Beyond Achebe: Reading the Continent

When he was 20 years old, Abdulrazak Gurnah fled to the UK from Zanzibar when the black population overthrew the ruling Arab government (Gurnah's family was of Arab descent) in 1968.* 19 years later he wrote his first novel at the age of 39. He spent the next three decades writing in relative commercial–though not critical–obscurity. That is,

I came across this book through a post on the Arabist's excellent blog--it was entitled A Libyan Novel You Should Read. The author of the post--Ursula Lindsey--wrote such a great opening hook to describe the books' author that I've included it here: Alessandro Spina was a Syrian Maronite who grew up in Ben Ghazi, was educated and wrote

I first encountered Ghanaian-American author Yaa Gyasi’s writing in 2019 when I read her multiple awards winning debut novel Homegoing (I reviewed it here).  Her latest novel Transcendent Kingdom may not rise to the same level of jaw-dropping narrative arc and grandiose themes but it’s still powerful in its attention to the personal.  Whereas Homegoing covered multiple generations across

No Room at the InnGhanaian poet Atukwei Okai has a lengthy poem entitled “Kperterkple Serenade” that perfectly captures much of the sentiment in Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers. The third section concludes its opening admonition of “make room in your inn for me –” with the following wry observation:americayou are a funny girl…everybody dreams of kissing you. Early

This book is a perfect example of why reading fiction is important. Reading fiction like this forces the reader to internalize and grapple with historical events in a way that a straightforward history never could. In this case, by personalizing something like the Algerian independence struggle, the reader must reevaluate the dry numbers, facts and statistics littering the