Authority Stealing in Nigeria
Akin Adesokan confronts the ‘real world of Nigerian politics’ and comes to grips with the ‘universal seductions of authoritarian power’ that make for ever-thickening plots. Two-point-eight billion naira, Oil money issy missing Dem set up enkwayary Dem say money no loss-y o… Money no loss, dem shout again Enkwayary come close o. E no finish? […]
Authority Stealing in India
Rakesh Khanna explores the web of Indian-language crime fiction publishing, in which colonial legacies and twisted plots in realms of sorcery and subterfuge are not limited to the page. Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, and quite a few other Indian languages have long traditions of crime fiction, yet very little of it has ever been translated or […]
I Think I’ll Call it Morning
by Bongani Kona Penumbra Songeziwe Mahlangu Kwela Books, 2013 Sometime in the winter of 2010 when, like the protagonist of his breakout novel, Penumbra, he was in his mid-20s and unemployed, Songeziwe Mahlangu had a nervous breakdown. The episode, and everything which led to it, is revisited and placed at the epicentre of his […]
The Shifting Fortunes of a Performing Poet
Post-apartheid poetry and its makers have witnessed the commodification of the art in more ways than one. Now a veteran of the South African performance poetry scene, Vonani Bila notices his greying chin hairs, his fading allure and the fact that nothing exists outside the realm of exchange. He calls on the new generation of […]
Black Man in the White Suit
A Letter from Cape Town by Kiluanji Kia Henda. In 2008, the South African artist Ed Young invited me to take part in a three-month residence programme in Cape Town funded by two Swiss cultural institutions. I had been to South Africa twice – first to Johannesburg, where I had lived from1996 to 1998, during […]