Kwani Trust have commissioned a series of articles by today’s leading African writers on writing craft and practice as a way to support writers through the process of developing and submitting manuscripts for the Kwani? Manuscript Project, Kwani Trust’s new literary prize for African writing. Including contributions from Aminatta Forna, Leila Aboulela, Ellen Banda-Aaku and Helon […]

By Leila Aboulela Polish your intention. Why are you writing? What do you really want to achieve? I once picked up a book of poems by Les Murray and the dedication said, “To the Glory of God”.  Other writers feel that they are bearing witness or that they are born story-tellers or that they are […]

Kwani Trust have commissioned a series of articles by today’s leading African writers on writing craft and practice as a way to support writers through the process of developing and submitting manuscripts for the Kwani? Manuscript Project, Kwani Trust’s new literary prize for African writing. Including contributions from Aminatta Forna, Leila Aboulela, Ellen Banda-Aaku and Helon […]

By Ngugi wa Thiong’o The links between Asia and Africa and South America have always been present but in our times they have been made invisible by the fact that Europe is still the central mediator of Afro-Asian-Latino discourse. We live under what Satya Mohanty in his interview in Frontline (April 2012), aptly calls the […]

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts’ first book, Harlem Is Nowhere fuses seemingly disparate elements of history, philosophy, journalism and prose in an attempt to untangle the myth and meaning of Harlem’s legacy. Formally, she never tires of digression, evoking voices from Harlem’s past and present to convey a reality that is multidimensional and complex in its simultaneity, as […]

Dominique Malaquais Goddy Leye nous a quittés. C’était le 19 février 2011, peu après minuit. A Karachi, au bord du désert, où jamais il ne pleut en cette saison, le ciel s’est ouvert. Averse. A l’aube, à l’heure du premier appel des muezzins, il pleuvait encore. J’écris là-bas ces mots pour l’ami, le mentor, le […]

by Achille Mbembe (translated by Karen Press) Here we are in 2010, fifty years after decolonisation. Is there anything at all to commemorate, or should one on the contrary start all over again? Here restoration of authoritarian rule, there administrative multi-partyism, elsewhere minimal, easily reversible advances, and just about everywhere, extremely elevated levels of social […]

Entretien de Norbert N. Ouendji avec Achille Mbembe « Sortir de la grande nuit. Essai sur l’Afrique décolonisée ». Tel est le titre du dernier livre d’Achille Mbembe qui paraît aux Éditions La Découverte à Paris le 14 octobre. J’ai eu le privilège de lire de manière attentive cet ouvrage riche et très documenté écrit en mémoire de […]