Nigerian writer Tope Folarin’s short story “Miracle” has been shortlisted for the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing. Folarin is up against fellow Nigerians Elnathan John, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim and Chinelo Okparanta, as well as Pede Hollist from Sierra Leone, for the £10 000 prize.
“Miracle” was first published in Transition, Issue 109, and the story also forms part of Folarin’s forthcoming novel, The Proximity of Distance.
While we await the announcement of the Caine Prize winner on 8 July, Books LIVE will be publishing each of the shortlisted stories. Recently we brought you “Bayan Layi” by Elnathan John. This week, read Folarin’s “Miracle”:
OUR HEADS MOVE simultaneously, and we smile at the tall, svelte man who strides purposefully down the aisle to the pulpit. Once there, he raises both of his hands then lowers them slightly. He raises his chin and says let us pray.
“Dear Father, we come to you today, on the occasion of this revival, and we ask that you bless us abundantly, we who have made it to America, because we know we are here for a reason. We ask for your blessings because we are not here alone. Each of us represents dozens, sometimes hundreds of people back home. So many lives depend on us Lord, and the burden on our shoulders is great. Jesus, bless this service, and bless us. We ask that we will not be the same people at the end of the service as we were at the beginning. All this we ask of you, our dear savior, Amen.”
The pastor sits, and someone bolts from the front row to the piano and begins to play. The music we hear is familiar and at the same time new; the bandleader punches up a pre-programmed beat on the cheap electronic piano and plays a few Nigerian gospel songs to get us in the mood for revival. We sing along, though we have to wait a few moments at the beginning of each song to figure out what he’s playing. We sing joyful songs to the Lord, then songs of redemption, and then we sing songs of hope, hope that tomorrow will be better than today, hope that, one day soon, our lives will begin to resemble the dreams that brought us to America.
To See the Mountain and Other Stories by The Caine Prize For African Writing
EAN: 9781431402045 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
A Life in Full and Other Stories: The Caine Prize for African Writing 2010 by The Caine Prize for African Writing
EAN: 9781906523374 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
Work in Progress and Other Stories: The Caine Prize for African Writing 2009 by The Caine Prize For African Writing Book homepage
EAN: 9781770097506 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
The Book Lounge and Modjaji Books are delighted to invite you to the Cape Town launch of Reneilwe Malatji’s acclaimed collection of short stories Love, Interrupted. Eva Hunter will introduce Reneilwe and talk with her about her book and her writing.
More about the collection:
I’m so excited about this collection, Reneilwe Malatji’s voice is a new and refreshing one. She writes in a way that I haven’t come across in South African writing before. She combines humour, wisdom, a beady eye and a take-no prisoners attitude and a very particular life experience and perspective. Everything and everyone is up for scrutiny.
The collection has received a range of very positive reviews in The Witness
THIS book is a treasure. A beautifully written book by a new author, who has powerfully captured the stories of African women, daughters, sons, and lovers in her first collection.
Malatji will be a voice to watch in the future and this is a worthy first book.
Reneilwe Malatji is on record as saying: “We need stories that are told from the point of view of black people, we need stories from rural areas, we need stories from ekasi, ja genuine sincere stories.”
This debut collection of short stories, Love Interrupted (Modjaji) – written in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an MA in creative writing at Rhodes University – just about fits this description.
…The collection offers a sustained exploration of the options open to (usually upwardly mobile) women in contemporary South Africa. One of its bleaker features is the absence of anything resembling a loving, intimate relationship.
More about Reneilwe Malatji
Reneilwe Malatji was born in Modjadji Village in 1968. She grew up in Turfloop Township, in northern part of South Africa. She grew up in a home where her father was an academic and her mother was a school teacher. She trained as a teacher and worked as a subject specialist and advisor to provincial education departments. She has recently completed a post-graduate diploma in Journalism and an MA in Creative Writing at Rhodes University. She is currently working on a doctorate at Rhodes. Love, interrupted is her first book.
Event Details
Date: Tuesday, 25 June 2013
Time: 5:30 PM for 6:00 PM
Venue: The Book Lounge, 71 Roeland Street, Cnr Buitenkant & Roeland Street, Cape Town 8001
Guest Speaker: Eva Hunter
Refreshments: Come and join us for a glass of wine
This year sees the return of Short Story Day Africa, a celebration of short fiction to coincide with the shortest day of the year in the Southern Hemisphere – 21 June.
First launched in 2011, Short Story Day Africa has gone from strength to strength thanks to Rachel Zadok, Tiah Beautement and others. This year, they’re partnering with Worldreader, which will make each story published as part of the Short Story Day Africa celebrations available to every mobile device on its network.
In honour of short fiction from the Africa, a new story will be published on Short Story Day Africa’s website every day in June until the 21st. Stories by Byron Loker, Alex Latimer, Sarah Lotz, Lauri Kubuitsile, SA Partridge, Richard de Nooy, Louis Ogbere and Pierre Brouard are already up on the site.
From Loker’s “Plattie Platpoot”:
It’s a funny thing, where stories come from. My dad began his career as a preacher by telling stories about Plattie Platpoot to the Sunday school children at Holy Trinity Church in Pietermaritzburg. If you listened really hard to those stories they would help you get to heaven, even if you forgot the moral at the end because you weren’t paying attention. Your age-eleven religious radio was tuned in to Danielle de Pietro. She was the first girl you fell in love with. She was twelve and you never missed a Sunday at church.
Two boulders created a gap a meter wide, closed on top by a lintel of granite. The local Khoi people knew of the doorway when they lived here thousands of years ago, but over time it had been lost. Fynbos obscured it and the well-worn paths that had once led right to it had been forgotten and redrawn as a circuitous route from Glen Way, up to Elsie’s Peak and back down again. Eager Jack Russels and men and women in orthopaedic Asics kept the path clear, their rhythmic footsteps flattening the shoots of opportunistic plants. But there came a day when the doorway was stumbled upon once more, quite literally.
Asikomi staggered into the neighbourhood drenched in sweat. He had just trekked an almost four kilometre distance from where he had attended a job interview. It was the only option he had, the trekking, to salvage his already dwindling savings.
While the Chain Gang Challenge will not take place this year, Short Story Day Africa is presenting a number of creative writing competitions for adults, youth and children.
Books LIVE is sponsoring the first prize of R2000 in the “Feast, Famine & Potluck”-themed writing competition, which calls for original unpublished stories, in any genre, inspired by this theme. Entries should be between 3000 – 5000 words and the deadline for submissions is 30 June. This competition will be judged by Petina Gappah (An Elegy for Easterly), Isabella Morris (Black Like You), Consuelo Roland (Lady Limbo) and Novuyo Rosa Tshuma (Shadows).
Short Story Day Africa’s Twitter competition is called “Spine Stories” and involves you assembling a story from the titles on your book shelf. You then need to take a photo of your Spine Story and tweet it to @benrwms and @shortstoryAFR with the hashtags #shortstorydayafrica and #spinestory.
Up for grabs is a portrait photo session worth R1 800 and a copy of the anthology Queer Africa. Competition ends 30 June.
The deadlines for the YA and children’s writing competitions are 15 July. Writers up to the age of 17 are asked to write an original reimagined fairy tale, myth, legend or fable. Ages 14 – 17 need to submit between 500 – 1200 words and their stories will be judged by Cat Hellisen (When the Sea is Rising Red), SA Partridge (Dark Poppy’s Demise) and Byron Loker (New Swell).
Children aged 10 – 13 are asked to write stories of 500 – 1200 words and contestants under the age of 9 can submit 900 words or less for the competition to be judged by Helen Brain (Princess Talia and the Dragon), Beatrice Lamwaka and Damaria Senne.
The organisers of Short Story Day Africa will be publishing two short story collections chosen from their competitions. To pay an editor to prepare the manuscripts and to cover other costs associated with this worthy event, Short Story Day Africa is asking for donations on Indie Go Go. Support them and they will send you an e-book of the 2013 Short Story Day South Anthology!
Erla-Mari Diedericks, skrywer van Still Standing, se kortverhaal “Seekatliefde” het onlangs in die gewilde vrouetydskrif rooi rose verskyn. In hierdie verhaal is die karakters Leon en Skat met vakansie op ’n Karibiese eiland, waar dinge effens skeefloop.
Ek is in die middel van ’n nagmerrie – en ek weet ek gaan nie wakker word nie. Ek en my man is in ’n luukse hotel op ’n Karibiese eiland in die middel van ’n groot oseaan. Buite ons kamervenster skitter die see blouselblou, maar al wat ek sien, is my oopgemaakte tas op die bed. Dis nie myne nie. Dit lyk soos my tas, en dit voel soos my tas, wat verduidelik hoe dit op die lughawe tussen die res van ons bagasie beland het. Maar dis nié my tas nie. En nou sit ek met ’n tas vol klere waarin ek nie dood gesien wil word nie.
“Is jy seker dis nie jou klere nie?” vra Leon. Ek moet op my tande byt om nie my oë te rol nie. Dis nie nou die tyd om sarkastiese opmerkings oor my eggenoot se gebrek aan verstand te maak nie. Ons is juis hier vir ’n tweede wittebrood – of wat ook al ’n mens dit noem as die fut uit jou huwelik is en jy dit wil terugblaas.
Team Trinity by Fiona Snyckers, launched on Saturday 1st June, at SKOOBS, we’ll write in more detail about that soon. This post is to tell you about something else that we are very excited about: in May NATIVE launched Team Trinity as the first title they promoted on their new bookly platform on Mxit.
Levon Rivers of NATIVE:
To start the app off with a bang, we secured SA author Fiona Snyckers’ new book in the Trinity Series, Team Trinity, as our first major novel.
What is particularly thrilling about this is that we are reaching readers who otherwise would probably not have had access to Team Trinity. So far 1874 readers have read or started reading Team Trinity in just 2 weeks! Our second most popular title is Love, Interrupted by Reneilwe Malatji. We have’t put all Modjaji titles up, as the main readers are teens and young adults. So we selected titles that are likely to appeal to them. Team Trinity is our first real title especially for YA readers, although many of our titles are likely to appeal to this age group.
Here are some comments from readers (in Mxitese):
• It’s nice and insightful. I don’t want2 chat to my friends anymore, coz im 2 busy reading…
• I love the idea that MXit has something like bookly. It’s awesome and I love it. Good books from great authors are available.
• It a very fast mxit program that give us the help about books we need.
• Im inlv wth ths app..thumbs up 4 it
• Bookly, to me is lovely, i like it.
• Iwould like to thank u guys for bringing bookly 2 mxit..it had help me alot nd your great books the teach me alot nd m happy nd ilav reading them…thank u so much for doing this
Marquis de Sade has long been viewed as the first sadist, with the word being derived from his name. With his decidedly liberal views on sexuality and his erotic works, like Philosophy in the Boudoir, The 120 Days of Sodom and Minski the Cannibal, depicting sexual fantasies with an emphasis on violence, criminality and blasphemy against the Catholic Church, his name still produces reactions of shock and horror almost two centuries after his death. Hussein Ibish writes for The Baffler about how he experienced first-hand the modern day reaction to the name of this “aristocratic theorist of unrestrained desire”.
Ibish, new to Washington DC, visited the famous bookstore Politics and Prose in search of De Sade’s works. After being rudely escorted from the store by what he suspects is a French shop assistant he set about trying to explain the reaction he received. But, he writes, he was not “entirely taken aback by this reception; as I completed work on my doctorate, my professors took me aside to warn me that I should never attempt to teach any of Sade’s work until I was securely tenured — and even then, they stressed, I should proceed with enormous caution.”
Ibish continues to discuss how De Sade is what he’d call “a household name among us that he functions as a sort of shorthand consumer brand for transgressive naughtiness, and the outright flouting of civilization’s taboos” and how this 1700s writer’s influence stretches deep into America’s culture. He cautions, though, that this is only one side of De Sade and that he also haunts political culture and systems of governance.
Not long after I took refuge from the academy to work in the policy centers of Washington, I visited one of D.C.’s landmark bookstores, Politics and Prose—a literary venue known, as its name suggests, for furnishing customers with the conceit that they’re browsing and shopping in a vaguely subversive fashion. But as I walked up to join the store’s cultivated and edgy communitas, I committed a terrible error: I asked a clerk where I might find the works of the Marquis de Sade. My request made its way up through an increasingly consternated group of shop assistants; I had to repeat it several times before they fully registered what I was asking for. At that point, I was told to leave the store immediately. The scene concluded on a perfect grace note when I was sternly conducted to the store’s exit by a female employee who was obviously French. It was as if I had asked for a how-to manual for murder, kidnapping, or child abuse—or, at a minimum, the most objectionable form of pornography.
That scene spoke volumes about the curious legacy of Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, the great and demented aristocratic theorist of unrestrained desire, in our own republic of consumer longing. Here, in the self-regarding intellectual center of a city justly famed for the free play of unleashed personal ambition and the basest kinds of instrumental manipulation of others, Sade was a four-letter word. Nor can I say that I was entirely taken aback by this reception; as I completed work on my doctorate, my professors took me aside to warn me that I should never attempt to teach any of Sade’s work until I was securely tenured—and even then, they stressed, I should proceed with enormous caution.
Nigerian writer Tope Folarin’s short story “Miracle” has been shortlisted for the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing. Folarin is up against fellow Nigerians Elnathan John, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim and Chinelo Okparanta, as well as Pede Hollist from Sierra Leone, for the £10 000 prize. 
May
