The Complete Gentleman
In London Kamwendo’s interpretation of Amos Tutuola’s sly satire of spectral global capitalism and Afro-modernity, debt is paid off with body parts traded on the open market, human flesh carries magnetic appeal and beauty is fatal. This graphic story features in the Chronic (August 2016), an edition in which we explore ideas around mythscience, science fiction and […]
The Art of Suspense
Lidudumalingani Mqombothi revisits the football matches of his childhood, when radio, not television, was most people’s ticket to the beautiful game. But a radio was not the only requirement for a full experience – an active imagination and an attentive ear were integral to engaging in the virtuosity of the audio commentary. Only a […]
A Fine Madness
By Masande Ntshanga Here’s how this starts: halfway through Mishka Hoosen’s debut novel, Call it a difficult night:, I get the impulse to remove its pages from the binding and to rearrange them into a remix of the book – an impulse, no doubt, that stems from the novel’s relentless adherence to a searing psychological […]
Politics of Betrayal
Using historian and author Jacob Dlamini’s latest work as a backdrop, Bongani Kona juxtaposes acts of defiance and acts of betrayal in the protracted struggle against apartheid in South Africa. He questions, as do Dlamini and many others, if the very act of betrayal – of collaboration with the enemy, of selling out and condemning […]
Dansons Donc le Zouglou
By Henri-Michel Yere Déscolarisé In 1980s Côte d’Ivoire, exclusion from the schooling system became a possibility that many high school graduates had to face. An economic crisis had set in; the prices of the country’s main produce – cocoa and coffee – had undergone a sharp decrease in the late 1970s. Le succès de ce […]