Eliphas Nyamogo’s anthology End Of The Dream: 7 Short Stories On Postcolonial World Order, published by the Goethe-Institut Munich, is out now.
Eliphas Nyamogo made his name as the head of library at the Goethe-Institut Nairobi where he was at the centre of the literary events happening in the city. He ended his stint in 2017 and moved to Goethe-Institut in Munich, Germany and we didn’t hear from him again. Until today. The Kenyan has edited an anthology with seven short stories produced for the Goethe-Institut’s online magazine Latitude. In Latitude, Goethe-Institut provides a platform for experts and creatives worldwide to exchange ideas on colonial power relations, their consequences and, above all, how to dismantle them: in discourses, interviews, opinion articles and art projects.
The new anthology comprises seven short stories from Africa and South America from the following writers:
- Panashe Chigumadzi (Zimbabwe) – God of the First Testament
- Cidinha da Silva (Brazil) – Thriller
- Cristina Ali Farah (Somalia/Italy) – The Stations of the Moon
- Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (Nigeria) – Dreams and Assorted Nightmares
- José Luís Mendonça (Angola) – Independence Square
- Luis Noriega (Columbia/Spain) – The Strip
- Zukiswa Wanner (South Africa/Kenya) – Blue Bra on a Samsonite Bag
The short stories are as thematically diverse as they are similar in the experiences of their protagonists. They corroborate the fact that colonialism was not only a gruesome chapter in the history of the colonized countries but also a disruptive phenomenon in the cultural setups of those societies: From forced displacements to expropriations, institutionalized violence and racial prejudice perpetuated by the colonizers to the introduction of foreign cultures, religions and political systems that disrupted hitherto established norms and social structures.
The anthology is currently available as the book End Of The Dream: 7 Short Stories On Postcolonial World Order in English as well as in German. For more information about the Latitude project please click here. The books are can also be downloaded as e-books and audio-books on the same site.
