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Features, Lit Scene, News September 16, 2019

15 Pieces to Guide Your Understanding of Xenophobia in (South) Africa

xenophobia in south africa - photo by guillerme sartori for agence france press and getty images

Once again, this September, xenophobic violence was unleashed on other Africans, mostly Nigerians, in South Africa: businesses were closed, shops were looted, and people were killed. The attacks, which previously happened in 2008 and 2015 and also targeted Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, and Malawians, among other nationals, have drawn widespread international condemnation and, in cases, diplomatic actions. […]

25 Authors, 41 Novels: An African History of the Booker Prize for Fiction

The Booker Prize for Fiction is awarded annually to the best original novel written in the English language and published in the United Kingdom. Formerly known as the Booker-McConnell Prize (1961-2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002-2019), it is widely regarded as the pre-eminent book prize in the English-speaking world. From inception, it was open […]

Ellah Wakatama Allfrey to Lead New Project for Artistic Partnership between University of Manchester and HOME

As part of their three-year artistic partnership, the University of Manchester and the Manchester-based arts venue HOME have created a knowledge exchange programme and a literature event series to be led by Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, OBE, who has been appointed Senior Research Fellow. It is her fourth major appointment this year, following her being named […]

African Literary Digest: 101 Notable Pieces of 2018

It was inevitable: compiling a list as monstrous as this would consume time, cause a delay. But here we are. 2018 came with its own firsts and highs. A new major publishing house came on board: The Indigo Press, founded by the distinguished Zimbabwean editor and critic Ellah Allfrey. A new major magazine: Kabaka, dedicated to publishing queer-centered […]

The 2018 Brittle Paper Awards: The Winners

The Brittle Paper Awards is our way of recognizing the finest, original pieces of literature by Africans available online for free. We began it in 2017 to mark our seventh anniversary. The $1,100 cash prize is spread across five categories which reflect our efforts to capture the range and variations of literary dialogue on the continent: the Brittle Paper Award […]

Un-Silencing Queer Nigeria: The Language of Emotional Truth | Five Writers in Conversation

To mark BRITTLE PAPER‘s 7th anniversary in 2017, we organised two conversations on our Facebook page. The second, themed “Un-Silencing Queer Nigeria: The Language of Emotional Truth,” took place on 5 August 2017 and was an insightful, urgent conversation about queerness and its exploration in Nigerian literature. Our guests were: Romeo Oriogun, winner of the 2017 […]

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus Turns 15: The Best Moments of a Modern Classic

“It wasn’t the first novel I wrote,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie told the audience at the University of Nairobi, during her lecture in honour of Kwani? Magazine’s 10th anniversary, and then she joked: “I wrote other bad novels which I hope nobody ever sees. But Purple Hibiscus was the first one that I loved.” When she […]

Exclusive Photos | Inside Wole Soyinka’s Art-Filled House in Abeokuta Forest

In August, we reported Kola Tubosun’s essay on Wole Soyinka’s art-filled house in Abeokuta forest. Published on Popula, “A House for Mr Soyinka“—a title alluding to V.S. Naipaul’s novel—has since been shortlisted for the 2018 Brittle Paper Award for Creative Nonfiction. At 84 years of age, Wole Soyinka’s life lives—to use Teju Cole’s phrasing on a […]