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Paul Beatty's The Sellout  have been announced as the winner of the 2016 Man Booker Prize. This makes Paul the first American to have won the prize since the change in rules in 2015, allowing any book published in English in the UK eligible. According to the Man Booker Prize   "The Sellout is a searing satire on race relations in contemporary America", which was "described by The New York Times as a ‘metaphorical multicultural pot almost too hot to touch’, whilst the Wall Street Journal called it a ‘Swiftian satire of the highest order. Like someone shouting fire in a crowded theatre, Mr. Beatty has whispered “Racism” in a postracial world.’" Though the prize has over the years been bogged with controversy - readers keening about its dumbing down  (sacrificing literary merit on the altar of readability) and the bolder ones threatening to form another prize , The Man Booker Prize is still an authoritative source for good books, new novelists, and bold n...

"Furo Wariboko awoke this morning to find that dreams can lose their way and turn up on the wrong side of sleep." With this foreboding line Igoni Barrett ushers the reader into the complex and funny world of Furo Wariboko who woke up one morning to find himself transformed into a Caucasian with a black-patched bottom, green eyes and red hair. However, this furious instantaneous genetic mutation did not affect his speech and so Furo looks like a foreigner but speaks like a Nigerian. How will Furo, a young graduate born and bred in a low-income suburb of Lagos and attending his first interview on the first day of this startling transmogrification, navigate the dangerous curves and turns of this identity quagmire? How will he convince people of his Nigerian identiy, when his looks rejects his name and his documents reject his looks? How will he face his family and tell them that he is the Furo they knew the night before? How will they reconcile the two Furos into his new phys...

One of the flagship projects of Commonwealth Writers , the Commonwealth Short Story Prize is now open for entries, with an international judging panel comprising judges from each of the five Commonwealth regions: Zukiswa Wanner (Africa); Mahesh Rao (Asia); Jacqueline Baker (Canada and Europe), Jacob Ross (Caribbean) and Vilsoni Hereniko (Pacific). The chair of this year’s panel is the novelist Kamila Shamsie, who is the author of six novels, including Burnt Shadows , which has been translated into more than 20 languages and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, and A God in Every Stone which was shortlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. “One of the pleasures of short stories is the potential for encountering both breadth and concentrated depth of writing over the space of just a few stories. In the case of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, the geographic range of the entrants, as well as the prize's track record of attracting extraordinary wri...

Tendai Huchu ( Source ) Today, I bring you an interview (a discussion) with Tendai Huchu. I interviewed him when his first book The Hairdresser of Harare came out. He has published his second book: The Maestro, The Magistrate, and The Mathematician. I caught up with him via Facebook and this is what ensued. Nana Fredua-Agyeman : So how did The Hairdresser of Harare   do? And how was it accepted in Zimbabwe noting the subject matter? Tendai Huchu : The Hairdresser isn't a book I think much about now. I have moved on as an artist. It was well received in Zim. First print run sold out. Good reviews. It was a popular read. Nana Fredua-Agyeman : OK. Great. I'm surprised you say you think not much about it. Is it that you are more concerned with your new work? Tendai Huchu : Yeah, I am doing newer and, hopefully, more interesting stuff. I have/am evolving. For me, the next project is always more exciting than the last. I imagine it is the same for all writers. ...

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, written over a twelve-year period (1928-1940) and published posthumously (1967), is a fantastic representation of phantasmagorical events that began with the portentous prediction whose realisation spelt doom for the entire inhabitants of Moscow, creating knots and entanglements that mere rationalisation was unable to coherently unwound or meaningfully disentangle.  The Great Deceiver, who in this case appeared as a great Magician, entered Moscow and, chancing upon a meeting of two literary enthusiasts at Patriarch's Ponds discussing the unending debate of the presence or otherwise of God, began a performance. The two self-professed atheists were strong in their conviction of a non-existent God and proffered argument after argument and hypothesis after hypothesis to support their thesis, until the arrival of Prof. Woland (the devil) and his retinue (Azazello, Behemoth the manlike-cat, Koroviev, Abadonna, and Hella,...

Books are life. Good books are heavenly. A stack of books? - indescribable. The following are the books I have purchased since I last talked about new books  I have acquired : The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician  by Tendai Huchu. I came to know Tendai when he published The Hairdresser of Harare .  I interviewed him then. And I have an interview with him on this new book, which I am yet to post here. I was therefore surprised to find that the book organization, of which I am a member, Writers Project of Ghana, has copies of his book for sale, courtesy Farafina.  The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician  was published in 2015. My interest in reading Tendai's second book is to really understand the path his writing will take. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. John Banville describes the book as "unlike anything I have read in recent years, an extraordinary, breathtaking achievement." It has been considered as a great American novel...

Every Day is for the Thief (2007; Cassava Republic) by Teju Cole is an interesting story that is difficult to categorise, if you are one in love with such mundane activities. In some aspects it is a novella - Teju says: " Every Day is for the Thief, written after I revisited Lagos after a long absence, is a novel "; however, in an attempt 'to capture a contemporary moment in the life of the city'...'much of the impetus comes from real-life events '. In this aspect, Every Day is for the Thief   is not just your everyday novel. It is more than that. The writing style, the plot (actually there was none), and the unnamed narrator writing about his travel makes it read like a travelogue, creative non-fiction style. However, at what point is a work of fiction, fiction? Or what proportion of fiction is required for a work to be described as such? Realist writers, whatever that term might mean, writes of the everyday happenings that the reader, if the book is set i...

300. Daisy Miller by Henry James: My first impression after reading this novel was one of disappointment.  It seemed too simple. I waited for something to happen but it never did until the main character died. However, like Fitzgerald, the story shows the progress society has made. The story is about social restrictions placed on young ladies. In the novel, it was frowned upon for a young unmarried woman to be seen in the company of a young man she is not engaged with for such a length of time without the presence of an elder woman. The problem was that some of these restrictions differ and when Daisy arrived in Europe where such restrictions were tough, she was confused and ignorant of what she was to do. Thus, reading the novel one is likely to think that Daisy is a tough woman brazenly defying society, yet it turned out that she was totally ignorant of the laws and that she was only flouting them in innocence. Though not a good representation of Henry James, it still provides ...

In October of 2009 , about seven months into my book blogging life, I came up with a plan to guide me read some fantastic books. I had just transitioned from reading 'everything' (or preferably pulp fiction) to literary fiction with focus on African literature. Realising how much I was missing, I set myself the target of reading 100 amazing books in five years. These books were to be exclusive of all other books I will read in the year. Thus, I can read other books but at the end of the five years I should have read these 100 books. I developed the list with vigour, with information from several sources (recommendations from friends and best books lists). This is the kind of challenge I cherish though I don't always complete challenges . However one challenging factor when it comes to challenges is book accessibility and it is because of this that I set the five-year target thinking that within that period the hurdle would have flattened out.  So I made a list of books...

The Man Booker Prize has, overtime, become the most prestigious literary award, not because of its 50,000 Pounds Sterling prize money (which is good but dwarfed by Nigeria's US$ 100,000 NLNG Prize for Literature), but for the fame and opportunities it opens up for nominees. To be long-listed is itself an achievement and the route to literary fame. Every year readers, writers, publishers and literary aficionados look forward to long-list and then the countdown to the shortlist and winner begins. Not until 2013, when it was announced that the award will be expanded (in 2014) to cover all books written in English by any author anywhere on the planet but published in the UK, the Man Booker has been reserved for only authors in Britain, Ireland, the Commonwealth, and Zimbabwe. Since its inception in 1968, the prize has given out 48 awards (including the Lost Man Booker Prize in 1970 and the award-sharing in 1974); however, very few nominees and, therefore, fewer winners have come f...

How do you justify your book purchases with limited book budget? Especially, when you want to break your promise to yourself? My excuse is that I am using the new books to ginger up the drastic drop of interest in reading. And who can argue against this reason? Once I have filled up my unread shelf again, I will be forced to deplete it. Though I know it really does not work. Cognitive dissonance?  The following are the books I have in the past weeks and months: My Watch by Olusegun Obasanjo . This is a three-volume work by the former Nigerian president. I usually do not like biographies and autobiographies. They are a nice of rehashing people's deeds. It's as if the person is telling you how to remember him, which is like hacking into the minds of the people and rearranging the thoughts they have of you. It is unfair. However, it is also a way of learning from people. Others have retold completely doubtful biographies. Others have been called out on certain aspects of ...

It is always easy to come across posts that discusses or 'reviews' newly published books. However, in most cases these reviews are skewed to western audience and so most of the books listed are from America and Europe, with one or two African writers thrown into the mix to give it a semblance of wide coverage. However, most of the names that are thrown into the mix are Africans who are fortunate enough to have their works distributed in the UK and/or US. Whereas the literary output from the continent cannot be compared with those coming from the rest of the world in terms of numbers, they are more than insignificant. Hence, kindly share with me  - with links and if possible your review (in the comments section) - of new African books you have come across. By new I am referring to books published since January 1, 2016 to present. You can even stretch it back a few months but it should not be more than twelve months since publication. So effectively books should have been pu...

I have criticized the Caine Prize for pandering to a certain trope of stories. I can recite the number of times that the 'the poor/refugee boy waiting for a miracle from the West and killing people or finding dead bodies in the interim' has won the Caine Prize. In fact so severe was my aversion to this trend that I altogether stopped reading the short stories. It was as if there was a hidden agenda and every story must conform. In fact, I felt justified when in 2012 the chair of judges said they will look  ' beyond the more stereotypical narrative .'  And Elnathan John has been shortlisted twice - 2013 and 2015. The story, Bayan Layi , which developed into Born on a Tuesday was shortlisted in 2013 . By 2013 I had lost all interest in the prize and had stopped reading the stories for my Short Story Mondays . When the Writers Project of Ghana selected this book for its book for June, I did not know what to expect. I had no knowledge that it had developed from a sho...

Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife (2003) was one of the books I read last year or two. Again, I am not truly reviewing them. I am only talking about it. The story is about a woman who fell in love with a man with a genetic disorder that allows him to unpredictably travel through time. This unpredictability of his travels led to several problems in that relationship. However, through some means involving the future self of Henry, the man, Clare - the woman - got pregnant and gave birth to a daughter, Alba. Alba was also diagnosed with chrono-impairment, the genetic disorder that causes time travel; however, Alba was able to control her destinations and the times of her travels. The story seems to be about waiting for love and the problems that arise from such waiting. It is weird. This novel defies classification: is it a love story? Is it a science fiction? Have you read this novel? What's your opinion?

Before my birth there was infinite time, and after my death, inexhaustible time. [Page 3] Four years after I first left Istanbul, while traveling through the endless steppes, snow-covered mountains and melancholy cities of Persia, carrying letters and collecting taxes, I admitted to myself that I was slowly forgetting the face of the childhood love I'd left behind. With growing panic, I tried desperately to remember her, only to realize that despite love, a face long not seen finally fades. [7] When you love a city and have explored it frequently on foot, your body, not to mention your soul, gets to know the streets so well after a number of years that in a fit of melancholy, perhaps stirred by a light snow falling ever so sorrowfully, you'll discover your legs carrying you of their own accord toward one of your favorite promontories. [11] After I took care of that pathetic man, wandering the streets of Istanbul for four days was enough to confirm that everyone wit...