African Interest

Brief Summary In this groundbreaking collection of essays Pius Adesanmi tries to unravel what it is that Africa means to him as an African, and by extension to all those who inhabit this continent of extremes. This is a question that exercised some of the continent's finest minds in the twentieth century, but which pan-Africanism, Negritude, nationalism, decolonization and all the other projects through which Africans sought to restore their humanity ultimately failed to answer. Criss-crossing the continent, Pius Adesanmi engages with the enigma that is Africa in an attempt to make meaning of this question for all twenty-first century Africans. ISBN:9780143527541 Author:Pius Adesanmi

Brief Summary Nawal El Saadawi is the 2007 recipient of the African Literature Association's Fonlon-Nichols Award! "People have become corrupt everywhere. You can search in vain for justice or true morality. They no longer exist." Kafr El Teen is a beautiful, sleepy village on the banks of the Nile. Yet at its heart it is tyrannical and corrupt. The Mayor, Sheikh Hamzawi of the mosque, and the Chief of the Village Guard are obsessed by wealth and use and abuse the women of the village, taking them as slaves, marrying them and beating them. Resistance, it seems, is futile. Zakeya, an ordinary villager, works in the fields by the Nile and watches the world, squatting in the dusty entrance to her house, quietly accepting her fate. It is only when her nieces fall prey to the Mayor that Zakeya becomes enraged by the injustice of her society and possessed by demons. Where is the loving and peaceful God in whom Zakeya believes? Nawal El Saadawi's classic attempt to square religion with a society in which women are respected as equals is as relevant today as ever. ISBN:9781842778777 Author:Nawal El Saadawi

Brief Summary Deep in the Congo’s Garamba National Park in the dead of night, Joseph Kony – the notorious warlord wanted by the International Criminal Court – made a shocking admission. Loosened by home-made wine, exposing a vulnerability he could never show the world, Kony looked George Omona in the eye, ‘You need to know that if I had a choice I would not be doing this … I wish I could be a man of books, like you.’ Three years earlier George was expelled from one of Uganda’s best schools, just weeks before he was due to graduate with exemplary grades, destroying his dreams of becoming a teacher. In desperation, his uncle found him a role in Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). George’s education and fluent command of English allowed him to rapidly rise through the ranks, eventually becoming one of Kony’s bodyguards, before he finally made his escape. George’s story – based on many hours of interviews with acknowledged LRA expert Ledio Cakaj – provides a vivid, personal and fascinating insight into the inner workings of the LRA, and the mind of Kony, its self-appointed prophet. "

Brief Summary A new novel from one of the world's great writers-an extraordinary work set in Mogadiscio, Somalia-that both breaks new ground and brings him back to his literary roots. A strong, self-reliant woman who was born in Somalia but brought up in North America, Cambara returns to Mogadiscio to escape a failed marriage and an overweening mother. Her journey back to her native home is a desperate attempt to find herself on her own terms-however ironically, in a country where women are expected to wear veils. And she has given herself a mission to reclaim her family's home from the warlord who has taken it as his own. Cambara finds emotional refuge and practical support with a group of Somali women activists working to broker peace in a country that has been savagely riven by its drug-addled, power-hungry men. Farah's novels have been famous for their unique African feminism since his debut, From a Crooked Rib (just reissued by Penguin); Knots represents his most powerful return to that legacy. Knots also presents a penetrating portrayal of Somalia's capital city-a city that's changed from the city Westerners saw on CNN and in 'Black Hawk Down,' transformed into a state of violent anarchy and psychological disrepair that has never been more important to understand. An especially intimate portrait of Mogadiscio, it's informed by Farah's own recent efforts to reclaim his family's property there, as well as his experiences trying to negotiate peace among the city's warlords. Now more than ever, Farah's deeply wise and worldly inside look at the Muslim world is valuable and necessary. " ISBN:9781594489242 Author:Nuruddin Farah

Brief Summary Running the Rift follows Jean Patrick Nkuba, a gifted Rwandan boy, from the day he knows that running will be his life to the moment he must run to save his life, a ten-year span in which his country is undone by the Hutu-Tutsi tensions. Born a Tutsi, he is thrust into a world where it's impossible to stay apolitical - where the man who used to sell you gifts for your family now spews hatred, where the girl who flirted with you in the lunchroom refuses to look at you, where your Hutu coach is secretly training the very soldiers who will hunt down your family. Yet in an environment increasingly restrictive for the Tutsi, he holds fast to his dream of becoming Rwanda's first Olympic medal contender in track, a feat he believes might deliver him and his people from this violence. When the killing begins, Jean Patrick is forced to flee, leaving behind the woman, the family, and the country he loves. Finding them again is the race of his life. This is the third Bellwether Prize winner published by Algonquin. The Bellwether Prize is awarded biennially by Barbara Kingsolver for an unpublished novel that addresses issues of social justice and was previously awarded to The Girl Who Fell from the Sky and Mudbound. ISBN:9781616201944 Author:Naomi Benaron

Brief Summary A Swamp Full of Dollars: Pipelines and Paramilitaries at Nigeria's Oil Frontier The largest U.S. trading partner in sub-Saharan Africa, petroleum-rich Nigeria exports half its daily oil production to the United States. Like many African nations with natural resources coveted by the world's superpowers, the country has been shaped by foreign investment and intervention, conflicts among hundreds of ethnic and religious groups, and greed. Polio has boomed along with petroleum, small villages face off with giant oil companies, and scooter drivers run their own ministates. The oil-rich Niger Delta region at the heart of it all is a trouble spot as hot as the local pepper soup. Blending vivid reportage, history, and investigative journalism, in A Swamp Full of Dollars journalist Michael Peel tells the story of this extraordinary country, which grows ever more wild and lawless by the day as its refined petroleum pumps through our cities. Through a host of colorful characters--from the Area Boy gangsters of Lagos to a corrupt state governor who stashed money in his London penthouse, from the militants in their swamp forest hideouts to oil company executives--Peel makes the connection between Western energy consumption and the breakdown of the Nigerian state, where the corruption of the haves is matched only by the determination and ingenuity of the have-nots. What has happened to Nigeria is a stark warning to the United States and other economic powers as they grow increasingly frantic in their search for new oil sources: unbridled plunder eventually rebounds on those who have done the taking. A Swamp Full of Dollars--shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award--shows that if the Arab world is the precarious eastern battle line in an intensifying world war for crude, then Nigeria has become the tumultuous western front. ISBN:9781569762868 Author:Michael Peel

Brief Summary The Caine Prize for African Writing is Africa’s leading literary prize and is awarded to a short story by an African writer published in English, whether in Africa or elsewhere. This edition collects the five 2009 shortlisted stories, along with twelve stories written at the Caine Prize Writers’ Workshop, taking place in spring 2009. Previous winners and entrants include Segun Afolabi, Leila Aboulela, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Brian Chikwava, Henrietta Rose-Innes, Mary Watson, and Binyavanga Wainaina. The collection will be released in time for the announcement of the award in July 2009. This year's shortlist: • Mamle Kabu (Ghana), 'The End of Skill from Dreams,' from Miracles and Jazz, published by Picador Africa, Johannesburg 2008 • Parselelo Kantai (Kenya), 'You Wreck Her,' from the St Petersburg Review, NY 2008 • Alistair Morgan (South Africa), 'Icebergs,' from The Paris Review no. 183, NY 2008 • EC Osondu (Nigeria), 'Waiting,' from Guernicamag.com, October 2008 • Mukoma wa Ngugi (Kenya), 'How Kamau wa Mwangi Escaped into Exile,' from Wasafiri No54, Summer 2008, London ISBN:9781906523145 Author:The Caine Prize for African Writing

Brief Summary In the Country of Men is a stunning depiction of a child confronted with the effects of Libyan strongman Khadafy's 1969 September revolution. But above all, it is a debut of rare insight and literary grace. Libya, 1979. Nine-year-old Suleiman’s days are circumscribed by the narrow rituals of childhood: outings to the ruins surrounding Tripoli, games with friends played under the burning sun, exotic gifts from his father’s constant business trips abroad. But his nights have come to revolve around his mother’s increasingly disturbing bedside stories full of old family bitterness. And then one day Suleiman sees his father across the square of a busy marketplace, his face wrapped in a pair of dark sunglasses. Wasn’t he supposed to be away on business yet again? Why is he going into that strange building with the green shutters? Why did he lie? Suleiman is soon caught up in a world he cannot hope to understand—where the sound of the telephone ringing becomes a portent of grave danger; where his mother frantically burns his father’s cherished books; where a stranger full of sinister questions sits outside in a parked car all day; where his best friend’s father can disappear overnight, next to be seen publicly interrogated on state television. In the Country of Men is a stunning depiction of a child confronted with the private fallout of a public nightmare. But above all, it is a debut of rare insight and literary grace. ISBN:9780385340427 Author:Hisham Matar