21st September will be a very special day as we mark the 1st anniversary of the infamous Al Shabaab attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi that traumatized us all so much. This day was especially trauma inducing for the literary community in Kenya as its premier literary festival the Storymoja Hay Festival was happening […]
Month: August 2014
The discussion about the languages we use to write our literature isn’t about to end any time soon. The debate has raged for years; write in the language of The Man (English, French, Arabic) or in our own (Swahili, Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Kinyarwanda, Shona, Zulu, Xhosa, Baganda, Nyanja, Somali, Amharic… I can go all day […]
My first experience of Hargeysa was in Nadifa Mohamed’s The Orchid of Lost Souls about three women and the way that they cope as their city falls apart. It was set in the late 1980s as Somalia fell apart. The Hargeysa of today is different in ways that one cannot imagine if you are obsessed […]
Niq Mhlongo was one of the battalion of South African writers who invaded Scotland for one of the biggest literature festivals on the planet: The Edinburgh International Book Festival. The writer is well known for his books Dog Eat Dog, After Tears and his latest Way Back Home which is as good a book as […]
Gojon Pin and others stories is the latest anthology from our friends at the Caine Prize. The book contains stories from several writers the most “high profile” being the winner of the 2014 prize, Kenya’s Okwiri Oduor as well as the other four shortlisted ladies and gents. The others are the twelve writers from across […]
Book: A daunting Journey Author: Jeremiah Gitau Kiereini (edited by Mutu Wa Gethoi) Publisher: Kenway Publications Year of publication: 2014 Number of pages: 258 Genre: Biography A Daunting Journey is the memoir of Jeremiah Gitau Kiereini one of the most well known and least known Kenyans in recent times. This reviewer knew Bwana Kiereini for one reason; that he was the big […]
We know our Naija people love to party like the rest of us on this continent and what better peeps to do this than for the writers longlisted for this year’s Nigerian Literature Awards. The awards which are the richest on the continent for any individual have eleven writers in the gunning for the US$100,000 […]
The Zimbabwe International Book Fair was held for the first time in 1983 in Harare, Zimbabwe. Since then it has been one of the biggest literary events on the continent and this year it was no different as many flocked to Harare for the event. This year’s theme was “Indigenous Languages, Literature, Art and Knowledge […]
The Wahome Mutahi Prize for literature 2014 nominees have just been announced. They are in four different categories English Adult, Kiswahili Adult, English Children and Kiswahili Children categories. The two children’s categories were introduced for this year’s Award. Winners in each category will take home a cash prize of sh50,000. English Adult category The Last […]
The 5th edition of the Maktaba Award (Library of the Year Award) in Kenya organised by the Goethe-Institut Kenya, the Jomo Kenyatta Foundation and the Kenya Library Association will be happening in September. In 2013 the overall winner was Catholic university. The Award, modeled on the German Library of the Year Award, aims to recognize […]
The Lazarus Effect is a book that was published a few years ago by Liberian Hawa Golakai or HJ Golakai. It is a crime fiction novel about an investigative reporter Voinjama “Vee”Johnson who was born in Liberia but is based in South Africa and how she goes around solving the murder of Jaqueline “Jacqui” Paulsen […]
They say that it has all gone digital. If you want to get the books you can also go online and buy the books in physical as well as virtual form as e-books. Buying books online is simple as long as you have a credit card that allows you to make purchases online. Now that […]
Kagiso Molope has just come from the White Raven Festival in Munich, Germany where she was one of the guest authors. The festival in its third year showcases children’s and young adult literature to a German audience. Part of the work done by Kagiso one of my favourite authors, Dancing in the Dust rocks, is […]
South African author Zukiswa Wanner continued selling her latest Kwela published book London Cape Town Joburg. The author has been doing a series of events in cities around the continent starting with Durban followed by other cities including Harare, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Kampala. The author started the Kenyan arm of book tour this past […]
The Storymoja Hay Festival is the biggest literary festival in Kenya having happened for the last five years and seeing many thousands of guests. This year’s event the five in the series is a bit special. The 2013 edition of the event was badly affected when terrorists attacked one of Kenya’s best malls at the […]
