Ben Okri will headline the 2019 African Book Festival in Berlin, curated by Tsitsi Dangarembga, where panels will be moderated by Brittle Paper founder Ainehi Edoro, the Berlin-based writers Musa Okwonga and Clementine Burnley, and TV literary programme host Denis Scheck. The event—funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds, presented by the literary agency InterKontinental, and themed “Transitioning from Migration”—will be held […]
Tag Archives: Ben Okri
The Freedom Artist, Ben Okri’s New Novel Forthcoming in January 2019, Is a Rallying Call in a Post-Truth Society
Ben Okri has a new novel forthcoming in January 2019. The Nigerian novelist-poet-essayist, who is the only black African to receive the Booker Prize, in 1991 for his The Famished Road, had the 256-page book rights acquired by Head of Zeus for release in the UK in February 2019, by HarperCollins for release in Australia […]
Bringing Achebe’s Masterpiece to Life | Highlights from the 60th Anniversary Reading of Things Fall Apart | Eddie Hewitt
60 years on from the first publication of Things Fall Apart, I was excited to be in Queen Elizabeth Hall at London’s Southbank Centre to pay homage to Chinua Achebe and to enjoy a performance of his masterpiece by a stellar group of readers. A seven hour session of the finest literary entertainment, presented by […]
African Literary Digest: 8 Must-Reads from January, 2017
We ended 2016 with a compilation of our best pieces of the year. The first month of 2017 is gone but it wasn’t arid: there was writing that caught our attention, and both the LGBTIQ group 14 and Afreada magazine released beautiful anthologies. Here are our must-read selections, an unranked list. They’re all online so […]
The Pleasure of Great Prose | Review of Sarah L. Manyika’s Like a Mule | by Yemisi Aribisala
Sarah Ladipo Manyika is a virtuoso at offering the gentle word that can break a bone. Her defiance in written words is as dense and mined as rich fruitcake. Her publishers, Cassava Republic Press urge us to read her new book Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun for the protagonist, Dr. Morayo’s […]
After 25 Years, Ben Okri Writes Beautiful Essay in Honor of His Booker Prize-winning The Famished Road
It is hard to believe that 25 years has passed since Ben Okri stunned the world with the story of a Azaro, a spirit child stranded in the human world. Published in 1991, The Famished Road was one of the crowning moments of the 20th century, as far as fiction goes. Okri’s poetic prose and […]
Lesley Nneka Arimah’s New Yorker Story is a Crazy Mix of Genres
For those eager to find new African writing, Lesley Nneka Arimah is a gift. There is nothing rookie about Arimah’s work. Her story “Light” won the Africa category of the Common Wealth Prize and was subsequently published by Granta. Still her New Yorker story, published last week, took many of us by surprise for being ridiculously […]
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