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CONTENTS
Editor-in-Chief's Message
Memorable Lines: The Scattering
Bookshelf: A Reading List
Common Ground
The African Novel Podcast: Kabuika Kamunga
Book Review: The House of Hunger
Author Readings: Cyprian Njoku Josson
Book Events & More
Our Radio Archives
Off the WRITE Path
African Proverb: South African
Editor-in-Chief’s Message
It’s an age-old aphorism that “art provides an escape from living.” Arguably, any kind of art.
In the last week before this current issue of The African Novel digital newsletter was put to bed, the process of editing this literary work has provided me a much-needed escape from the bone-chilling news out of my native country, Nigeria. How fast is the once-promising African “giant” descending to the unenviable position where terrorists and religious fanatics can uninhibitedly storm into a Catholic church and unleash despicable mayhem with bombs and automatic guns, taking the lives of more than 30 innocent Christians?
I was equally sickened by the fact that politics in Nigeria continued uninterrupted in the form of political party primaries held after the tragedies in Owo in southwestern Nigeria.
Thankfully, this quest to be your guide in the celebration of African letters on a few web pages — month after month — was my savior. It saved me from descending into a depression about the deteriorating state in a country I visited with my wife and four teenage children as recently as last December and January. God save Nigeria — for Nigeria, for Africa, and for our world!
Enjoy!
Cyril Ibe, Ph.D
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Memorable Lines
"She isn’t sure she can love a man with these bits of a stranger about him. But how can she tell him, stop being you? Stop being this man who you are now? –
How could the stars not be changed by all this evil they had witnessed?
They were alive. Their systems ran. Their hearts beat. Their blood moved through their veins. But something shifts in a person when the only hope they have is to live and nothing more."
— from The Scattering (Penguin Random House South Africa, 2016 ) by Lauri Kubuitsile.
Bookshelf
What writers and readers of African titles are reading:
Poet Bayadir Mohamed-Osman (Maryland): Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and The New War on the Poor by Dr. Paul Farmer; Secrets of Div. ine 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).
Dambudzo Marechera’s The House of Hunger is a collection of one novella, eight short stories, and one poem. In 154 pages, Marechera manages to weave together a mood at once empty and full, haunting and fulfilled.
In the novella, The House of Hunger, from which the book gets its title, Marechera casts his net wide to weave into his narrative characters as weird as they are awesome. We see Zimbabwe that is diverse in its national character, gentle on the one hand, violent on the other, sane in one instant, and insane in the other. The House of Hunger is a story of brutality and gentility, innocence and coming of age.
This kaleidoscopic feeling sustains Marechera’s The House of Hunger, even in the shorter stories. Whether it be about the mockery of a man unable to kill a goat or the angst of a writer dealing with loneliness and alienation from his wife, the book shakes with a fatalism pulsating behind the words. In other instances, The House of Hunger grips us with its self-critical gaze, as in a story of a self-hating African who seems to want to escape himself.
Now subtle, now hyperbolic, Marechera’s The House of Hunger is like a little gem, awesome in the scope of the author’s imagination. It evokes a deep desire for something — something hard to describe, but certainly something better than what is.
The House of Hunger was published in 1978. Dambudzo Marechera was born in the former Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. He is the author of Black Sunlight and The Black Insider. He died at the age of 32.
Editor’s Note: Reviewer Benjamin Kwakye is The African Novel’s “Resident Novelist.”
Author Readings
Hear authors themselves reading from their works.
Cyprian Njoku Joson, Chartres, France-based author, reads from The Immigrant Ladder.
Book Events & More…
In Person
The Grand Rapids Public Library (GRPL) has launched the Black Lit Book Club in celebration of African American authors. The book club will meet monthly to discuss one book written by an African American author. GRPL’s librarians will lead the book discussions.
Book club enthusiasts will gather outside at the Seymour library branch, 2350 Eastern Ave SE, Grand Rapids, Mich. 49507.
The book club’s schedule through August, 2022 is as follows:
May 24:The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray.
June 28:The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey by Walter Mosley.
July 26:The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin.
Aug. 23:Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi.
All book club meetings are scheduled from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. For more information: (616-988-5413), or visit Grand Rapids Public Library.
In Person
Somaliland Hosts Hargeysa International Book Fair 2022
The Hargeysa International Book Fair 2022, marking its 15th year, will be held in Somaliland from July 23-28 under the theme “Solidarity.” Senegal is the festival country partner.
Launched in 2008, the Hargeysa International Book Fair has been held since at the Redsea Cultural Foundation in Somaliland. The festival is considered “the biggest literary extravaganza in the Horn of Africa” and “one of the biggest on the African continent.” It has hosted leading writers, journalists, academics, publishers, artists, journalists, and other professionals visiting from dozens of countries around the world.
The Hargeysa International Book Fair will feature panels, readings, book launches, performances of theatre and poetry over the five days. For 2022, the “country focus” will be on the West African nation of Senegal, considered one of the “leading literary powerhouses” in that region of the continent.
Library of Congress Celebrates May for Africa Month By Sharing Interviews With African Writers
The Library of Congress is celebrating Africa Month by hosting a three-part series of conversations with award-winning African writers throughout May. The writers include Nigerian-born author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, South African novelist and playwright Damon Galgut, and Tanzanian-born novelist and Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah.
The LC has noted: “The interviews are part of the `Conversations with African Poets and Writers Series’ produced by the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division since 2008 to promote a greater cross-cultural understanding and dialogue. The series offers a window onto African writers, from the continent and the diaspora, and features their works in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama and literary criticism.”
This archive is made possible through a multi-partner literary program series involving the Library of Congress' African and Middle Eastern Division, the Poetry and Literature Center, the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa, and the Center for African Studies at Howard University.
For more information about “Conversations with African Poets and Writers,” 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: 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 role 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).
Cyprian (Njoku) Josson directs a gospel group in Chartres, France, and organizes “Festival International de Gospel et Negro Spiritual de Chartres” in the historic French city.
African Proverb
"A clever king is the brother of peace.” — South African Proverb.
Our Team
Cyril Ibe, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief (Ohio)
Resident Novelist/Reviewer Benjamin Kwakye (Michigan)
