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 […]
FESTAC ’77
In 1977, thousands of artists, writers, and musicians from Africa and its diaspora descended on Lagos, Nigeria for the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC ’77). Can a past that the present has not yet caught up with be summoned to haunt the present as an alternative? What is important here is not the reiteration of the actual past, […]
A Geography of Times and Affects
by Marissa Moorman. An Angolan friend of mine refuses to read Ondjaki. He says the writer’s work is nostalgic for the socialist period – times he’d rather forget. I disagree. Granma Nineteen and the Soviet’s Secret is the third book (and the second translated into English, following Good Morning Comrades) that uses a child narrator […]
Miniature Metamorphoses
by André Naffis-Sahely. In his dotage, Henry Kissinger has come to resemble Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars; after five decades of insidious influence on US foreign policy, stretching from Nixon all the way to Obama, his face has scrunched into a ripple of wrinkles, but his eyes retain their wily lustre. When he enters a room, […]
IRM de la ville de Douala
by Maud De La Chappelle To Didier À Douala, on nomme les carrefours, places, rond-points, rues, de manière improvisoire [1]– improvisée et provisoire – augré des anecdotes du quartier, des lieux de vies importants ou du type d’activité quis’y pratique. Ces noms apparaissent, suivant le même processus unpeu mystérieux que celui qui forme les rumeurs, pour […]