“I am a tomb”, begins the new short story by Tendai Machingaidze, ‘The Neurological Map of a Madwoman’, a story that puts the reader into a dream state. What more can you ask for, especially from a writer who also uses language with a magical skill? Tendai Machingaidze was born in 1982 in Harare, Zimbabwe.…
In his review of Okey Ndibe’s ‘Foreign Gods, Inc.’ (2014), Ronald Adamolekun writes, “There has been much fuss in the media regarding the credibility of Okey Ndibe’s prose style. His debut novel, ‘Arrows of Rain,’ shares a close title with Chinua Achebe’s 1964 novel, ‘Arrow of God.’ His deployment of the nuances in the ethical…
“This country is fucked up. What shit are they celebrating?” Mbatu nods towards the noisy bunch of students who have occupied every table in this open-air bar. They are singing and dancing as if someone just won a million dollars in the lottery. These are the boys and girls who say they have ‘swag’. Girls…
One million children are exploited by the global commercial sex trade, every year. The Facts About Child Sex Tourism: 2005 (U.S. State Department) 146: A Collection of Love Stories is dedicated to the little girl who wore number 146 pinned to her red dress. What little is known about her story is told at the…
Kagiso ‘Dubla’ Senthufhe, esq., is a social researcher, freelance and creative-story writer based in the sleepy village of Metsimotlhabe in the outskirts of his hometown of Gaborone, the capital of Botswana. He graduated from the University of Botswana (‘UB-Basco’) with a BA degree in Sociology and Public Administration, in 1991, before spending a further two…
“My review [of We Need New Names] is a very funny one,” says Nkiacha Atemnkeng, “but I think the funniest novel in African literature ever also deserves a funny book review.” This is more than a review. Atemnkeng presents a personal response, in honour of his his role model, NoViolet Bulawayo, the author of one…
With an insider’s intimacy, author Carine Fabius, in Saturday Comes: A Novel of Love and Vodou, dispels the religious, social and cultural stereotypes and myths shrouding her native Haiti in an atmospheric coming-of-age tale that pits the bourgeois Chenet family against the impoverished Saint Fleurs – their live-in cook Jizzeline and her young daughter Maya. Driven…
Nkiacha Atemnkeng is a Cameroonian writer and blogger at nkiachaatemnkeng.blogspot.com. His work has been published in three online literary journals, malawiwrite.org, www.africabookclub.com and www.thenewblackmagazine.com. He was shortlisted for the 2013 Mardibooks short story competition in London. A holder of a Curriculum Studies and Biology degree, he works as a Swissport Customer Service agent at the…
There is Dambudzo Marechera the writer who died in 1987 and Dambudzo Marechera the collection of all the works by and about him. Books featuring critical perspectives on his works and those depicting his profound influence on contemporary writers have been published. Moving Spirit: The Legacy of Dambudzo Marechera in the 21st Century is an example of such books, but it…
By Brian Bwesigye It is now a trend, that any story out of Africa that deals with deprivation, misrule and suffering is met with loud outcries of poverty-porn from a group of Africans Taiye Selasi defined as Afropolitans. Writing in Lip Magazine in 2005, Taiye described Afropolitans as “the newest generation of African emigrants … (known by a)…
