In an opinion piece in the New York Times, Swedish author Henning Mankell writes about years spent living “with one foot in African sand and the other in European snow”. Mankell first came to Africa 25 years ago in an attempt to escape the limits of “Eurocentricity” and has lived on-and-off in Mozambique ever since. He argues that this has afforded him a new respect for listening – something he calls one of Africa’s “guiding principles”.
Mankell goes further to predict an “African literary outpouring” based on listening which, he argues, will offer a new perspective on the “human condition”. Mankell compares this to the increase in popularity of South American literature some years ago, characterised by the magical-realist stories of Gabriel García Márquez, Jose Saramago and others. In this regard, Mankell alerts us to the work of the late Mozambican author, Mia Couto, which, while immersed in its own magical realism, borrows from a strong African oral tradition.
I came to Africa with one purpose: I wanted to see the world outside the perspective of European egocentricity. I could have chosen Asia or South America. I ended up in Africa because the plane ticket there was cheapest.
I came and I stayed. For nearly 25 years I’ve lived off and on in Mozambique. Time has passed, and I’m no longer young; in fact, I’m approaching old age. But my motive for living this straddled existence, with one foot in African sand and the other in European snow, in the melancholy region of Norrland in Sweden where I grew up, has to do with wanting to see clearly, to understand.
This book deals with the author’s memories of the struggle against apartheid.
Nadja Manghezi was born in Denmark but married a South African, Alpheus Manghezi, a student she met in Nigeria when teaching there.
While contributing to the struggle through the ANC, the couple supported the newly independent Mozambique. Other African countries are also in the picture as they move around the continent, as ANC members at that time tended to do.
As part of their continuing investigation into the economic and social influence of China in Africa, Kevin Bloom and Richard Poplak ventured to Mozambique, where they found environmental devastation in the country’s marine sector.
They found hacked-up sharks sans fins, beheaded turtles and sting rays lying on a bloodied shore – all fare, presumably, for a Chinese delicacy. For Mozambicans, the price paid for shark fins represents more than twice the minimum wage. The final product? A soup so high in mercury content that it presents a severe health risk to those who consume it:
The beach that stretches out along Praia do Tofo, Mozambique, resembles a long, lazy horseshoe, with surf breaking all along the spotless sand. The holiday town, with its rundown lodges and backpacker cabins and ramshackle market, is the bay’s economic centre. If there is a reason to come to Tofo, besides the cheap rum and the reasonably priced accommodation, it is to gawk at the wonders of its marine life.
In 2008, in front of the rustic lodge of Casa Barry, on the southern end of the horseshoe, that marine life was slaughtered wholesale.
It was quite a treat to meet Jose Eduardo Agualusa, the Angolan writer about whom one has heard much, but who figures very little in South African literary discussions, despite his stature in Europe and Latin America.
It was “Portuguese night” at SILA yesterday; Agualusa was in conversation with Alfonso Gonzalez Jerez, a journalist based in the Canary Islands. He described Agualusa as “the best-known Angolan writer internationally”, but led with a question that put this identity into some doubt: “Are you a European writer or an African writer and, if the latter, what does that mean?”
Agualusa demurred, retreating behind the international border drawn by Jerez in his opening remarks. “I’m neither: I’m an Angolan writer. I’ve a novel set in Brazil, and one in India, but the action is viewed, as it were, through the eyes of an Angolan. I think writers are entitled to have the world at their disposal.” One’s audience, or market, does not dictate how one identifies in this world.
Agualusa mentioned Angola’s strong ties with Latin America – ties at least as strong, indeed, with those the country has with the rest of Africa. It has to do with the sense of place Angola supplies. The writer mentioned Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 1978 visit to Angola – at the behest of Fidel Castro – and how, to Marquez, it felt like returning to his childhood. “And when I read Marquez, it’s true, there’s continuity [between Angola and Latin America]. His world is my world.”
Commenting on the differences between Angolan writing and writing in Portuguese from other parts of the world, Agualusa said: “The Brazilian masters, the Portuguese, have great technique, better technique than we have. So we have to find a different solution to make others interested in our realities: and our solution is in our stories. We have loads of stories in Africa, stories that you want to tell, good stories.”
Agualusa’s first novel, A Conjura, was published in 1989, and had an Angolan first print run that I thought I mis-heard at first: 15 000 copies. Books then were apparently subsidised by the state and didn’t cost much to buy. Now, he lamented, they’re expensive and inaccessible to most Angolans. South Africans will know the feeling.
Turning to the question of what power writers wield in African societies, Agualusa remarked, “What frightens politicians is not books, but media: newspaper interviews, overseas coverage, and now the internet… newspapers are currently repressed in Angola: some have been bought, others burned down…” Jerez interjected: the governor of the Canaries once purchased the entire print run of a newspaper that carried a corruption story, straight off the boat as it came into port. There’s just something about seeing your name in print, it seems: it drives politicians crazy. South Africans, of course, are currently not seeing anything to contradict this.
On the rise of Angola as a serious economic force in Africa, Agualusa said that the current geopolitical situation was, unfortunately, conducive to tyranny in his home country. Portugal, which relies on Angola for so much, economically – and which has a sizeable ex-pat community in Angola to consider – is fearful of upsetting Angola’s rulers and won’t openly criticise it. The USA, said Agualusa “just doesn’t care” about Angola, as long as its companies can operate freely there; internally, progressive voices are silenced; and Angola’s African neighbours only want to read a success story into the situation.
“The real problem in Angola has always been a lack of debate,” he said. But it remains his home.
~ ~ ~
Also on stage at SILA that evening were publisher Celso Pedro Augusto Muianga of Mozambique and Portugal’s Jose Rui Martins, who discussed cultural collaboration between the two countries.
Alert! The longlists for the R75 000 Sunday Times Fiction Prize and the R75 000 Sunday Times Alan Paton Award for non-fiction – Africa’s largest literary prizes for single works – have been announced.
Here are Sunday Times books editor Tymon Smith‘s notes on gongs:
Alan Paton Award
The 21st edition of the Alan Paton Award for non-fiction sees a list of entries that continues to reflect the national concerns of a burgeoning and eclectic group of authors. As always, the judges for this year’s awards faced the difficult task of ingesting the barrage of information provided in the 40 titles in contention for Africa’s premier literary award.
[...]
Ficiton Prize
Writers working with the present moment and its uniquely perplexing characters produced a fascinating body of work that examines everything from the cut-throat world of the boardroom in Carel van der Merwe’s Shark to the zany business of being a magistrate with a bodyguard in Zakes Mda’s Black Diamond, the sombre reality of circumcision in Thando Mgqolozana’s A Man Who is Not a Man, the cultural clashes of life as a curry Mafia princess in Zinaid Meeran’s Saracen at the Gates and the plight of post-apartheid refugees in Andrew Brown’s Refuge.
It would not be amiss to observe that Antjie Krog appears twice on the Alan Paton Longlist – for Begging to Be Black and There Was This Goat, the latter written with Nosisi Mpolweni, Kopano Ratele.
The shortlists for the 2010 awards will be announced on Thursday 3 June at a cocktail function in Johannesburg. Here are the longlists, with titles given in the order that they were sent to BOOK SA:
Wire Me a Million: The Rise and Fall of Multimillionaire Billy Wolfe, the World’s Most Audacious White-collar Crook by Jack Shepherd Smith
EAN: 9780864867902 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
Something On My Mind – Kate Jowell: Her battle with Alzheimer’s by Sharon Sorour-Morris
EAN: 9781770200906 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
There Was This Goat: Investigating the Truth Commission Testimony of Notrose Nobomvu Konile by Antjie Krog, Nosisi Mpolweni, Kopano Ratele Book homepage
EAN: 9781869141660 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
The Origins of Non-racialism: White opposition to apartheid in the 1950s by David Everatt
EAN: 9781868145003 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography by Clifton Crais, Pamela Scully
EAN: 9780691135809 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
When Colleen Higgs started the small independent publisher, Modjaji Books, it was with the express intention of creating a space for new writers to develop and emerge. At the launch of the fifteenth book on her list, Bed Book of Short Stories, held at the Franschhoek Literary Festival on Saturday, the rain queen quite literally appeared. Tears flowed as an overwhelmed Higgs beamed with delight as she showed off the latest addition to the Modjaji family.
She said it had been an early goal to publish an anthology of short stories. “I love this form,” she said, “and I figured there had to be others who would want to read short stories too. There certainly are many who like to write them.” Another goal was to cast the net wide so as to include writers from countries across the border. The collection includes writers from Zimbabwe, Malawi, Botswana and Mozambique.
Joanne Hichens, who edited the collection, talked about the challenge and delight of working with new writers who were hungry for engagement on their writing and were keen and willing to take up her suggestions. She said she felt the responsibility acutely and found it was a gratifying process that informed her own growth as an editor: “Part of my learning curve was never to underestimate how a writer’s energy drives one to polish a story until it sparkles like a gem.” She noted that it felt at times like she was “the mother of thirty children!”
She saluted Higgs’ vision, saying she was a “brave publisher that takes risks”. She siad it was imperative to seek out new writers and to nurture and engage with fresh voices in order to expand the literary canon in South Africa.
Higgs said this publication was a testament to teamwork on every level. She acknowledged Lauri Kubuitsile who had read more than 300 stories and come up with the selection that called to her most strongly. Maire Fisher’s proof reading and Colleen Crawford-Cousins’ practical and emotional support had been supremely valuable.
She acknowledged the financial support of the Arts and Culture Trust that had enabled her to keep the resale price of the book down. Additionally, the support of Jenny Hobbs of the Franschhoek Literary Festival, Le Bon Vivant, the restaurant that hosted the launch and provided the delectable munchies, and Porcupine Ridge all contributed to a delightful welcome for the Bed Book of Short Stories.
In a not-to-be-missed article on her Sunday Independent books pages, Maureen Isaacson holds up a focussing lens on race and racial tension in South Africa, constructed from different facets presented by recently-published SA non-fiction:
Zuma’s latest call for a national conversation, reiterated on Freedom Day, with an emphasis on “the need for a common perspective” on the changing of geographical names, transformation, the songs we sing and the symbols we embrace is undoubtedly urgent. Such issues are at present the tinders that may ignite the fire, as is language policy and the cultural practice of animal slaughter, but history and the unresolved issue of the past, such as racial inequality urgently need to be probed.
The themes in many of the non-fiction works published this year reveal that history lives on in the present and, indeed, that they interconnect.
Nadja Menghezi’s The Maputo Connection; ANC Life in the World of Frelimo (Jacana) tells many stories including one that is continued by Albie Sachs in the detailed context provided in The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law, (Oxford University Press). This book recounts his life story, including the Maputo car bomb in which he lost an arm and the sight of an eye. It recounts his recovery, and describes the ways in which his political journey shaped the strengths that were to prove indispensable during his term as Constitutional Court judge.
Unfinished Business: South Africa, Apartheid and Truth by Terry Bell, Dumisa Ntsebeza
EAN: 9781859845455 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
There Was This Goat: Investigating the Truth Commission Testimony of Notrose Nobomvu Konile by Antjie Krog, Nosisi Mpolweni, Kopano Ratele Book homepage
EAN: 9781869141660 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), die ANC se gewapende vleuel, wou die Voortrekkermonument in 1981 opblaas. Wyle Oliver Tambo, destyds president van die ANC, het egter ’n stokkie voor dié plan gesteek, want die ANC het die apartheidsbewind as sy vyand beskou, nie die Afrikaner en sy simbole nie.
Dít blyk uit The Maputu Connection: ANC Life In The World Of Frelimo, ’n boek deur Nadja Manghezi, ’n Deen wat lank saam met haar man, Alpheus, ’n aka demi kus, in bannelingskap in Mosam biek gewoon en hulp aan ANC-uitgewekenes verleen het. Sover vasgestel kon word, word hier ’n stuk geskiedenis oor die Voortrekkermonument onthul wat nie algemeen bekend is nie. ’n Uit gebreide soektog op die internet en in koerantargiewe het niks op gelewer nie, en die hoof van die Voortrekkermonument, Gert Opper man, het by navraag gesê dit is ook vir hom nuus.
Alert!SA PEN has issued its call for entries for the £10 000 2011 PEN/Studzinsky Literary Awards – which are judged by JM Coetzee – and has announced that Margie Orford is set to replace Shaun Johnson on the PEN executive.
In a not-altogether-welcome shift of policy, SA PEN has reverted to the geographical scope of its award that was in place before it secured sponsorship from current benefactor John Studzinski. That is, only residents of SADC‘s fifteen countries may enter, whereas the inaugural award was open to the whole of Africa. (See the press release below for the full list of eligible countries.) Happily, the lack of any age restriction on entrants appears to remain intact.
3 000 to 5 000 word short fiction entries in English are invited from 1 March 2010; submission details will be posted to the SA PEN website on that date; no final closing deadline appears to have yet been set.
Here’s the complete press release from SA PEN:
2011 PEN/STUDZINSKI LITERARY AWARDS
Entries invited from 1 March 2010
The South African Centre of International PEN (SA PEN) is pleased to announce the launch of the second in the series of PEN/STUDZINSKI Literary Awards.
Entries for the award for original short stories in English are called for from 1 March 2010 and AFRICAN PENS, a compilation of the short-listed stories, will be published in mid-2011.
Prizes totalling £10 000 will once again be donated by American philanthropist and global investment banker, John Studzinski. The first, second and third prizes will be £5 000, £3 000 and £2 000, respectively.
Nobel Laureate and SA PEN Honorary Member, J.M. Coetzee, will once again select the winning entries.
The 2011 PEN/STUDZINSKI Literary Award aims to encourage creative writing in southern Africa and will offer talented writers an exciting opportunity to launch or develop a literary career. Twelve contributors to our earlier HSBC/SA PEN series have now published their own books, including Ceridwen Dovey who won the 2008 Sunday Times Fiction Prize. Petina Gappah, an early winner, went on to sign a three-book contract with Faber & Faber in the UK and Farrar Strauss & Giroux in the US. Three of the five short-listed stories for the Caine prize for African Writing first appeared in AFRICAN PENS 2007 – the model for AFRICAN PENS 2011. The story POISON, set in a threatened Cape Town, and written by author Henrietta Rose-Innes, was chosen by J.M, Coetzee as the winner of the 2007 HSBC/SA PEN Literary Award and it went on to win the 2008 Caine Prize of £10 000.
Our 2009 project, led by author Shaun Johnson, received over 800 entries from writers throughout Africa, but this year we revert to appealing only to writers living in the fifteen countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC*). The genre is still the short-story, this time between 3 000 and 5 000 words.
SA PEN is pleased to announce that author Margie Orford has agreed to take Shaun’s place on the SA PEN executive and that the Editorial Board for the 2011 award will comprise:
Anthony Fleischer (Chairman), novelist and President of SA PEN
Dianne Case, popular children’s author
John Gardener, English teacher, retired Head of Kingswood College & Bishops, published numerous articles and Bishops’ 150 year history of the school
Jeremy Lawrence, writer who has worked in journalism and publishing in London and South Africa
Adré Marshall, retired academic, author of book on Henry James and sundry poems, translator (French/English)
Peter Merrington, novelist, professor extraordinaire at the University of the Western Cape, ceramicist and motorcyclist
Margie Orford, writer and sometime journalist
Anne Schuster, novelist, poet, creative writing facilitator and publisher
J.M. Coetzee – Nobel Laureate (Final judge)
Writers who are citizens of SADC countries* are encouraged to prepare short stories for submission. Further information and detailed rules of entry will be posted on the SA PEN website, www.sapen.co.za, from the 1 March 2010.
Previous publications featuring the shortlisted and winning stories from the 2005, 2006 and 2007 HSBC/SA PEN, and 2009 PEN/STUDZINSKI Literary Awards are: AFRICAN COMPASS (2005, New Africa Books), AFRICAN ROAD (2006, New Africa Books), AFRICAN PENS (2007, New Africa Books), NEW WRITING FROM AFRICA 2009 (2009, Johnson & KingJames Books).
* SADC countries: Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Alert! The Penguin African Writers Series has just debuted in the UK – featuring five of the six books that appeared under the series’ aegis in South Africa (BOOK SA can’t determine which one was left out; any help on this score is much appreciated) – but the event has left Guardian books critic Akin Ajayi underwhelmed.
The books give the series a backward-looking feel, Ajayi writes. Rather than showcasing what’s new on the continent – with material from the generation driving the likes of Kwani?, Chimurenga or Saraba, for instance – he feels the new AWS editors have opted for works that convey the dusty, if freshly-liberated, Africa of the 20th century:
Perhaps I’m hard to please, but I can’t help feeling a little underwhelmed by Penguin’s new African Writers Series, launched last month and published by its Modern Classics imprint. It’s not that I think the series is a bad thing, far from it, but by modelling itself upon the iconic Heinemann imprint of the same name, the impulse to compare the two is irresistible. And, to judge from the first five books published, I fear that Penguin won’t come out of this looking very good.
First, a bit of context. The original AWS was inaugurated by Heinemann in 1962, the brainchild of publishing executive Alan Hill. Hill, whom Chinua Achebe describes in his book of autobiographical essays Home and Exile as “an adventurer with all the right instincts”, recognised that the nascent post-colonial publishing industry was not supporting the growth of original African literature. Domestic markets at the time were dominated by foreign publishing houses, and were considered primarily a territory for selling books written and published abroad. Not much was happening to encourage and promote new writing from within.
Verdict: carrot
Apr
