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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...

Source Though Achebe's Things Fall Apart   (1958) is often cited and used as the beginning of the modern African novel written in English (the book being the first to receive critical global acclaim), it was not necessarily the first novel published in Africa. Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford's  Ethiopia Unbound: Studies in Race Emancipation , published in 1911, has been cited as, probably, the first African novel written in English. Similarly, Herbert Isaac Ernest Dhlomo's (from South Africa)  The Girl who Killed to Save: Nongqawuse the Liberator  published in 1935 is regarded as first African Play in English. In any discussion of initiatory works, especially those in relation to literary works, a distinction should be made between writing and publication with the latter being usually the preferred index. And in so far as recognition could be a function of distribution and, consequently, acceptance, it possibly could be that there was an African novel,...

September 30 to October 6 was (or is) celebrated as Banned Books Week worldwide. During this period, people around the world, especially in the blogosphere, read books that have been banned at one point in before for various perceived offenses, either due to its language, sex, murder, or profanity. According to the the American Library Association who established this in 1982 Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it highlights the value of free and open access to information. Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community -- librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types -- in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular. In Africa, governments and other bodies have used several excuses to ban several books. However, every book deserves to be given the opportunity to be read. The ...

It is that time of the year when followers and lovers of literature begin to predict or speculate about the possible winner(s) of the highest award in literature - the Nobel Prize in Literature. Every year several names pop up at several sites and blogs in articles that explain why one author deserves to be awarded more than the other and why others need not to be awarded . In fact, some of the arguments, debates and discussions have been geocentric with some readers and followers bashing the Swedish panel for being too Eurocentric ; this is because no American has won the award since 1993 when Toni Morrison - that intelligent writer and Champion of the African (sorry) Black American history - won the award, though several names like Philip Roth, Bob Dylan, Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon are always bandied about at various places. Since the award began in 1901, only four Africans have won the award;  Wole Soyinka , 1986; Naguib Mahfouz , 1988; Nadine Gordimer , ...

For those of us bibliophiles in Ghana in particular and those in Sub-Saharan Africa, whatever this handed-down geographic description means, in general but excluding South Africa, the quest of getting quality books of authors within the sub-region could be as daunting as climbing Mount Everest. In fact, such books are hardly available. Sometime past, this gap was filled by the African Writers Series of the Heinemann Publishers. Through this company, books such as Achebe's Things Fall Apart , Armah's The Beautyful Ones are not Yet Born   got a huge following. And most of today's African writers we hold in high esteem were discovered or published by Heinemann. However, today, Heinemann are no longer publishing new African writers. What they seem to be doing is reprinting or republishing old stories. For instance, they have recently reprinted Armah's The Beautyful Ones are not Yet Born.  In their absence, a gap was created and a dire need for its closure arose. South ...

Last week,  Stefania of Books of Gold  drew my attention to a particular article by George Packer of Lapham's Quarterly , a magazine of history and ideas . Perhaps it was in the spirit of sharing ideas that Packer wrote his beautiful literary article aptly titled  Dickens in Lagos .  According to Packer, and you could read his article first, the present day reader in Bombay, Rangoon, Mombasa or Lagos is more likely understand the contextual works of Dickens, and Hardy, and Dreiser and Gissing and Balzac than the Western reader in New York or Los Angeles because in these Western countries, The conditions for Gissing’s version of unhappiness, and Hardy’s, and Dreiser’s (and, earlier, Balzac’s), no longer exist in the civilizations that produced their work. In the great cities of the West, the standard of living is too high, public life too rationalized, social taxonomy too fluid, and aesthetic taste too jaundiced, for a novel to turn on the main character’s fra...

This topic has been on my mind for some time now. Initially, I thought it would not appeal to people, but then I do not write to agree with people. I speak of things I have seen; of things I think of; of things that would generate arguments or agreements and from which I would come out more knowledgeable than before. Whatever it is we need to talk, discuss, argue, agree, and agree to disagree. Has anyone observed the path some authors have taken to popularise their novels? Or perhaps it emanates only from my masochist macho mind? Or perhaps I am framing the whole thing up and presuming it is pervasive: not everybody does it but most do? Whatever the case may, as in many other professions, people always discover shortcuts to stardom. After all, once the archetype is prepared and accepted one can always build on it. Some writers, and if I can call myself one then I also stand accused, have capitalised on the fact that women form a larger percentage of the reading and/or book-buy...

VIDA , a Women Literary Organisation which was founded in August 2009 "to address the need for female writers of literature to engage in conversations regarding the critical reception of women’s creative writing in our current culture" has conducted a fascinating research into the gender distribution of book reviews and articles. Their findings have generated a wave of discussion on the gender biasness in literary circles or the less emphasis placed on women writings. Available statistics from big publishing houses such as Atlantic, Boston Review, Granta, London Review of Books, Harper, New Republic, New Yorker, New York Times Book Review, New York Review of Books, according to VIDA, show skewness in representation against women, even though "women write and women read".        Source:  VIDA Some responses even suggests that since women form a larger percentage of the reading public there should be a greater representation of women in these studies. The...

Ever since Tricia Nwaubani's infamous article, In Africa, the Laureate's Curse , first published in The New York Times and then at the NEXT , a lot of comments and opinions have been shared. The majority of these have been against the theses posited by the writer. I personally wrote a response . The crux of Tricia's article are: An Ngugi Nobel would have resulted in the new generation of aspiring writers dreaming of nothing higher than being hailed as "the next Ngugi"; An Ngugi award could have them [new writers] back to the old tried and tired ways [which Tricia described as 'an earnest and sober style' of Ngugi, Achebe and Soyinka]; Instead of acclaimed Nigerian writers, we would have acclaimed Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa writers. We suffer enough from tribal differences already. This is not the kind of variety we need. [Here Nawaubani claims that writing in his native Gikuyu language or any other African language for that matter breeds tribalism]. ...

December 18, 2010 was the date. I participated in my first ever Barcamp. I have realised that ever since I started this book review and active blogging, I have moved from the hermit I was to become a socially vibrant person who is no more scared to share his thoughts. And I know, I can sometimes be vitriolic. That's my nature. I cannot suffer sycophancy or pure hypocrisy. I love ratiocinative thinkers. For the first time, I met some of the faces behind blogs I have been following for a long time such as Ato of Mighty Africa , and Nina of Accra books and things . I also met twitter friends such as MacJordan , Nii Ayertey and more. Barcamp Ghana brought together young individuals who have passion, ideas, and the zeal to let their ideas walk. It was not your usual Talk Shops where one went to sit and be talked to. At Barcamp, participants set the agenda they would want to talk about. People elect themselves to facilitate and no one imposes his or her ideas on the other, ra...

Ngugi wa Thiong'o Discussions have been going-on , ever since Tricia Adoabi's article In Africa, the Laureate's Curse , was published in The New York Times . I had vehemently opposed to most of the issues raised in the article and had a facebook post of it yesterday. However, I really didn't want to blog about my qualms. Yet, to distance my comments from my blog would be a dereliction of duty, most especially when my blog exists mainly to promote African Literature. To begin with Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani is the author of that beautifully-written, award-winning novel  I Do Not Come to you by Chance , a novel that has been on my contemporary reading list but for its unavailability in Ghanaian shops I would have reviewed it on my blog. Now to the crux of the issue. Adaobi stated that: A Nigerian publisher told me that of the manuscripts she reads from aspiring writers, half echo Chinua Achebe and half try to adopt Wole Soyinka's style. (paragraph two) and then I kno...