Binyavanga’s writing was enough
A close friend remembers the Kenyan writer and commentator Binyavanga Wainaina (January 18, 1971 - May 21, 2019).
Lit
Women’s political consciousness in Senegal
Rama Salla Dieng talks with a British literature scholar on literary activism in French.
The third brother
A new thriller by Andrew Welsh-Huggins follows a detective investigating the disappearance of a Somali-American teenager in Ohio.
Reading List: Ronnie Close
The author of a book on football and revolution in Egypt gives us a list of must reads on football in the Middle East and North Africa.
Reading List: Dionne Searcey
The author and journalist shares a reading list from her time as The New York Times' Bureau Chief for West Africa.
Rouge Impératrice
Imagining a utopian, unified African federation not divided by colonial era borders or neocolonial interventions.
Reading List: T.J. Tallie
Among the books historian Tallie has on his reading list is one about the food of the American Old South—“… a forgotten Little Africa but nobody speaks of it that way.”
Reading List: Jill Kelly
The historian of South Africa on books she is reading for a new project on women and anti-apartheid activities in 1950s rural KwaZulu-Natal.
Reading List: Benjamin Talton
The writer, a historian, on scholarly texts, novels, and memoirs that he consulted in writing a political biography of US congressman Mickey Leland and his solidarity politics in Africa.
Bernard-Henry Lévy in Nigeria
The French philosopher and TV personality favors spectacle over analysis. The result: we don't make sense of political violence in Nigeria.
Excavating forgotten histories in South Africa
Remembering Adelaide Tantsi Dube’s poem 'Africa: My Native Land,' first published in 1913, the same year the white government stripped black South Africans of their land.
Reading List: Peter James Hudson
The writer, a historian of capitalism, white supremacy, and US imperialism, on four books he has been reading.
Reading List: Ainehi Edoro
English Professor and Editor of Brittle Paper, recommends five books she’s been reading.
There is no one way to talk about migration
Beyond news headlines, African artists complicate common migration narratives.
The pitfalls of symbolic decolonization
Mukoma wa Ngugi's opening remarks at the launch (today) of the 2020 Writers Unlimited International Literature Festival in The Hague.
Detritus of revolution
Nthikeng Mohlele’s novel Small Things (2013) provides a rejoinder to J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999), depicting a black man’s perspective on the failures of South Africa’s transition.
At the edge of sight
One of the few books about photography to come out of the continent and where the majority of contributors are African and work on the continent.
Our women on the ground
A new book of essays offers a nuanced glimpse into the complexities of reporting on the Arab world, including North Africa.
History time
The historical novel is in vogue across the continent, challenging how we conceive of the nation, and how we write its histories.
In praise of disruption
A conversation with the founding editor of Bakwa Magazine—created to amplify new writing from Cameroon and from the African diaspora.