ImageNations

Reflections on the First Half of the Year The end of June also marks the end of the first half of the year and an assessment of progress has to be made. But a friendly one. For this activity is only a hobby and rakes in no financial benefits. However, whatever thing that is worth doing is worth doing well. That said, lets jump straight to what I set out to do from the beginning of the year and what I have achieved so far. It is good to talk about successes first and failure last. I set out to read 70 books by year-end December 31, 2013 , at an average of almost 6 books a month,  repeating what I did in the year 2012. However, when I saw the kind of books I had to read for the Year of Russian Literature  (a challenge I had set for myself), I swiftly readjusted it to 60, averaging exactly 5 books per month. So far I have read exactly 30 books and 1 Single Story, which is half of the total books to be read at half of the year. Comparatively, a year ago by this time I had read...

Over the past few months, several Africans have come up with great novels that have received rave reviews. It is important that we get to know these novels. In my previous discussions, I talked about how relatively prolific African writers have become. Here are a selection of three and I will post what has been written about them since I have not read them myself: Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi [Ghana/Nigeria/UK]. According to the Diana Evans in The Guardian :   [Ghana Must Go] stands up to the hype. Taiye Selasi writes with glittering poetic command, a sense of daring, and a deep emotional investment in the lives and transformations of her characters. There is a lot of crying in this novel, lots of corporeal observations of the pain inflicted by social experience and the ties of love. But the tears flow lightly through passages of gorgeous description and psychological investigation, leaving behind a powerful portrait of a broken family – "a fa...

Last year I purchased fewer books in a month than read. In this way I reduced the number of unread books on my shelf, somewhat. I will continue that principle, in spirit, but only in so far as I have enough books to meet my reading objectives. The implication of this caveat is that because I don't have unread African books (only one or two remain on my shelf) and Russian novels, I would have to buy them to meet my reading goals. Thus, though I will purchase fewer books, books that contribute to the achievement of a reading would would of necessity be purchased. The following are the books I have added to my library: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. This is to be read for the Year of Russian Literature. Tolstoy considered this to be his first true novel, considering War and Peace as more than a novel. From the blurb: Anna Karenina is one of the most loved and memorable heroines of literature. her overwhelming charm dominates a novel of unparalleled richness and destiny. Rubble b...

The rate of literary outturn by Africans, though comparatively smaller, has been progressively increasing. Africans have been writing and publishing for over a century now. For instance, The Anglo-Fante Short Story  by Kobina Sekyi was published in the West African Magazine in 1918. The author's play Blinkards was first performed on-stage around 1915. The novels Ethiopia Unbound: Studies in Race Emancipation  by Ephraim Casely-Hayford and  Eighteen Pence by R. E. Obeng's were published in 1911 and 1943. Similarly, Herbert Isaac Ernest Dhlomo's The Girl Who Killed to Save: Nongqawuse the Liberator  was published in 1935.  Several of these examples exist. However, the publication of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart   (1958) brought African literature to a wider audience. The numerous translations (into more than fifty languages) and its widespread distribution made it one of the most translated and read African novels. The effect is that when...

July 6, 2013 will be the 76th birthday of one of Africa's great authors, Bessie Head. To commemorate the day, some African book bloggers - Mary Okeke of Mary Okeke Reviews , Kinna of KinnaReads & this writer of ImageNations - have decided to celebrate this day by posting items about the author from July 6 to 12, 2013. Posts could be anything except that it should be about the author: review of her books, quotes from her books, her life, pictures and others. This blogging event is open to all readers. About Bessie Head:  Bessie Amelia Head (1937-1986) never knew her real parents — an unstable white woman and an unknown black man. She was born and raised in apartheid South Africa. There she suffered from poverty, racial segregation, and gender discrimination. She also had to worry about her own "delicate nervous balance". As a young woman she left South Africa to come to Botswana. She lived the rest of her life in this country, mostly in Serowe. Bit by bit...

I am posting three poems by the Zimbabwean Mbizo Chirasha. I have read and enjoyed Mbizo's works and it is not out of place to feature some of his works on this blog. Read, enjoy and comment. Though this is not going to be a regular feature, I hope to once in a while bring you 'new' poets from Africa as part of my vision to Promote African Literature. 1. Children of Xenophobia Children eating bullets and firecrackers Beggars of smile and laughter Silent corpses sleeping away fertile dreams Povo chanting new nude wretched slogans Overstayed exiles eating beetroot and African potato Abortions and condoms batteries charging the lives of nannies and maids Children of barefoot afternoons and uncondomized nights Sweat chiselling the rock of your endurance The heart of Soweto, Harare, Darfur, Bamako still beating like drums Violence fumigating peace from this earth. 2. Kalinga- linga A daughter of revolution fed on rich political nutrition Wit...

Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard and his Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Deads' Town  (Faber and Faber, 1952; 125) is a string of fantastic occurrences or linked folkloric tales. The happenings are, like all folktales, incredible, colourful,  and entertaining with a moral lesson, of sorts. The story opens with the main character and narrator introducing himself to readers. He says: I was a palm-wine drinkard since I was a boy of ten years of age. I had no other work more than to drink palm-wine in my life. In those days we did not know other money, except COWRIES, so that everything was cheap, and my father was the richest man in our town. [7]  From there on the Palm-Wine Drinkard, whose name the reader never gets to know but who referred to himself as 'Father of gods who could do anything in this world', narrates a journey he embarked upon to bring back his dead palm-wine tapster from Deads' Town. The fantastic and mysterious events that took place on the...

I was a palm-wine drinkard since I was a boy of ten years of age. I had no other work more than to drink palm-wine in my life. [7] Do not follow unknown man's beauty. [19] I had told you not to follow me before we branched into this endless forest which belongs to only terrible and curious creatures, but when I became a half-bodied incomplete gentleman you wanted to go back, now that cannot be done, you have failed. Even you have never seen anything yet, just follow me. [20] I could not blame the lady for following the Skull as a complete gentleman to his house at all. Because if I were a lady, no doubt I would follow him to wherever he would go, and still as I was a man I would jealous him more than that, because if this gentleman went to the battle field, surely, enemy would not kill him or capture hims and if bombers saw him in a town which was to be bombed, they would not throw bombs on his presence, and if they did throw it, the bomb itself would not explode until...

The Kwani? Manuscript Project, a new one-off literary prize for unpublished fiction from African writers, is delighted to announce a shortlist  selected from a longlist of 30 . The seven shortlisted titles are: Ayobami Adebayo , Stay with Me (Nigeria)  Ayesha Harruna Attah , Saturday’s People (Ghana / US) Stanley Gazemba , Ghettoboy (Kenya) Toni Kan , The Carnivorous City (Nigeria)  Timothy Kiprop Kimutai , The Water Spirits (Kenya)  Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi , The Kintu Saga (Uganda / UK) Saah Millimono , One Day I Will Write About This War (Liberia) The shortlist has been selected, without the author’s name attached, by a high-profile panel of judges including Deputy Editor of Granta magazine Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, leading scholar of African literature Professor Simon Gikandi, Chairman of Kenyatta University’s Literature Department Dr. Mbugua wa Mungai, editor of Zimbabwe’s Weaver Press Irene Staunton and internationally renowned Nigeria...

Infinite Riches (Phoenix, 1998; 394) is the last book of Ben Okri's trilogy that begins with The Famished Road .  I postponed reading this particular book since in 2009 because I wanted to read them chronologically. I was serendipitously gifted with the first book but could not get the second - Songs of Enchantment -  so finally I had to succumb and skip it. Infinite Riches  continues the story of Azaro, the abiku child who sees into the spirit world and do fantastic things. Also, the struggle between the political parties - the Party of the Rich and the Party of the Poor - over who to take the mantle of power once the colonialists has granted the colony its independence continues unabated. Herein lies the nefarious activities of the political elite; the brutality of the people by both the police and thugs of the political parties; the discrimination of the people by the people and the parties; and the humongous corruption of the political arrivistes against the be...

Time is growing ... And our suffering is growing too. When will our suffering bear fruit? One great thought can alter the future of the world. One revelation. One dream. But who will dream that dream? And who will make it real? [5] Some people who are born don't want to live. Others who are dead do't want to die. [6] Another insisted justice was an idea invented by the big crooks who run the world, an idea designed to keep small people in their corners. [26] His ears were so wounded that he heard the language of his blood in the beating heart of the prison walls. His eyes hurt so much that he saw shapes hovering between the metal bars. Angel or demon, spirit or ancestor, he couldn't be sure. [46] [F]ame is often devourer of the best things in our spirit. [88] Every mood is a story, and every story becomes a mood. [153] It is only when the diverse peoples of the earth meet and learn from and love one another that we can begin to get an inkling of thi...

Reading Elias Canetti's Auto da Fe (Penguin Modern Classics, 1935; 522)* after Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment  is like travelling on an underground railway connecting two cities in different countries - the transition is seamless and without notice. Not only were both books translations - one from Russian, the other from German - but they both address identical issues: introducing new elements into a hyper-functioning cognitive process leading to an imbalance that bothers on insanity. Again, both books discuss matters of knowledge or ideas, albeit in different forms; whereas Canetti discusses an intelligent bibliomania, Dostoevsky discusses a deductive theorist hoping to practicalise his theories. Finally, both books make references to ideas in other important books. It was therefore a unique privilege to have read these books in succession.* Professor Kien is a Sinologist, the best of his time. He has an extraordinarily boundless memory and can read several Ea...

Occasional collisions unexpectedly encountered determine the direction of a lifetime. [16] A bookseller is a king, and a king cannot be a bookseller. [16] The greatest danger which threatens a man of learning, is to lose himself in talk. [20] He reserved consciousness for real thoughts; they depend upon it; without consciousness, thoughts are unthinkable. Chewing and digesting happen of themselves. [32] The man who has frittered away the strength of his eyes is a worth companion of the beast that leads him. [35] Martyrs do not cry out, saints do not cry out. [45] [I]t is easy to be self-possessed when you have been dead for centuries. [51] Man alone was master of his fate. [64] Blindness is a weapon against time and space; our being is one vast blindness, save only for that little circle our mean intelligence - mean in its nature as in its scope - can illumine. The dominating principle of the universe is blindness. It makes possible juxtapositions whi...