Book: The Spider King’s Daughter Author: Chibundu Onuzo Publisher: Faber and Faber Year of publication: 2012 Number of pages: 286 This story has two main characters. On the one hand is seventeen year old Abike Johnson the favourite daughter of a very rich fellow living in Lagos, Nigeria. Her life is a very high end […]
Category: Nigeria
Where we talk about Nigerian writers, their books, their achievements and the countries events.
Book: Bom Boy Writer: Yewande Omotoso Publisher: Modjadji Books Year of publication: 2011 Number of pages: 255 Bom Boy by Yewande Omotoso published by Modjadji Books recently found itself (magically?) on the shortlist for the Etisalat Prize for African literature 2014. With this happening I went back and reread the book I first enjoyed […]
So Teju Cole came to Nairobi in a blaze of glory last year in the Storymoja Hay Festival. He came to these shores on the back of the Faber & Faber published Open City. The book is about a psychotic rapist Nigerian/German walking around New York and giving his strange view of the world. The […]
Book: Walking With Shadows Writer: Jude Dibia Publisher: BlackSands Books Year of publication: 2005 Number of pages: 255 In which a gay Lagos executive is outted by a colleague and how it affects him and his family. It was all fun and games in Nairobi as we awaited Binyavanga Wainaina’s latest literary baby The Africa39 […]
They announced the shortlist for the Etisalat Prize for African literature yesterday. Those in the running for Africa’s first major Pan-African literature prize are the following writers; Bom Boy by Yewande Omotoso (Modjaji Publishers) Finding Soutbek by Karen Jennings (Holland Park Press) We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo (Little, Brown and Company/Chatto & Windus […]
Categories
Teju Cole’s Open City; A review
Book: Open City Writer: Teju Cole Nationality: Nigeria/USA Number of pages: 259 Publisher: Faber and Faber. Open City is the highly praised debut novel of Nigerian/US writer Teju Cole who was the main speaker at Storymoja Hay Festival in 2013. The novel is about Julius, a psychiatrist who was born to a Nigerian father and […]
The long list for the inaugural Etisalat for Literature, the first pan-African prize open solely to debut fiction writers of African citizenship, is out. The longlist to the prize judged by professor Pumla Dineo Gqola the Chair of Judges and Professor at the University of Witwaterstrand, Sarah Ladipo Manyika a writer and academic and Billy […]
The richest literary prize on the continent, despite all you may have heard, is the Nigeria Prize for Literature. This prize, sponsored by the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG), see one writer go home with a cool US$100,000. For comparison purposes, the Caine Prize winner goes home with UK pounds10,000 and the Etisalat Winner will […]
We all read books then watch its movie version and complain bitterly that the director never did justice the jewel we all read. It’s not often that we get to see books by our fellow Africans in the cinematic form so this post will please some of us. The movie trailer for Half of a […]
This Chimamanda. Nigeria’s sweetheart writer Chimamanda Adichie has been doing what she does yet again; winning awards for her novels. The latest of her awards is the 2013 Heartland Prize. This annual prize, an initiative of the Chicago Tribune, was created in 1988 and sees authors awarded in two categories: Fiction and Non-Fiction. These prizes […]
Migritude was first coined by Kenya Poet and human rights activist Shailja Patel. The concept involves people who leave one space to another for whatever reason be it political, economical or otherwise. The concept has been seen of late quite a bit in literature of people from this continent with both Chimamanda Adichie (Americah) and […]
The Kwani Trust was started a over decade ago to ensure that literature from this part of the world grew. Their latest attempt at this is the Kwani Manuscript Prize supported by Lambent Foundation and Ford Foundation which saw those who entered get a chance to win the following prizes; 1st Prize: 300 000 KShs […]
