student befriends a fellow Jamaican whose privileged West Coast upbringing has blinded her to the hard realities of race. In "Mash Up Love,” a twin’s chance sighting of his estranged brother—the prodigal son of the family—stirs up unresolved feelings of resentment.
In "Bad Behavior,” a mother and father leave their wild teenage daughter with her grandmother in Jamaica, hoping the old ways will straighten her out. In "Mermaid River,” a Jamaican teenage boy is reunited with his mother in New York after eight years apart. In "The Ghost of Jia Yi,” a recently murdered international student haunts a despairing Jamaican athlete recruited to an Iowa college. And in "Shirley from a Small Place,” a world-famous pop star retreats to her mother’s big new house in Jamaica, which still holds the power to restore something vital.
The winner of The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize for "Bad Behavior,” Alexia Arthurs emerges in this vibrant, lyrical, intimate collection as one of fiction’s most dynamic and essential young authors.
ISBN:9781524799205
Author:Alexia Arthurs
A Change Is Gonna Come by Bello Mary
Brief Summary
WINNER OF THE YA BOOK PRIZE SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD 2018
Featuring top Young Adult authors and introducing a host of exciting new voices, this anthology of stories and poetry from BAME writers on the theme of change is a long-overdue addition to the YA scene.
Contributors include Tanya Byrne, Inua Ellams, Catherine Johnson, Patrice Lawrence, Ayisha Malik, Irfan Master, Musa Okwonga and Nikesh Shukla.
Plus introducing four fresh new voices in YA fiction: Mary Bello, Aisha Bushby, Yasmin Rahman and Phoebe Roy.
ISBN:9781847158390
Author:Bello Mary
The Pen and The Gun by Maina Wa Kinyatti
Brief Summary
The Pen and The Gun will make an excellent addition to the study of the struggle for democracy, the imposition of dictatorship and state terrorism in Kenya.
The book will also enrich Kenya's prison revolutionary literature and, at the same time, reveal the brutality of the Kenyan penal system.
Linked to all of the above, it will shed light on the broader role of African nationalism, Pan-Africanism and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in the African social revolution. the role of the working class and its peasant ally in the liberation of Africa from world imperialism is clearly defined.
ISBN:9781453834411
Author:Maina Wa Kinyatti
At the Crossroads Readings of the Pos...
Brief Summary
Recent criticism on African literature and visual art, affected by contemporary global socio-economic and political influences, has been moving away from a singular focus on postcolonial theory towards notions of transnationalism.
There have been visible critical attempts that question the relevance of postcolonial critique, while various globally orientated critical approaches have emerged, complicating the notion of postcoloniality as we have known it.
This book consists of essays and articles that demonstrate this critical shift.
ISBN:9781592219636
Author:Ghirmai Negash, Andrea E Frohne and Samuel Zadi
The Search for Africa A History in th...
Brief Summary
These essays and articles, written between 1953 and 1993, explore the development of an African historiography and, in that context, the author's own development.
People who have been involved all their lives with Africa will be reminded of how many times Basil Davidson has given them new insights.
People who approach the study of Africa for the first time will find this collection opens out their perceptions.
ISBN:9780852557143
Author:Basil Davidson
Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the So...
Brief Summary
Thabo Mbeki plays a crucial role in world politics, but to many people he is an enigma. In this book Gumede pulls together his insights from years of reporting on the Mbeki presidency to create a sophisticated but easy-to-read account of power in South Africa.
He explores the complex position that Mbeki occupies and reveals the underlying political and personal tensions that help explain the forces that have created one of the world's most powerful and enigmatic leaders.
Covering Mbeki's attempts to modernize the economy and kick-start an African Renaissance, and investigating his controversial stance on issues from AIDS to Zimbabwe, the book offers invaluable insights into the arcane machinations behind political decisions that touch the lives of millions every day.
ISBN:9781842778487
Author:William Mervin Gumede
Crucible of the Ages Essays in Honour...
Brief Summary
Essays In Honour of Wole Soyinka at 80, edited by two award-winning African writers is a celebration of the literary life of Wole Soyinka at an important stage in his life.
The volume provides the most extensive anthology ever produced on Africa's first Nobel Laureate in Literature and features 30 essays with a foreword by the former secretary general of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku. With contributions from three Nobel Laureates: Toni Morrison, Nadine Gordimer and Derek Walcott and other contributions from African leaders, scholars, writers and literary critics from around the world, they assess Soyinka's perspectives on power, politics and the arts to create dialogue and debate.
Diverse aspects of his life are reflected in six themes in this volume that also documents the literary and cultural histories of West Africa from the 1950s to the present day.
The Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o describes Soyinka as: " A writer and public intellectual, who has voiced his concerns over major happenings in different parts of the continent over the last fifty years and more, Soyinka has become the moral and democratic conscience of Africa."
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ISBN:9780956930798
Author:Ivor Agyeman Duah, Promise Ogochukwu Okekwe and Ayebia Clarke
Regional Integration Identity and Cit...
Brief Summary
The Greater Horn of Africa (GHA) is engulfed by three interrelated crises: various inter-state wars, civil wars, and inter-communal conflicts; an economic crisis manifested in widespread debilitating poverty, chronic food insecurity and famines; and environmental degradation that is ravaging the region.
While it is apparent that the countries of the region are unlikely to be able to deal with the crises individually, there is consensus that their chances of doing so improve markedly with collective regional action. The contributors to this volume address the need for regional integration in the GHA.
They identify those factors that can foster integration, such as the proper management of equitable citizenship rights, as well as examining those that impede it, including the region's largely ineffective integration scheme, IGAD, and explore how the former can be strengthened and the latter transformed; explain how regional integration can mitigate the conflicts; and examine how integration can help to energise the region's economy.
Kidane Mengisteab is Professor of African Studies and Political Science at Penn State University; Redie Bereketeab is a researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute, Sweden.
ISBN:9781847010582
Author:Kidane Mengisteab