Book: An Elegy for Easterly Author: Petina Gappah Publisher: Faber and Faber Year of publication: 2009 Number of pages: 273 Genre: Short story collection We suffered a bit in the 1990s when the Kenyan shilling was devalued by 30% at one go in 1993 and we suffered the worst inflation in our history. The US […]
Month: March 2014
The Writivism Festival is set for Kampala, Uganda from the 18th – 22nd of June this year. I have been following The Writivism initiative with keen interest. The program which is aimed at pushing literature to the next level started last year quietly but has grown very fast very quickly with many capitals taking part. […]
The International Confluences Book Fair was hosted in Mauritius on March 6-9 with authors from the island on the Indian Ocean and other parts of the globe. The Mauritian authors who attended the fair included Ananda Devi, Lindsey Collen, Alain Gordon-Gentil and Sedley Assone. From out of Mauritius were writers from France, UK, India, China, […]
Its truly awards season in the literature space for African authors. The latest nominee in a book award is South Africa novelist Lauren Beukes for the Mulholland published The Shining Girls and the award in question is The Strand Magazine Critics Awards 2013. The Strand Magazine was a monthly magazine composed of fictional stories and […]
Book: Nairobi Heat Author: Mukoma Wa Ngugi Publisher: Spear Books Year of publishing: 2009 Number of pages: 212 Nairobi Heat is the debut novel of Cornell literature professor Mukoma Wa Ngugi and it was published by Spear Books in 2009. The book speaks of black African American police Detective Ishmael Fofona who is investigating the […]
Residents of Kampala Uganda were treated to the biggest book fair in the country last week. The festival which started in 1993 was aimed at showcase Uganda’s intellectual output and bring national and regional focus on the crucial role that reading and books play in the country. Here are some sights from the well attended […]
Chimamanda Adichie is the biggest name in Nigerian (if not African) literature right now. She is kinda like the Lupita Nyong’o of literature from this rock we live on and love so much. Her book Americanah was published last year and she has been racking up the nominations and wins for this one book. In […]
The Kenyan short list for the Burt Award for African Literature 2014 was announced at a breakfast today. The Burt Award for African Literature is an award for fiction targeted at young adults in four African countries; Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. The award which started in 2012 is sponsored by Code, a Canadian NGO […]
Book: Callused Hands Author: Stanley Gazemba Publisher: Nsemia Publishers Year of publication: 2013 Number of pages: 243 Kenyan writer Stanley Gazemba has been in the game for quite a while. His much loved debut novel The Stone Hills of the Maragoli about life in a village in Western Kenya was the winner of the Jomo […]
Zukiswa Wanner’s latest book London, Cape Town, Jo’burg launches in May in Johannesburg, SA. Zukiswa Wanner is one of the most recognised names in South African literary circles. She emerged in 2006 with the Oshun books published The Madams about a black South African woman who takes the services of a white South African maid. […]
Jalada Africa is a brilliant new initiative to bring new African voices to the literary landscape. Their first collection of stories was Sketch of a bald woman in the semi-nude and other stories which I really enjoyed. The next collection is already in production and will be a Porn/Sex anthology. The anthology in both English […]
Book: Mandate of the people. Author: Margaret Ogola Publisher: Focus Publishers Year of publication: 2012 Number of pages: 246 Many Kenyans will be familiar with Margaret Ogola’s 1995 Commonwealth Prize winning novel The River and The Source. The book also went home with Jomo Kenyatta Foundation Prize for literature. This is not because the book […]
Sierra Leone writer Aminatta Forna is one of the eight winners of the 2014 edition of the Windham Campbell Prize. Donald Windham and Sandy M. Campbell were avid book collectors, voracious readers, and friends with many of the most important literary figures of their time. When Campbell passed away unexpectedly in 1988, Windham created an […]
You may or may not know the Baileys Women Prize for women but you probably know about it in its old life. It all started in January 1992, a diverse group of creative types both male and female gathered together in a flat in London, UK (England, not Siaya). The Booker Prize shortlist of 1991, […]
Book: Den of Inequities Author: Kinyanjui Kombani Publisher: Longhorn Year of publication: 2013 Number of pages: 188 Kenyan writer Kinyanjui Kombani has a new book out called Den of Inequities. His first book was The Last Villains of Molo and it addressed the tricky issue of the series of crises that occurred in the Rift […]
