As 2019 draws to an end, we at Brittle Paper would like to thank all our readers for your continued support. It’s been another fantastic year of achievements by African authors and authors of the African diaspora, and we’ve been honored to be able to document them. Like previous years, our Notable African Books of […]
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Photos & Recap | The First Sierra Leone National Book Fair | Stephen Ney & Karim Bah
The first Sierra Leone National Book Fair took place between December 5 to December 7, 2019, in Freetown, at the 50/50 Hall on Tower Hill. Total attendance over the three days was close to a thousand. While the fair was attended by government ministers and scholars from most of Sierra Leone’s main universities, over half […]
Tejumola Olaniyan, Eminent Professor of English and African Cultural Studies, Dies at 60
Tejumola Olaniyan, eminent professor of English and African literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, died of heart failure in Madison, Wisconsin, on Saturday, November 30, 2019. He had turned 60 in April this year. Tejumola Olaniyan was Louise Durham Mead Professor of English and Wole Soyinka Professor of the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, […]
Nnedi Okorafor Tweets About Her Tesla Problem. Elon Musk Steps In.
Nnedi Okorafor recently ran into an issue with her newly acquired Tesla. And CEO/co-founder of Tesla Inc. Elon Musk, fresh off his short-lived hiatus from Twitter, could not resist giving her a hand. Here’s what happened. On November 1, Okorafor tweeted about how her condominium board members refused her request for an electric car charging […]
Cover Reveal for Ikenga, Nnedi Okorafor’s Debut for Middle Grade Readers
It’s hard to keep up with Nnedi Okorafor. One minute she’s creating a TV production company for Africanfuturist stories, the next she’s winning the Nommo Award. What we’re currently excited about, though, is Okorafor’s upcoming book, Ikenga. Okorafor recently revealed the book’s cover on social media. 🚨 Cover reveal 🚨 My next novel IKENGA (due […]
Alain Mabanckou’s New Book, a Collection of his Lectures Delivered at the Collège de France, to be Published January 2020
Congolese author Alain Mabanckou, possibly the most prominent name in Francophone African literature and renowned for his experimental writing, has a new book in the works: a collection of essays based on his lectures delivered during his tenure as a visiting professor at the Collège de France. The book, titled Huit leçons sur l’Afrique (loosely translated […]
“Read Salone, Build Salone”: The First Sierra Leone National Book Fair | 5-7 Dec.
Between December 5 to December 7, Freetown, Sierra Leone, will play host to the Sierra Leone National Book Fair—the first of its kind since 1925. In a statement provided to Awoko, Mohamed Sheriff, an organizer of the fair, explains that the aim of the fair is “to showcase the books that have been written by […]
Is There a Quota of 5 Books by African Authors for Every “Best 100 Books of 2019” List?
As yet another year draws to a close, literary lists of various sorts are once again filling our newsfeeds. During the first week of November 2019, BBC Arts released a list titled “100 Novels That Shaped Our World.” On that list, Brittle Paper noted that there were five novels by African authors which, in the words […]
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