The African Novel, Issue #12
Celebrating African literature and performance
Welcome to the latest issue of The African Novel digital newsletter. You have joined an exciting global community of publishers, authors, readers, writers, poets, and performers, as well as academics, missionaries, and even current and former Peace Corps volunteers. We are all connected in our passion for appreciating, celebrating, and sharing African literature and performance in its many forms.
To savor this e-newsletter, we’d highly recommend you patiently read from top to bottom!
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IN THIS ISSUE
Editor-in-Chief's Message
Book Review: Waiting and Other Stories
The African Novel Podcast: Novelist Benjamin Kwakye (Part II)
Author Readings: Bayadir Mohamed-Osman
State of African Literature
Bookshelf
Book Events & More
Our Radio Archives
African Proverb: Guinean
Editor-in-Chief’s Message
What African book have you ‘read’ on tape lately?
The main point of this issue’s Editor-in-Chief’s message is to give you something to ponder – that’s all. After you weigh it, please share your thoughts with us. In turn, we shall share them with our readers on this platform.
Last week, I decided to pay close attention to web analytics for The African Novel podcasts. It struck me with excitement that 11 percent of downloads for Part 1 of my conversation with Benjamin Kwakye – our “Resident African Novelist” -- was by listeners in Bolivia. Another 4 percent of downloads was in the Kingdom of Bahrain.
Very interesting to me, indeed. Bolivia in central South America, known for its diverse terrain stretching from Andes Mountains, the Atacama Desert and Amazon Basin rainforest, tuned in to Benjamin Kwakye’s narratives from, and about, Africa. And Bahrain, an island country in Western Asia – one of 20 countries located partly or fully there – added to our podcast analytics by 4 percent.
This got me thinking hard about the state of audio books of African titles in our global world today.
In their joint partnership three years ago, Books on Tape, Listening Library, and Penguin Random House made this declaration: “The audiobook industry is growing faster than ever….” leading to an “explosive growth in the number of audio listeners” through local libraries, rise in a number of platforms, and digital devices.
What African audiobook have you listened to lately? What’s the title? Who’s the author?
Whether you live in Bolivia, Bahrain, Scotland, Alaska, or Botswana, what genre of African literature do you hunger to “read” on tape? Do you particularly enjoy hearing authors read their works? Let us know. Let’s all keep engaged!
Enjoy!
Cyril Ibe, Ph.D.
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Title: Waiting and Other Stories
Author: Martin Egblewogbe
Publisher: Lubin & Kleyner
Reviewer: Benjamin Kwakye
Expect the unexpected in this breathtaking collection of short stories by Martin Egblewogbe, who continues to demonstrate the brilliance he announced with his first collection, Mr. Happy and the Hammer of God & Other Stories.
With a style like no other, Egblewogbe has created in this collection, Waiting and Other Stories, one of those rare works of art that is hard to categorize, not simply for its fecund descriptions but more so because of the stylistic originality that transcends pigeonholing. With a power of description as evocative and poignant as it is tender, Egblewogbe’s subject matters range from the simple, though far from simplistic, to the almost metaphysical.
He is as adept in covering the shenanigans of a pastor in The Going Down of Pastor Muntumi, with Maupassantian irony, as he is with the seemingly existential scope of a story such as The Cwroling Caterpillar. These are mere examples from the panoramic span of Waiting and Other Stories, as it is extremely difficult to single out any particular story from the lot.
In Waiting and Other Stories, each story is brilliant, with its own endearing and enduring peculiarities. Egblewogbe manages to achieve the tricky balance of imbuing his stories with sufficient cultural allusions to ground them without rigidly tethering them to time and place.
Waiting and Other Stories clearly comes from a highly creative and rich mind, a keen observer of our life and times who demonstrates that, like life itself, there are no assured tidy endings. We learn that the sometimes emotional cliffhangers these stories leave us are just as, and often more, satisfying than any.
Editor’s Note: Reviewer Benjamin Kwakye is The African Novel’s “Resident Novelist.”
Episode #12
Ghanaian-born novelist and poet Benjamin Kwakye talks with Cyril Ibe about his works and the moniker “resident novelist,” for which he has been known since his first novel, The Clothes of Nakedness, was published in 1998.
Past Podcast Episodes:
Ghanaian novelist and poet Benjamin Kwakye Part 1, author of Songs of Benjamin and other titles
Gambian poet Tijan Sallah (Parts 1 & 2), author of I Come from a Country
Poet Obiwu Iwuanyanwu, author of Tigress at Full Moon
Harlem-based writer Obi Nwizu, author of Residue
Jeanne-Marie Jackson, author of The African Novel of Ideas
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, author of Praise Song for My Children
Bayadir Mohamed-Osman, author of Second Hand Smoke
Vanessa Onwuemezi, author of Dark Neighbourhood
Cyprian Njoku Josson, author of The Immigrant Ladder
Kabuika Kamunga, author of Kabuika Wants to Make New Friends
Author Readings
Hear authors themselves reading from their works.
Sudanese poet Bayadir Mohamed-Osman reads from her new collection of poetry, titled Second Hand Smoke.
Questions on the State of African Literature
Three questions are posed to writers every month. Listen here to their answers.
Responding to the questions below is Liberian-born Poet Patricia Jabbeh Wesley.
Are writers of African fiction “taking the literary world by storm?” these days?
Is the “tide turning” for African literature in America and the rest of the West?
Are we witnessing “a renaissance” of African literature today?
Bookshelf
What writers and readers of African titles are reading:
Young writer Adaobi Iwuanyanwu:
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
I Fell in Love with Hope by Lancali
Night and Day by Virginia Woolf
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Poet Tijan Sallah from the Gambia: African Literature and the CIA: Networks of Authorship and Publishing by Caroline Davies; Ancient Ghana and Mali by Nehemiah Levtzion; Nonrequired Reading by Wislawa Szymborska; African Literature Comes of Age, African Literature Today 40, edited by Ernest Emenyonu.
Comparative literature professor Jeanne-Marie Jackson (Baltimore, Maryland): Brotherhood by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr (in English translation; French original); The Wolf at Number 4 by Ayo Tamakloe-Garr; The Madhouse by T.J. Benson; and An Unusual Grief by Yewande Omotoso (just started reading).
Poet Obiwu (Ohio, USA): The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare; Ijele by Uche Nduka; Samarkand by Wole Soyinka; Ingrid Joker: Poet Under Apartheid by Louise Viljoen.
Writer Arinze Ifeakandu: Hue and Cry by James Alan McPherson, and The Great Mistake by Jonathan Lee.
Writer Obi Nwizu (New York): Another Country by James Baldwin and The Girl With the Louding Voice by Abi Dare.
Poet Bayadir Mohamed-Osman (Maryland): Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and The New War on the Poor by Dr. Paul Farmer; Secrets of Divine Love by A. Helwa.
Writer/Poet Vanessa Onwuemezi (London): The Palmwine Drinkard by Amos Tutola; Lote by Shola Von Reinhold.
Novelist Cyprian Josson (Chartres, France): Ladies Trip by Fanny Enoh; Burning Grass by Cyprian Ekwensi.
Novelist Benjamin Kwakye (Michigan, USA): Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth by Wole Soyinka; The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers.
Cyril Ibe (Ohio, USA): Things Fall Apart (in French)/Le Monde s’effondre by Chinua Achebe; Songs of Benjamin by Benjamin Kwakye.
(As a reader or subscriber of this newsletter, you can submit titles of African fiction and other books on your reading list. Tell us in what part of the world you reside).
Book Events & More…
What: PhiloXenia Creative Writing Retreat: Writing as a Catalyst for Community
“The retreat will be led by three renowned writing professionals: Glory Edim, founder of Well-Read Black Girl; Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tyehimba Jess; and Senior Editor Yahdon Israel.”
Where: Jnane Tamsna Hotel in Marrakech, Morocco,
When: March 28 to April 2
For more information: Visit here.
On Demand:
What: Library of Congress’ Interviews with African Writers, a three-part series titled “Conversations with African Poets and Writers Series.” Featured are Nigerian-born author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, South African novelist and playwright Damon Galgut, and Tanzanian-born novelist and Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah.
When: Available since May 2022.
Where: Library of Congress
For more information: Visit here.
Our Radio Archives
Coming soon: Offerings of rare, exclusive interviews and audio documentaries for our paid subscribers.
A partial list of archived Premium offerings:
Interview: Chinua Achebe biographer Ezenwa-Ohaeto
Interview: Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka on his legendary cousin, Fela
Interview: The Black press in America
Interview: South African novelist Mark Mathabani
Audio Documentary: Eighty Gifts for Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks
An audio tour of the Mandela House Museum in Soweto, South Africa
Interview: Ethiopian-Jewish Filmmaker Orly Malessa
Interview: U.S. filmmaker Ileen LeBlanc on Take Us Home, a documentary pic on the exodus of Ethiopian Jews to Israel.
Interview: American historian Edward Haas on slavery, the civil war, and the uncelebrated heroism of Blacks in the Union Army.
Interview: Herbert Martin, professor emeritus of English literature and African-American studies at the University of Dayton and co-editor of The Collected Novels of Paul Laurence Dunbar (Ohio University Press).
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African Proverb
“Around a flowering tree, there are many insects. — Guinean proverb
Our Team
Cyril Ibe, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief (Ohio)
Resident Novelist/Reviewer Benjamin Kwakye (Michigan)
Nollywood Director/Filmmaker/Novelist Cyprian Josson (Chartres, France)
Contributor/Writer Kabuika Kamunga (Rochester, Minnesota)
Past Issues of The African Novel eNewsletter:
Issue #4