Cover Story
He’s been described as the “founding father of African literature”, an author “who played key role in developing African literature”; a “towering man of letters” who “helped to revive African literature”… but these accolades do little justice to Chinua Achebe’s literary legacy. One of the greatest writers/storytellers in the English language, Achebe was equally adept […]
Must You Stage an Escape?
Stacy Hardy reads the work of two itinerant poets – Johannes Göransson and Uche Nduka – who wield words to leap walls, jack us “out of the suburbs” and make us into “peeping toms” There is a wonderful suggestive confusion between wonder and wander – as if getting lost and digression were at the […]
New Bushs Old Ghosts
Cyber crime is a burgeoning business in West Africa, despite often primitive infrastructure, intermittent electricity supply and Western assumptions that Africans surely could not be capable of the third largest bank heist in history. Louis Chude-Sokei tells otherwise. Despite being accused of mangling Africa’s past and embarrassing its present, author Amos Tutuola was really after the […]
An Introduction to Arithmetic Sorcery
Cyclonopedia – Complicity with Anonymous Materials (re.press, 2008), a “theoretical-fiction novel” by Iranian philosopher and writer Reza Negarestani is reviewed by Neo Muyanga. First of all this is definitely a hyper-modern, rather than a ‘contemporary’ work, aesthetically speaking. It is very much like reading one of those overhead transparencies we used to use in high school, except this one […]
The Test
Read the following text carefully: “Know thyself, thus says the quotation and thus I tell you myself!” says SOCRATES. To whom belongs the quotation? Science fiction writer João Barreiros takes the test. José Esteves wakes up with all the psychosomatic symptoms that come with this sort of day. Sickness. Asthenia. Cold sweat. Sensing […]