NoViolet Bulawayo wins 12th Caine Prize for African Writing

I had always known that the announcement of the Caine Prize for African Writing would fall on my birthday. However, in joyful and thoughtful moods that birthdays always bestow upon its adult celebrants, I entirely forgot to follow the announcement on twitter. Thanks, however, to the internet I have been able to retrieve the announcement of the winner.

Press Release

Zimbabwe’s NoViolet Bulawayo has won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing, described as Africa’s leading literary award, for her short story entitled ‘Hitting Budapest’, from The Boston Review, Vol 35, no. 6 – Nov/Dec 2010.

The Chair of Judges, award-winning author Hisham Matar, announced NoViolet Bulawayo as the winner of the £10,000 prize at a dinner held this evening (Monday 11 July) at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Hisham Matar said:

The language of ‘Hitting Budapest’ crackles. Here we encounter Darling, Bastard, Chipo, Godknows, Stina and Sbho, a gang reminiscent of Clockwork Orange. But these are children, poor and violated and hungry. This is a story with moral power and weight, it has the artistry to refrain from moral commentary. NoViolet Bulawayo is a writer who takes delight in language.

NoViolet Bulawayo was born and raised in Zimbabwe. She recently completed her MFA at Cornell University, in the US, where she is now a Truman Capote Fellow and Lecturer of English. Another of her stories, ‘Snapshots’, was shortlisted for the 2009 SA PEN/Studzinski Literary Award. NoViolet has recently completed a novel manuscript tentatively titled We Need New Names, and has begun work on a memoir project.

Also shortlisted were:

• Lauri Kubuitsile (Botswana) ‘In the spirit of McPhineas Lata’ from The Bed Book of Short Stories published by Modjaji Books, SA, 2010
• Tim Keegan (South Africa) ‘What Molly Knew’ from Bad Company published by Pan Macmillan SA, 2008
• David Medalie (South Africa) ‘The Mistress’s Dog’, from The Mistress’s Dog: Short stories, 1996-2010 published by Picador Africa, 2010
• Beatrice Lamwaka (Uganda) ‘Butterfly dreams’ from Butterfly Dreams and Other New Short Stories from Uganda published by Critical, Cultural and Communications Press, Nottingham, 2010

The panel of judges is chaired by award-winning Libyan novelist Hisham Matar, whose first novel, In the Country of Men, was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize. His second novel, Anatomy of a Disappearance, was published by Viking this March.

He is joined on the panel by Granta deputy editor Ellah Allfrey, publisher, film and travel writer Vicky Unwin, Georgetown University Professor and poet David Gewanter, and the award-winning author Aminatta Forna.

Once again, the winner of the £10,000 Caine Prize will be given the opportunity to take up a month’s residence at Georgetown University, Washington DC as a ‘Caine Prize/Georgetown University Writer-in-Residence’. The award will cover all travel and living expenses.

Last year the Caine Prize was won by Sierra Leonean writer Olufemi Terry. As the then Chair of judges, Fiammetta Rocco, said at the time, the story was 

ambitious, brave and hugely imaginative. Olufemi Terry’s ‘Stickfighting Days’ presents a heroic culture that is Homeric in its scale and conception. The execution of this story is so tight and the presentation so cinematic, it confirms Olufemi Terry as a talent with an enormous future.

Previous winners include Sudan’s Leila Aboulela, winner of the first Caine Prize in 2000, whose new novel Lyrics Alley was published in January 2010 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, as well as Binyavanga Wainaina, from Kenya, who founded the well-known literary magazine, Kwani?, dedicated to promoting the work of new Kenyan writers and whose memoir One Day I Will Write About this Place will be published by Granta Books in November 2011.

You can read the winning story here.

[Courtesy: Wealth of Ideas]

Tope Folarin Wins Caine Prize for African Writing 2013

Monday July 8, 2013: The Caine Prize for African Writing announced the winner of its announced Nigerian Tope Folarin as the winner of the 14th Caine Prize for African Writing with his story Miracle published in Transition, Issue 109 (Bloomington, 2012).

The Chair of Judges, Gus Casely-Hayford, announced Tope Folarin as the winner of the £10,000 prize at a dinner held this evening (Monday, 8 July) at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Miracle is a story set in Texas in an evangelical Nigerian church where the congregation has gathered to witness the healing powers of a blind pastor-prophet. Religion and the gullibility of those caught in the deceit that sometimes comes with faith rise to the surface as a young boy volunteers to be healed and begins to believe in miracles.

Gus Casely-Hayford praised the story, saying: 

Tope Folarin's ‘Miracle’ is another superb Caine Prize winner – a delightful and beautifully paced narrative, that is exquisitely observed and utterly compelling. 

Tope Folarin is the recipient of writing fellowships from the Institute for Policy Studies and Callaloo, and he serves on the board of the Hurston/Wright Foundation. Tope was educated at Morehouse College, and the University of Oxford, where he earned two Master’s degrees as a Rhodes Scholar. He lives and works in Washington, DC. Also shortlisted were: 

• Pede Hollist (Sierra Leone) ‘Foreign Aid’ from Journal of Progressive Human Services, Vol. 23.3 (Philadelphia, 2012)
• Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (Nigeria) ‘The Whispering Trees’ from The Whispering Trees, published by Parrésia Publishers (Lagos, 2012)
• Elnathan John (Nigeria) ‘Bayan Layi’ from Per Contra, Issue 25 (USA, 2012)
• Chinelo Okparanta (Nigeria) ‘America’ from Granta, Issue 118 (London, 2012)

Once again the winner of the £10,000 Caine Prize will be given the opportunity to take up a month’s residence at Georgetown University, as a Writer-in-Residence at the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice and will be invited to take part in the Open Book Festival in Cape Town in September. Last year the Caine Prize was won by Nigerian writer Rotimi Babatunde. 

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Read more here

Caine Prize 2014 Shortlist

Exactly a week ago, the Caine Prize announced its 2014 shortlist. This year's shortlist was announced by the Nobel Prize winner and Patron of the Caine Prize Wole Soyinka, as part of the opening ceremonies for the UNESCO World Book Capital 2014 celebration in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The Shortlist comprises:

1. Diane Awerbuck (South Africa) "Phosphorescence" in Cabin Fever (Umuzi, Cape Town. 2011)
2. Efemia Chela (Ghana/Zambia) "Chicken" in Feast, Famine and Potluck (Short Story Day Africa, South Africa. 2013)
3. Tendai Huchu (Zimbabwe) "The Intervention" in Open Road Review, issue 7, New Delhi. 2013
4. Billy Kahora (Kenya) "The Gorilla's Apprentice" in Granta (London. 2010)
5. Okwiri Oduor (Kenya) "My Father's Head" in Feast, Famine and Potluck (Short Story Day Africa, South Africa. 2013)

Tendai Huchu is the author of The Hairdresser of Harare. Billy Kahora's Urban Zoning was nominated in 2012 Caine Prize Shortlist. To commemorate fifteen years of the Caine Prize this year, £500 will be awarded to each shortlisted writer. The winner of the £10,000 prize will be announced at a celebratory dinner at the Bodleian Library, Oxford on Monday 14 July.

Read more about it here

108. Stickfighting Days by Olufemi Terry

Olufemi Terry's Stickfighting Days won the 11th Caine Prize for African Writing Award in 2010. It was later included in the anthology A Life in Full anthology published in 2010. This story first appeared in Chimurenga vol. 12/13.

The focus of the Caine Prize is ' on the short story, as reflecting the contemporary development of African story-telling tradition.' Here, one wonders if the 'African story-telling tradition' part deals with what publishers refer to as 'The African Story'. If so, the Caine Prize has succeeded. If the 'development' is also necessary, then it has failed totally; for now, the prize is almost seen as the ultimate search for the story that that can make readers puke and wonder if the characters are savages or humans. Consequently, writers summon all their creative power to write the most scatological stories that would define what an African story is. Whereas some writers search for the most rotten neighbourhoods in any country they can imagine, 'selling their nations horrors', others, unable to find appropriate vicinities, themes, or enough filth, create theirs. And if the Caine Prize's aim is to continuously reward these stories, describing them as 'creative, ambitious, bold, imaginative', then Stickfighting Days would be to the Caine Prize, what Rushdie's Midnight's Children is to the Booker. Stickfighting Days by Olufemi Terry is the ultimate horror story a writer can create.

The story is filled with blood, shit, murder, glue-sniffing, scavenging and more. At almost every other line, there is the macabre. There is enough macabre in this story to make any of Stephen King's novels become a bedtime story. The more so if one realises that King's stories are somewhat paranormal and Olufemi's story is more of a representation of his reality, at least that is what he wants to portray. As to which reality, created reality based on his perception or his personal experience, it is up to him to tell us.

Stickfighting Days - worse than E.C. Osondu's Waiting, another Caine Prize-winning story (2009) that made me puke - is a story about a young boy of thirteen (13) years named Raul and the life he leads. Like Waiting, we do not know the place, whether it's a town or a city. The story is based on the character Raul and how he relates to his environment and the people around him. 

Raul is a stickfighter - simply put, he fights with sticks. And this is no child-fight. He fights to kill. He pops out eyes. In fact in a single day he killed two people - a boy named Tauzin, from whom he steals bread, and Salad, a guy who always act as judge during stickfighting. Prior to this he had nearly killed another fighter. This makes the reader wonder how many people would be left on the street if he goes at such rate. Besides, he exhibits no emotions; he has become habituated to emotions, which makes him eerily enjoy what he does. 

There's something in his eyes - he's not afraid - but I see recognition beyond fear - and acceptance of what I'm about to do, of what I am. Killer.

Written in the first person narrative, this is how Raul describes killing Tauzin

The strike is precise enough to kill; I feel the rubbery give of his temple beneath the tip of my sticks. But once more shame comes on me, so suddenly I taste it mingling with the acid vomit. I walk away without checking he's dead.

And this is a thirteen-year old boy who names his sticks Mormegil and Orcrist because the judge - Salad - had told him stories from Lord of the Rings. In fact he aims to be like the Spartans. And here the Olufemi showed his motive: to create a morbid and macabre story in a way that has never been before. For how does an illiterate boy, who does nothing but to fight, kill, scavenge and sniff got to know how the Spartans were and wanted to be like them? It's almost like a collection of morbidity heaped on this Raul character. 

Markham thrusts into his other eye and Salad's face splashes blood. He still makes no sound. I'd dreamed of a killing blow, the single cut that cleanly ends life, but I've done that already, with Tauzin earlier. It was sweet. But now's not the time for precision. I swing and thrust, mindlessly raining blows, and Markham is with me, shares my aim for we club at the judge's head with no thought of accuracy. Even when he no longer moves, Markham and I swing for some minutes. And I stop.

And what did judge or Salad do? He prevented Raul from killing Markham and declared Raul the winner of the fight. Because he prevents fights from deteriorating into death matches.

If the boys are not stickfighting, they are scavenging on dumps, covering their legs with specks of shit - remember Osondu's Waiting? - sniffing glue. Almost every character in this short-story has a delinquent behaviour and this is rightly so as Olufemi was writing about street children. But street children even show love, they show care. I wonder where these street children came from and in which environment they live. Even in street kick-boxing, deaths are not rampant. For instance, Raul had killed Tauzin because Tauzin told him that he had put rat-poison in the bread he just stole and ate.

"That bread was poisoned. I left it as bait for whoever's been stealing my stuff. Rat poison," he adds unnecessarily. "Bet you didn't know I was a master poisoner. Had no idea it was you, but I don't care really. You might not even die."

Some people have claimed that the author is not an ambassador for his country and what matters most in writing is the creative process. This story does not read like anything by Flaubert or Proust, so what is the motive? According to the Chair judge, Fiammetta Rocco, this story is

ambitious, brave and hugely imaginative, Olufemi Terry's 'Stickfighting Days' presents a heroid culture that is Homeric in its scale and conception. The execution of this story is so tight and the presentation so cinematic, it confirms Olufemi Terry as a talent with an enormous future

I wonder what Fimmetta was referring to as brave and ambitious. Was the author writing about a people he was not supposed to write, which requires bravery? Or was he ambitious of winning the Caine, which might probably explained why he wrote this? Mediocrity is not talent. If Olufemi keeps writing in this form, even Western readers, to whom most of this morbidity and macabreness is directed, would be fed up with his offering.

This story did nothing for me. It is the weakest story in the shortlist. But it won, according to the judges. For those who want to find out, this story is available at the Caine Prize website for downloading.

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Brief Bio: Read about the author here.

ImageNations Rating: 2.5/6.0

Nigeria Dominates the 14th Caine Prize Shortlist - 2013

This year's Caine Prize for African Writing shortilst, released on May 15, was dominated by Nigerians. This emphaises Nigeria's long-held and enviable position as the powerhouse of quality and prodigious Literature on the continent; perhaps only South Africa can 'compete'. Four of the five stories that made up this year's shortlist were by Nigerians. The fifth story is by a Sierra Leonean. Nigeria has produced such great writers as the Nobel Laureate, Akinwande Oluwole (Wole) Soyinka; the Man Booker International Prize Winner, Chinua Achebe; Elechi Amadi; John Pepper Clark; Ola Rotimi; and others. One can also mention many of the new generation of writers such as Chuma Nwokolo; the Booker Prize Winner, Ben Okri; the Orange Prize Winner, Chimamanda Adichie; and others. We can talk of Nigerian writers forever. According to the Chair of Judges, Gus Casely-Hayford,

The Shortlist was selected from 96 entries from 16 African countries. They are all outstanding African stories that were drawn from an extraordinary body of high quality submissions.

Could Nigeria's dominance with quality literature have been due to the vibrant publishing industry in the country? Yet, it is also clear from the shortlist (below) that only one of the stories was published in Nigeria. One can therefore say that writing is embedded in the DNA of the Nigerian. The average Nigerian command over the English language and their diction is unique.

Another unique phenomenon, keeping up with the last year's, is the subject. Prior to 2012, the Caine Prize became notorious for award certain peculiar stories. Stories of extreme hunger, poverty, unconditional scatology, which represents nothing but base, and other stories in similar vein. Last year the Chair of Judges, Bernadine Evaristo, sought to go 'beyond the more stereotypical narrative.' The 2013 CoJ, Gus Casely-Hayford, might have kept faith with going beyond the stereotypical. In describing the 2013 shortlist, he says

The five contrasting titles interrogate aspects of things that we might feel we know of Africa - violence, religion, corruption, family, community - but these are subjects that are deconstructed and beautifully remade. These are challenging, arresting, provocative stories of a continent and its descendants captured at a time of burgeoning change.

I hope they provide an alternative to the common narrative; I hope they do not revert to the previous and that even when they discuss such issues they would be more penetrative, investigative, or psychological treatment than mere arrangement of images.

This year's shortlisted stories are:

• Elnathan John (Nigeria) Bayan Layi from Per Contra Issue 25 (USA, 2012)
• Tope Folarin (Nigeria) Miracle from Transition, Issue 109 (Bloomington, 2012)
• Pede Hollist (Sierra Leone) Foreign Aid from Journal of Progressive Human Services, Vol. 23.3 (Philadelphia, 2012)
• Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (Nigeria) The Whispering trees from The Whispering Trees, published by Parresia Publishers (Lagos, 2012)
• Chinelo Okparanta (Nigeria) America from Granta, Issue 118 (London, 2012)

The Winner of this £10,000 prize will be announced on July 8, 2013 at Bodleian Library, Oxford. Read more here.

104. The Life of Worm by Ken Barris

Ken Barris's The Life of Worm was shortlisted for the 11th Caine Prize for African Writing, 2010. The story was first published in New Writings from Africa Anthology published by Johnson and King James Book, Cape Town. This story, like all the shortlisted stories, are part of the A Life in Full Anthology published in 2010.

The Life of a Worm is a story about a man and his dog, Worm. The man lives behind a series of metal doors, motion sensors and several electronic security protection. He is also protected by Worm, a ferocious dog he struggles to handle on their daily outings. When people approach them, praising the dog, the man becomes scared, afraid that the dog would tear off intruder's face. From his internal conversation, we see that the man is unable to control his dog. He is also afraid of something: armed-burglars? He is needs this protection and this makes him unable to sleep properly, always checking on his security detail. With alarms going off randomly, his alarming security detail is a worry to his neighbours.

Another worry of Worm's owner is his neighbours infested oak tree. This oak tree has bent at such an acute angle that any strong winds or storms would fall it and in falling destroy the man's house. The man has estimated the extent of this damage should it occur, arriving at the conclusion that his garage would not be destroyed.

Taking his dog for walk one day, the man sees that a huge trunk-like stem of the oak, which he dreamt had broken off, had actually broken and and destroyed a part of the wall. He wants to confront his neighbour but continues his walk with Worm. Then a spaniel approaches Worm and Worm grabs the spaniel and strangles it to death. The man cannot make Worm release this spaniel from his jaw. And powerless, he waits till Worm, in his own time, releases this dead dog.

This story, written in the first person present, is more of an internal dialogue and desperation of a man. Taken at face-value it portrays nothing. Absolutely nothing; however, further reflection shows man's daily worries about security, death, things he cannot control, things he procrastinates and more. Would he be attacked by the numerous robbers parading the street or by any of the reported incidents of burglary? Would the rotten oak tree fall and destroy his house? Would Worm kill someone? It has this Kafka-esque feel, for things begin almost at nothing and develops into something different.

This story is worth its inclusion in the shortlist. As to it winning the award would have depended on the meanings attributed it not what it says. And since attribution is a subjective endeavour, it is difficult to speak for or against it not winning.

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Brief Bio: Ken Barris lives in Cape Town, South Africa. He's a poet, novelist, and short story author. His short story The Quick Brown Fox won the 2006 Thomas Pringle Award. In 1996 his novel The Jailer's Book  won the M-Net Book Prize; it also received Honourable Mention at the Noma Award. His Poetry in New Coin won him the Sydney Clouts Memorial Award. An Advertisement for Air, a collection of poetry also won him the Ingrid Jonker Prize. He has been twice shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2003 and 2010 for Clubfoot and The Life of Worm, respectively. The latter was also shortlisted for Studzinski/PEN Award in 2009. Barris' novel What Kind of Child was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize for Best Book for Africa Region and the Herman Charles Bosman Fiction Prize. (Read about the author here)

ImageNations Rating: 4.5/6.0

Other Caine Prize Shortlist: How Shall we Kill the Bishop (2010) 

Olufemi Terry wins the 2010 Caine Prize

So I must say that this one went by without my notice and had it not been The Bookaholic Blog I would not have heard it and talked about it. Thanks Bookaholic. I first blogged about the Prize here...

Sierra Leone's Olufemi Terry has won the 2010 Caine Prize for African Writing for 'Stickfighting Days' from Chimurenga vol 12/13. This Prize has been described as Africa's leading literary award. The Chair of Judges, The Economist's Literary Editor Fiammetta Rocco, announced Olufemi as the winner of the 10,000 pound prize at a dinner held on Monday July 5 at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. 

Fimmetta Rocco said "ambitious, brave and hugely imaginative, Olufemi Terry's 'Stickfighting Days' presents a heroid culture that is Homeric in its scale and conception. The execution of this story is so tight and the presentation so cinematic, it confirms Olufemi Terry as a talent with an enormous future"

Olufemi was born in Sierra Leon of African and Antillean parentage. He grew up in Nigeria, the U.K., and Cote d'Ivoire before attending university in New York. Subsequently, Olufemi lived in Kenya and worked as a journalist and analyst in Somalia and Uganda. He lives in Cape Town where he is writing his first novel. His writing has appeared in Chimurenga, New Contrast and The Caine Prize for African Writing's Eight Annual Collection.

Also shortlisted were:

• Ken Barris (South Africa) 'The Life of Worm' from New Writing from Africa 2009, published by Johnson & King James Books, Cape Town
• Lily Mabura (Kenya) 'How Shall We Kill the Bishop?' from Wasafari No 53, Spring 2008
• Namwali Serpell (Zambia) 'Muzungu' from The Best American Short Stories 2009, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston MA
• Alex Smith (South Africa) 'Soulmates' from New Writing from Africa 2009 (As Above)

Read the full press release here....

Shortlist for the 11th Caine Prize

On April 26, 2010, the shortlist for the 2010 Caine Prize for African Writing was announced. The Caine Prize, widely known as the ‘African Booker’ and regarded as Africa’s leading literary award, is now in its eleventh year

Chair Judge

The Chair Judge for this year's award, The Economist literary editor Fiammetta Rocco, said: "Africa has much to be proud of in these five writers. Not only are their stories all confident, ambitious and skillfully written, each one boasts an added dimension – a voice, character or particular emotional connection – that makes it uniquely powerful."

Joining Fiammetta on the judging panel this year are Granta deputy editor Ellah Allfrey, Professor Jon Cook of the University of East Anglia, and Georgetown University professor Samantha Pinto.

Entries

Selected from 115 entries from 13 African countries, the shortlist is once again a reflection of the Caine Prize’s pan-African reach. 

Award

The winner of the £10,000 prize is to be announced at a celebratory dinner at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, on Monday 5 July.

The 2010 shortlist comprises:

• Ken Barris (S Africa) 'The Life of Worm' from 'New Writing from Africa 2009', published by Johnson & King James Books, Cape Town
• Lily Mabura (Kenya) 'How Shall We Kill the Bishop?’ from ‘Wasafiri’ No53, Spring 2008
• Namwali Serpell (Zambia) 'Muzungu' from 'The Best American Short Stories 2009', published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston MA
• Alex Smith (S Africa) 'Soulmates' from 'New Writing from Africa 2009' [see above]
• Olufemi Terry (Sierra Leone) 'Stickfighting Days' from ‘Chimurenga’ vol 12/13, Cape Town 2008

Read the full article at the Caine website here...

PS: The award was won by Olufemi Terry (Sierra Leone) for Stickfighting Days... click here

12th Caine Prize Shortlist

I know this has been long in coming... The shortlist for the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing was been announced on Monday 9 May. The Caine Prize, widely known as the ‘African Booker’ and regarded as Africa’s leading literary award, is now in its twelfth year. The chair of judges, the award-winning Libyan novelist Hisham Matar, said 

choosing a shortlist out of nearly 130 entries was not an easy task – one made more difficult and yet more enjoyable by the varied tastes of the judges – but we have arrived at a list of five stories that excel in quality and ambition. Together they represent a portrait of today’s African short story: its wit and intelligence, its concerns and preoccupations. 

Selected from 126 entries from 17 African countries, the shortlist is once again a reflection of the Caine Prize’s pan-African reach.  The winner of the £10,000 prize is to be announced at a celebratory dinner at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, on Monday 11 July. The 2011 shortlist comprises: 

• NoViolet Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) ‘Hitting Budapest’ from ‘The Boston Review’  Vol 35, no. 6 - Nov/Dec 2010  
• Beatrice Lamwaka (Uganda) ‘Butterfly dreams’ from ‘Butterfly Dreams and Other New Short Stories from Uganda’ published by Critical, Cultural and Communications Press, Nottingham, 2010 
• Tim Keegan (South Africa) ‘What Molly Knew’ from ‘Bad Company’ published by Pan Macmillan SA, 2008 
• Lauri Kubuitsile (Botswana) ‘In the spirit of McPhineas Lata’ from ‘The Bed Book of Short Stories’ published by Modjaji Books, SA, 2010 
• David Medalie (South Africa) ‘The Mistress’s Dog’ from ‘The Mistress’s Dog: Short stories  1996-2010’ published by Picador Africa, 2010 

As always the stories are available to read online on our website. Read more here.

127. SHORT STORY MONDAY: The Mistress's Dog by David Medalie

David Medalie's story, The Mistress's Dog, should have been read last year as part of the Caine Prize Shortlist 2009 to 2011 Reading Challenge. I carried it with me but never came around to reading it, perhaps preferring to read the books rather than the single stories or perhaps discouraged by seeming bad taste that I found most of the Caine Prize Shortlist. If any of these was the reason why I failed to complete that challenge last year, then I should have persevered since this is a quite different and hilarious story.

The Mistress's Dog was shortlisted for the 12th Caine Prize for African Writing in 2011 and was included in the Caine Prize for African Writing anthology To See the Mountain and other stories (2011). However, it was first published in The Mistress's Dog and other stories (1996 - 2010).

The dog had outlived its owner, The Mistress, and was now in the care of Nola. In fact, it had outlived the two individuals who made Nola's life silently difficult, Nola's husband included. And even though she preferred cats to dogs she had been left with this canine whose life and, with time, death she must look after. An animal that reminds her that there is really an end to life, that to every beginning there is an end, which makes her also think about her own end.

The Mistress came from a rural, religious, and poor background but had 'worked' hard to make a career for herself. She was single but not entirely, and her career consisted of working as a secretary to a powerful man and also as his mistress.

She remained single, devoted herself to what she called her 'career' (she was a powerful man's secretary), and had an affair that endured for over a decade with a married man (that same powerful man).

And this powerful man is Nola's husband. And Nola knew. She also knew that The Mistress was far from what she made people believe she was. So that even though people thought her to be beautiful, bold, daring, unconventional, libertarian, and happy - laughing excessively even when it was not warranted - Nola knew otherwise; she knew she was weak and fearful and frightened of being alone even though she flagrantly displayed her independence, which was limited to only marriage as the powerful man provided for all her needs even when they were not seeing each other again.

After thirty years of service with the powerful man, fifteen of which there was an intimate relationship, the man retired with Nola and so too was the single The Mistress, who thought it unwise to work for any other person. Unfortunately, the powerful man left with his wife to Cape Town leaving The Mistress in Johannesburg. Lonely she grew decrepit and moved into a home for the aged. It was during this time that the powerful man, now weak and suffering, begged her wife to take The Mistress's dog into her keep.

All through the novel, man's name is not mentioned and so too was the Mistress's name. The story provides a hilarious and at the same time scathing look at some of the choices and decisions that have become fashionable these days.

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Brief Bio: David Medalie is a South African writer and an academic. He is a professor in the Department of English. His first collection of short stories, The Shooting of Christmas Cows was published in 1990. Prior to its publication it won the Ernst van Heerden Award. His debut novel, The Shadow Follows, was published in 2006. It was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Literary Award for Best First Book and the M-Net Literary Award.  A new collection of short stories The Mistress's Dog was published in 2010. (Read more about him here)

Rating: 5.5/6.0

100. Waiting by E.C. Osondu

Waiting (2008) is the winning  story on the 10th Caine Prize for African Writing, 2009. This story was published at Guernica.

Written in the first person, Orlando Zaki writes about his life in a refugee camp. Orlando is amongst a group of young people in a refugee camp. According to him, most of the people at this camp got their names from the inscriptions on the shirts they receive from the Red Cross

Orlando is taken from Orlando, Florida, which is what is written on the t-shirt  given to me by the Red Cross. Zaki is the name of the town where I was found and from which I was brought to this refugee camp. My friends in the camp are known by the inscriptions on their t-shirts.

In general, life at the camp is lived according to the theory of 'only the fittest survive'. There is struggle for water and food, that is when they become available. For the most part they live in wait of these basic facilities and also in expectation of being adopted and sent to abroad. The story borders on being a catalogue of scatology with 'shit' bandied here and there. And such was the visual presentation of this filthiness that one could go without food for days after reading this filth-packed paragraph.

There were a lot of black dogs. They were our friends, they were our protectors. Even though food was scarce, the dogs never went hungry. The women would call them whenever a child squatted down to shit and the dogs would come running. They would wait for the child to finish and lick child's buttocks clean before they ate the shit.

Later on, when food became scarce, the dogs were killed and eaten as food. And must the dogs be black? Or what is the symbolic significance of a black dog? This is a clear example of what has become the African stories and the very ones that are noted and awarded. In the end, as the writer stopped narrating his story, all that has been covered were the desolate lives of a group of young people in a refugee camp whose only hope of survival is to be adopted. And this is the very stories that almost always put me off from my objective of reading African stories and promoting them. 

Per this story, and if this theme pervades Osondu's new short story anthology Voice of America, then I think I would pass on that one. This is not a matter of writing the so-called positive stories about Africa, but about writing stories not for the popularity of the themes. It is about writing because you have something else to say. How can there be a representative story if all that is said are on the extreme left.As it stands now, such themes have become crowded and I have read a lot of them to last me a generation. 

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Brief Bio: was born in Nigeria, where he worked for many years as an advertising copywriter. He won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2009. His book of stories Voice of America is due from HarperCollins in November, and his novel This House Is Not For Sale is due from HarperCollins in 2012. His short stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Guernica, AGNI, and many other magazines. With William Pierce, he coedited The AGNI Portfolio of African Fiction. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, where he was a Syracuse University Fellow. He is assistant professor of English at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. (Continue reading) The story could be read at the Guernica site here and its pdf version could be downloaded from the Caine Prize for African Writing site.

Other Caine Prize Shortlist: How Kamau wa Mwangi Escaped into Exile by Mukoma wa Ngugi

August in Review, Projections for September

This is the first time I overachieved my reading targets. I set out to read four books, or five time permitting, but ended up reading seven books and four single stories (for the Caine Prize Shortlist Reading). 

• Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe. This book tells of the rift that came among a group of three friends as one became the head of state. It shows how the quest of power could wreck a lifelong relationship. 
• Eno's Story by Ayodele Olofintuade. This is a children's story about witch-labelling and tagging. The language is simple but the subject is complex. We get to know how people in seeming authority and elders could all be wrong and wreck lives because of misunderstanding. And folly.
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. A story that traces the complexity of relationships between the rich and the poor over the course of a country's history. A story that would affect you in more than one way.
• The River Between by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. A story about the tribal relations at the eve of colonialist invasion into the deeper regions of Kenya.
• Opening Spaces by Yvonne Vera (editor). A short story anthology by contemporary women of Africa. It deals with issue such as polygamy, rape, and irresponsible husbands. There are other themes like politics and the cycle of abuse.
• Look Where you have Gone to Sit by Martin Egbelwogbe and Laban Carrick Hill (editors). This is a poetry anthology by new Ghanaian writers, most of whom have never had their work published before.
• Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism by Kwame Nkrumah. Kwame Nkrumah's book traces the factors that has led to the underdevelopment of most African countries, the impediments on the path to unity, the powers behind the extractive industry in African and the world at large and how these corporations work to impede Africa's progress; how they control production and supply and has the power to affect prices and output; how capitalism works, through its very free nature, to aid the development of monopolies, so that the extractive industries is a made up of a link of few corporations with interests in one another and controlled by fewer people.

In August I set out to read all the Caine Prize Shortlist, beginning 2009, one story at a time or as single stories rather than an anthology. The difficulty here is that single stories are difficult to review as the breadth of the story is not that wide. In 2010, I read Mamle Kabu's End of Skill which was on the 2009 shortlist. The others read in August to complete the 2009 shortlist are:

• Icebergs by Alistair Morgan
• You Wreck her by Parselelo Kantai
• How Kamau Wa Mwangi Escaped into Exile by Mukoma
• Waiting by E.C. Osondu (Winner of the 2009 Caine Prize)

Currently, I am reading The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. I hope to finish this in time and start the selected books for September. The total number pages read, excluding the one currently being read, is 1,390.

Again, I would be conservative with my selections for September. For this month, I have the non-fiction Excursions in my Mind by Nana Awere Damoah. I reviewed Nana's Through the Gates of Thoughts, his second book, on this blog. For the non-African-authored book for the month I would be reading a book that has been with me for a long time The Shadow Catcher by Marianne Wiggins. The remaining books for the month are: A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and The Book of Not by Tsitsi Dangarembga, a sequel to Nervous Conditions.

In addition to these, I would review the 2010 Caine Prize shortlist: The Life of Worm by Ken Barris, How shall we Kill the Bishop by Lily Mabura, Muzungu by Namwali Serpell, and Soulmates by Alex Smith. Follow me for updates and reviews of these books.

Again, these are just projections and could change depending on mood and other factors. They are meant to be a guide only.

The Commonwealth Short Story Prize

About the Prize

 

Commonwealth Writers has re-focused its prizes to concentrate only on the Short Story. It will no longer offer the Commonwealth Book Prize.

The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is part of Commonwealth Writers the cultural initiative from the Commonwealth Foundation. Commonwealth Writers develops the craft of individual writers and builds communities of emerging voices which can influence the decision-making processes affecting their lives. The Prize aims to identify talented writers who will go on to inspire their local communities.

There will be five winners, one from each region. One regional winner will be selected as the overall winner. The overall winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize will receive £5,000 and the remaining four regional winners £2,500. If the winning short story is a translation into English, the translator will receive additional prize money:  £2,000 for the overall winning story and £1,000 for a regional winning story.

The final selection will be judged by an international judging panel; experienced readers will assist the named judges in selecting the long lists. The 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize will be chaired by Ellah Allfrey, Deputy Chair of the Council of the Caine Prize and previously Deputy Editor of Granta and Senior Editor at Jonathan Cape, Random House.

Eligibility

• Entrants must be citizens of a Commonwealth country. The Commonwealth Foundation will request verification of citizenship before winners are selected. Writers from non-Commonwealth countries (including the Republic of Ireland and Zimbabwe) are not eligible.
• For regional purposes, entries will be judged by country of citizenship. Where the writer has dual citizenship, the entry will be judged in the region where the writer is permanently resident.
• Entrants must be aged 18 years or over. 
• There is no requirement for the writer to have current residence in a Commonwealth country, providing she/he is a citizen of a Commonwealth country.
• All entries will be accepted at the discretion of the Commonwealth Foundation which will exercise its judgement, in consultation with the prize chair as necessary, in ruling on questions of eligibility. The ruling of the chair on questions of eligibility is final, and no further correspondence will be entered into.

Entry rules

• Entries must be made by the writer
• Entries will only be accepted via the online entry form at Commonwealth Writers Prize.
• The deadline for receipt of entries is 30 November 2013 (12 noon GMT).
• Only one entry per writer may be submitted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
• The story must be the entrant’s own work. 
• The story must be original and should not have been previously published anywhere in full or in part. Published work is taken to mean published in any printed, publicly accessible form, e.g. anthology, magazine, newspaper. It is also taken to mean published online, with the exception of personal blogs and personal websites.
• Entries previously submitted to the Commonwealth Short Story Prize are not eligible.
• All entries must be in English. Translations of short stories written in languages other than English are eligible if submitted by the writer (not the translator) and provided the translator is a citizen of a Commonwealth country. Details of the translator must be stated on the entry.  If successful a proportion of the prize money will be awarded to the translator.
• Entries must be 2,000 words minimum, 5,000 words maximum.
• Entries should be uploaded in a PDF document.  Please save your document as a PDF and use the title of the story as the file name. Please note the story must not be saved as ‘Commonwealth Story’, ‘Short Story’ or any other generic title.  If it is not possible to save the entry as a PDF document, it may be uploaded as a Microsoft Word document, with the file name in the same format as above. The first page should include the name of the story and the number of words (and details of the translator if it is a story written in a language other than English).
• The author’s details should be included in the entry form. They must not be given anywhere on the uploaded document. All entries are judged anonymously.
• All entries should be submitted in Arial 12 point font and double line spacing.
• There are no restrictions on setting, genre or theme.
• The story should be adult fiction and must not have been written for children alone.
• Entrants agree as a condition of entry that the prize organisers may publicise the fact that a story has been entered or shortlisted for the Prize.
• Worldwide copyright of each story remains with the writer. The Commonwealth Foundation will have the unrestricted right to publish the winning stories (the overall winning story and the four regional winning stories) in an anthology and for promotional purposes.
• The overall and regional winners will be expected to take part in publicity activities including social media where possible.
• The overall and regional winners will be expected to undertake a mutually acceptable programme of regional outreach activities to develop and promote Commonwealth Writers.

Prize regions

• Africa: Botswana, Cameroon, The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia. Overseas Territories: St Helena, Tristan Da Cunha, Ascension Island.
• Asia: Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, India, Malaysia, Maldives, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka.
• Canada and Europe: Canada, Cyprus, Malta, United Kingdom. Overseas Territories: Gibraltar, Falkland Islands.
• Caribbean : Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago. Overseas Territories: Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands.
• Pacific: Australia, Fiji Islands, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu. Overseas Territory: Pitcairn.

101. Soulmates by Alex Smith

Alex Smith's Soulmates was shortlisted for the 11th Caine Prize for African Writing in 2010. The story appeared in New Writing from Africa (2009) published by Johnson & King James Book, Cape Town.

Mary of the bees and thorns, Mary of the porcupines and nubbly roots, namelijk Maria, genaamd Magdalena, van welke zeven duivelen uitgegaan waren, Maria minus seven devils, Maria after whom I have been named, help me, please! Outside spiders were spinning webs, bees were waiting, motionless, for day, and porcupines were chewing through the frost and rutty bulbs of the renosterveld. Inside Maria was tearing. The door to the room was closed, but windy wind, tumultous as Maria's loss, violated the locks and cracks and came in with grit and insects, to witness the splitting of the elliptical entrance to Maria's physical soul, and, regardless of the fragile circumstances, boorish wind rampaged about the room with all the rattle of seven devils. Maria was laid out on a bed of coarse sheets.

Soulmates is the retelling of a historical event that occurred in Cape of Good Hope in the 18th Century. It is a story of love and murder, of a woman who, in finding love, found death for in finding love she stepped over an abominable line: killing her husband, in a patriarchal era, and falling in love with a black slave in an era where all that blacks were good for were dienaars en slawe: servants and slaves.

Maria was married to 'Rough' Franz Jooste, 'a knurled farmer, who has spent his blessed savings on negotiating for a bride price' at a young age her family was in need of the money. From the story we observe that Maria is depressed. There is no joy in the marriage, no love, no affection exhibited by Franz. There was two main activity that Franz demanded, one was asked, the other was taken: food and sex, respectively. Sex with Franz was one of a punishment through asphyxiation, physically and emotionally, than it was of love, for Franz, as portrayed in the story, was a straightforward person who goes in directly for what he wants. It was one-sided without the kisses, without the conversation, without the sharing of emotions: it was always rough and dry. 

Franz, who had stripped her of clothes to fondle, squeeze, prod, suck, suffocate, vandalise and admire her, and now now slept fully dressed with his pants still unbuttoned and his mouth hanging open, ...

Consequently, Maria experienced no joy in the household. Not even in her language, as Franz had 'disallowed her mother tongue, French' thus taking away her willingness to read the 'humourless Bible in Dutch'.

Suddenly, Maria, who had always thought of herself as better than their slave, Titus, realised that she was no different from him; they were both slaves to Franz, beaten by him at his will for the least offence and sometimes for nothing at all. However, 

Impish Titus with tapering fingers, ..., in spite of everything that was in his life possessed the playfulness of youth. He was a jester, not especially gifted at comedy, but irrepressibly inclined to joke.

This meeting, this realisation forbade doom. From then on Maria 'grew fond of the Biblical book of Titus, regardless of its Dutch, and from it drew comfort.' Titus would dress her wounds with lotion and herbs after the master had beaten her; Titus would get her a flower, a leaf, a speckled egg, a feather, even as the master refused to buy her clothes. Then one day Maria 'leaned upwards and held her lips near to Titus's lips.' And the abomination was complete.

Death by impalement and decapitation to Titus and by strangulation to Maria was the judge's sentence, when Maria shot and killed her husband after Titus's shot failed to kill him for beating Maria. The sentencing of Maria and Titus took place on September 1, 1714 and Titus lived for two more days after his impalement, giving up life on September 3, after which

His right hand and head were sawed off and fixed on the gates of Jooste farm as a warning to other slaves who might dare to love beyond their quarters.

This story, full of biblical allusions (for it seemed that Franz Jooste was one who kept the Lord's words in some sense), shows how far the people of South Africa, and humanity in general, have come. For 'today, they would be allowed to kiss, allowed to love and would surely have been acquitted from the charges of murder, for they were acting in self-defence'. From the latter statement, one can deduce that this story is meant to be a rallying call for their 'names to be cleared'. Yet, they were

'a contemptible slave guilty of carnal intercourse' and 'a woman who gratified her foul and godless lust'

I am extremely impressed by this story; not only for the quality and beauty of its prose (reason why I quoted part of the opening paragraph to the story at the beginning of this review), but also for the unlikely source from which the story was taken. With this story, Alex Smith has shown the wideness and deepness of the river how varied the fishes that swim in it. Read the true account of this story here.
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Brief Bio: Alex Smith was born in Cape Town but has lived in China, Taiwan and the UK. She is a teacher, textile merchant, a bookseller and an author. She has been shortlisted for and won several awards. In 2009 she was shortlisted for the PEN/Studinsky Award judged by J.M. Coetzee for Soulmates, which was also shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing and is currently part of the Caine Prize anthology for 2011 To see the Mountain, after appearing in the New Writing from Africa anthology. She won the 2011 Nielsen Book Data Booksellers Choice Award for Four Drunk Beauties (Random House publication). She was also the prize winner in the Tafelberg-Sanlam Youth Literature Competition 2010 for her youth novel Agency Blue. In 2009 her story Change was included in the prestigious Touch anthology of stories by 25 top South Africa authors.

ImageNations' Rating: 5.5/6.0

Other Caine Prize Shortlist: Waiting by E.C. Osondu (2009)

Readers' Top Ten - Nkiacha Atemnkeng (Reader, Writer)

I started Readers' Top Ten as a  continue my Readers' Top Ten to introduce to readers of this blog the rich literature the continent has to offer and to move beyond the 'one-novel' representation of African literature. Submission was sporadic and so I have not been consistent with the posting. However, the session is still on and any who want to share could. Today, the Cameroonian reader and writer Nkiacha Atemnkeng shares his top 10 African books, per his reads*.

About Nkiacha: Nkiacha Atemnkeng is a young Cameroonian writer. His work has been published in four literary online journals: Malawi Write, The New Black Magazine, Africa Book Club and Munyori Literary Journal. He was shortlisted for the 2013 Mardibooks short story competition in London and was a finalist for the month of October 2013 at the Africa book club. His musings and book reviews can be found at writerphilic. A holder of a Curriculum Studies and Biology degree, he works as a Swissport Customer Service agent at the Douala International Airport.
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My literary taste keeps changing, next year more than half of the books may change places or even leave the list entirely.

1. We Need New Names, NoViolet Bulawayo [Zimbabwe]. My favourite African novel of the moment, the funniest African novel ever written, the first black African woman to get shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize. Please give it up for this violet lady from Bulawayo, even though she says she’s got “no violet”. I think she’s been unfairly labeled a poverty pornstar and wrongly accused of writing her stunning novel in a CNN treatise of Africa, including a string of clichés about African suffering. A little research about Zimbabwean politics will help the readers of this book. Zimbabwe went through four phases, the pre-colonial one, the colonial one called Southern Rhodesia, independent one called Zimbabwe which was thriving and the collapsing Zimbabwe of the lost decade (2000-2010). This novel is set in the lost decade Zimbabwe only and she goes on to illustrate in her US setting that human hardship can actually be a universal issue. What I also love about this contemporary novel is its beautiful prose poetry, techie exploits (there’s facebooking, texting and skyping in it), lovely language and humour. If you have a quarrel with your spouse, here’s some advice. Get two copies of this book and make sure you both read, by the time you’re in the middle you’ll be laughing so hard, you’ll forget the quarrel.

2. Happiness, like Water, Chinelo Okparanta [Nigeria]. My best short story writer from Africa at the moment. The book is a collection of ten short stories written through the eyes of a child and generally young women. Unlike the title, there’s not much happiness in the pages of these well crafted stories. The characters are always seeking fulfillment in various ways in these stories. Chinelo’s prose is very grim but she also handles her dense subjects in a light and fresh manner. It’s a poignant collection with female characters who are either under pressure to get married, to abandon their gay relationship, to get documentation in the US, under the pressure of parental abuse etc. In fact, the characters always have one wahala or another. And yes, there’s a brilliant short story in it titled Wahala too. And yes, one of the stories in the book, America was shortlisted for the 2013 Caine Prize for African writing. And yes, her New Yorker November 2013 published short story Benji is even more impressive. One of the reasons why I love the book so much is because it is my very first book which the author sent to me herself. Last year, I read a lengthy seven page interview of hers and was so impressed with her thoughts that I wrote her a crazy adoring fan message which spurred her to send me the book. 

3. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe, [Nigeria]. He just had to be on the list right! The Michael Jordan of African literature who needs no introduction. Do I really need to say anything about him and the book again? No. On a personal note, I studied it as an examination text when I was in secondary school (Form Three) and without any boastfulness came second with an A-grade in the Things Fall Apart based Literature exam. My very first literary work which got published out of my country even, is my short essay about his legacy on malawiwrite.org when he died. May his soul rest in peace. So that may probably give you an idea how much he means to me.

4. The Icarus Girl, Helen Oyeyemi, [Nigeria]. This wonderful childlike magical realism novel was written by this very talented author when she was just eighteen and diligently studying for her Advanced level examination in London. That’s just pure genius. Let the age not fool you. I enjoyed her prose more than some novels written by some fifty-year-olds. It’s about an eight-year-old biracial girl, Jessamy Harrison living in London who befriends an estranged, ragged little girl called Tilly Tilly during a visit to Nigeria. The way Helen brilliantly blended Greek mythology and Yoruba folklore and shaped her two main characters and their downward spiraling relationship right to the breathtaking finale at the end moved me to the point of utmost admiration. I can only describe Helen Oyeyemi in one word - precocious. The novel even received positive reviews from Oprah’s book club.

5. Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, [Nigeria]. This one had to wrestle hard with the equally impressive Half of a Yellow Sun before making it into my list. As much as I love HOAYS because of the way she honestly confronts ethnicity in Nigeria and her very powerful evocation of the Nigerian civil war which she didn’t even experience, Purple Hibiscus struck my chord more because of its character Eugene. I’ve never hated any character in a book like I hate Uncle Eugene. If he materializes in front of me I will probably kick his stomach open with my big toe. Every time I came across him he always succeeded in making me angry. His religious fanaticism and domestic repression in the name of “not sinning” went to the point of absolute senselessness. It even made me develop empathy for his wife when she poisons him. The series of events that occur after Uncle Eugene dies haunted me a lot too. And I also love the book for its very fresh perspective. But seriously Chimzi nno, why did you damn the Caine Prize like that? Remember they helped you find a publisher for this novel when you’d had dozens of rejections!

6. The Crown of Thorns, Linus. T. Asong, [Cameroon]. A writer every Anglophone Cameroonian knows but is probably unheard of by many of my non Cameroonian friends, largely because he self published all his ten novels in Cameroon. (This particular one was published in 1990.) And he wasn’t lucky with global shine too. “Achiebefuo rose, coughed and cleared his throat…” that’s the famous opening of the novel we had always been reciting since our infancy. It starts from somewhere in the middle and then deep into the novel, rewinds to the real beginning, exactly what Chimamanda did in Purple Hibiscus. It’s about a Chief who never wanted to be Chief. He is forcibly enthroned. So in disappointment, he disagrees with all the village elders at every point where disagreement is possible. The greedy D.O of that village, known as Goment (mispronunciation of the word government by the villagers) hatches an evil plan to sell the stature god, Akeukeur of Nkokonoko Small Monje village as a mere artifact to America. But the kingmaker, Ngobefuo discovers the theft and rallies the other elders to find out what happened. They dethrone their unhappy Chief who they discover was complicit in the god selling affair. Even though the stature is later returned to the village from abroad, the elders reject it because it is already defiled. Next, they launch into their punishment, killing their Chief and even Goment that sparks government military reprisals. The novel was examination text for prose at the Cameroon G.C.E Ordinary Level examination for over fifteen years and is also being studied at my former school, the University of Buea.

7. Mission Terminée (Mission to Kala), Mongo Beti [Cameroon]: Francophone Africa’s response to Chinua Achebe. I can already picture Nana mumbling “Ahmadou Khourouma!” Mongo Beti published over half a dozen critically acclaimed novels. On a funny note, Ahmadou Khourouma worked for an insurance company in Cameroon in the seventies. He shut his mouth whenever he met Mongo and whenever Mongo spoke (Mongo was highly critical with very strong opinions.) His pen name means “son of Beti”. Beti being the tribe where he hails in Cameroon’s Centre Province. His novel Mission to Kala is probably his best known work and I like it a lot. He wrote a beautifully woven tale with such chic artistry. Having failed his exams, Medza returns to his village in anxiety. But to his surprise he finds out that as a scholar (even a failed one) his prestige is immense. A young woman runs off with a man from another tribe. So Medza is entrusted with the delicate task of retrieving her. When he reaches her village he has to wait for her to return from another adventure, so he stays with his uncle, who passes him off as a great phenomenon of learning. Medza is entertained, loaded with gifts and consulted like an oracle. But his stay in Kala has to come to an end and he returns to his part of the country only to find himself unable to come to terms with his family and their way of life.

8. Ten Years of the Caine Prize for African Writing Anthology, Various Authors [Africa]. In 2009, Africa’s most prestigious literary award, the Caine Prize for African writing celebrated its tenth year of existence and also published the ten winning short stories of those years in an anthology to commemorate the event. Now put together ten award winning Caine Prize short stories, plus three bonus short stories by the three African winners of the Booker Prize, Ben Okri, Nadine Gordimer, and J.M. Coetzee. You’ll obtain such a diverse literary feast of banging writing from Cape to Cairo and Kenya to Nigeria, completing the four cardinal points of African writing. The stories’ setting in the book range from Parks in South Africa, a giant tent in a village, a museum in Scotland, a prison cell in Nigeria, a malfunctioning chemical plant in Cape town etc. You’ll come across a non French speaking man trapped in Rwanda without documentation, a castigated lesbian girl in Uganda, a woman fleeing a poisonous gas cloud in Cape town and orphaned children in a refugee camp somewhere around Nigeria. The approaches are so varied. Some are written in great style, some flaunt their beautiful language, others have fragmented narratives/diary entries and yet another is written in a memoir-like manner and classifies as creative non-fiction. It’s a helluva book. 

9. So Long a Letter, Mariama Ba [Senegal]. The female Leopold Sedar Senghor. She deserves the nickname, this fearless lady from Dakar. The very brief novel is written in the epistolary mode. It is a very long, very beautiful letter by the main character, Aissatou to her close friend, Ramatoulaye in the US. In her letter, Aissatou talks about all the issues plaguing her after the death of her husband. Firstly, she talks passionately about him when they started dating and got married. Then the relationship goes turbulent when her husband decides to marry her daughter’s friend. And Ba goes on to reveal that Ramatoulaye had actually divorced her own husband and left for the US after a similar thing happened to her. The narrative goes poignant when Aissatou’s children begin to suffer. But they strive to regain their lost rights. This is one of the first African novels that succeeds in addressing women’s issues and advocates for the rights of women.

10. The Narrow Path, Francis Selormey [Ghana]. I read this beautiful book when I was a child, nine, maybe ten and I haven’t reread it since so I’ve forgotten all the character names and most of the plot. But I still remember generalities and how moved I was by its end even at that age. It’s about the relationship between a Ghanaian father and his son. In typical African father style, he cautions his son with an iron fist and the cane whenever he falters. I remember I thought that father really hated his son as I was reading the book. But as the son prepares to go to secondary school in Kumasi and his belongings are being assembled, I was shocked and very impressed by the way Francis Selormey ended the novel, “…There were tears in my father’s eyes.” If you ask me how We Need New Names or Happiness, like Water, books which I read just last year, ended I won’t even remember. But I still vividly remember how The Narrow Path ended. It was with that last sentence that I knew that, the father loved his son. He only punished him to make him a better person. Personally, I endorse the controlled use of the cane, (My father had me spanked too when I was a child and it helped me a lot). I disagree with the west on their zero caning dogma. What makes caning bad is the senseless beating of children out of fiery anger to the point of injury and bleeding. That’s when it becomes parental abuse.

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Click here to read more on Readers' Top Ten

* I have linked some of the titles to posts within ImageNations, where such reviews are available. Note that my views on these books may differ from Nana Yaw's and so this must be borne in mind when reading them.

February in Review and Projections for March

February was also a good reading month. Despite the fact that it is two days short of January, the reading rate was not affected. I enjoyed almost every book I read in this month and I fulfilled all the books I projected to read.

Like January, I read a total number of 7 books and 4 single stories (uncollected short stories), 2 less than in January. However, the total number of pages read was 1795 compared with 1787 in January; this makes it a rate of 61.90 pages per day in February compared to 57.65 in January. I do these things for fun and my excel sheet does the estimation based on the formulas I have provided. It's just fun but I try not to make the stats take over the fun in reading. 

The following books are the books read:

1. Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz (for the African Reading Challenge, Top 100 Books Reading Challenge and Chunkster Challenge)
2. Sula by Toni Morrison
3. Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham (for the Top 100 Books Reading Challenge)
4. Harare North by Brian Chikwava
5. Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis by Jimmy Carter
6. Blindness by Jose Saramago
7. Maru by Bessie Head

The single stories read as part of the 100 Shots of Shorts Challenge and reviewed for the Short Story Monday are:

1. Lenny Hearts Eunice by Gary Shteyngart
2. Dayward by ZZ Packer
3. The Kid by Salvatore Scibona
4. Twins C. E. Morgan

I promised to go shopping for African books but I have not and I don't think I can make it within this month or the next. Consequently, I will be running down on my African books, making do with the few I have still not read, which means that my reading this month will be skewed towards non-African books, somewhat. I am not abandoning ImageNations' vision though.

In March, I will be reading the 2010 Caine Prize anthology  A Life in Full and Other Stories for the Short Story Monday series. This anthology is made up of two parts: the first part is the Caine Prize 2010 Shortlisted stories, which I read last year as single stories and the second part is The CDC Caine Prize African Writers' Workshop Stories 2010. The first part would be excluded. I also intend to read Zadie Smith's White teeth for the Top 100 Books Reading Challenge and the Chunkster Reading Challenge. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is also on the shelf. I will read this to complete the trilogy of dystopias which began with 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale. For the African Books I have Shimmer Chinodya's Harvest of Thorns, which will also serve as the Commonwealth Writers Prize Winners Reading Challenge.

I hope March will be as successful as February.