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, […]
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 […]
The Invention of African Football
Moses März documents his fleeting orbit of the “African” football scene, from the Afcon 2008 tourney in Ghana to Angola in 2009 and the 2010 FIFA World Cup extravaganza further south. All in all it was brief, expensive, stereotypically Eurocentric and big on defeat. My short-lived career as an African football correspondent began with a […]
The Second German Chronic is Here
[hr] The second German-language edition of the Chronic takes up the theme of new cartographies. The 32-page publication features translations of maps and selected writings from previous editions of the English Chronic produced in 2014 and 2015. Contributors include Binyavanga Wainaina, Yemisi Aribisala, Billy Kahora, Jesse Weaver Shipley, Wendell Marsh, Agri Ismail, Moses März, Elnathan John, Stacy Hardy, Sarah Jappie […]
POLITRICKS IN THE STADIUM
Melanie Boehi discusses how, for politicians, sports tournaments such as the upcoming Africa Cup of Nations and the World Cup in 2010 serve as magical image-production machines and informal meeting space, where work is disguised as play and play disguised as work. Hosni Mubarak was among the first to congratulate Egypt’s national team upon its […]