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All Africa (Free subscription) | 11/24/2009
"The problem with stereotyping is not that it is untrue; it is that it is often incomplete." This is the truism that underlies what Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian writer, calls the danger of relying on the single story. The African story is not a single narrative laced with depressing vignettes of hunger-stricken children with shrivelled buttocks, wars, corruption and failure; there are triumphant...
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NigerianMuse Articles (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
Ohakim and the Political Deities Governor Ikedi Ohakim of Imo State made a significant media showing last week. He visited the corporate headquarters of THISDAY and granted a thrilling interview which was carried in THISDAY newspaper of Friday, Nov. 6. Another interview was also generously splashed in Sunday Vanguard of Nov. 8, 2009. Ikedi Ohakim is a peculiar guy. He is not a run of the mill politician...
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What's Left in the Church (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
N.B.: This is a far more thoughtful response to Feodor's complaint about my remarks concerning Marcel Proust. If this doesn't satisfy him, well, I'll buy him a subscription to Dissent. One point George Scialabba made last evening with which I profoundly disagree (for obvious reasons) is the effect of the internet on literacy . I find this odd, in particular, since so much of what happens on the internet...
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Moderato (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
Zadie SmithWhy do novelists write essays? Most publishers would rather have a novel. Bookshops don’t know where to put them. It’s a rare reader who seeks them out with any sense of urgency. Still, in recent months Jonathan Safran Foer, Margaret Drabble, Chinua Achebe and Michael Chabon, among others, have published essays, and so this [...]
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The Guardian (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
Suffering from 'novel nausea', Zadie Smith wonders if the essay lives up to its promise Why do novelists write essays? Most publishers would rather have a novel. Bookshops don't know where to put them. It's a rare reader who seeks them out with any sense of urgency. Still, in recent months Jonathan Safran Foer, Margaret Drabble, Chinua Achebe and Michael Chabon, among others, have published essays,...
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All Africa (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009
The Obi of Onitsha, Nnemeka Achebe, yesterday praised Chinua Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart, as a book which not only consolidated the foundations of Anglophone African literature, but opened a new page in the study of African peoples and culture.
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Baxojayz - Centricity (Free subscription) | 11/16/2009
hoi polloi \hoi-puh-LOI\ , noun; The common people generally; the masses. Origin: Hoi polloi is Greek for "the many." Bike-Curious A man interested in buying a Harley motorcycle. Jim dreams of buying a Harley someday; Jim is bike-curious. Trivia When it comes to Internet slang, what phrase is represented by the number 224? Today, tomorrow, forever—as in 2-day, 2-morrow, 4-ever. Today...
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Sports
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The Untrusted (Free subscription) | 11/16/2009
Jadwiga was crowned King of Poland in 1384. Prettiest king ever, so they say. Pizarro captured the Inca emperor Atahualpa in 1532. Fyodor Dostoevsky was sentenced to death for anti-government activities in 1849, though the sentence was later commuted to life at hard labour. Benazir Bhutto was elected Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1988. Born today: W.C. Handy (1873-1958), Alexander Blok (1880-1921),...
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Maud Newton (Free subscription) | 11/12/2009
“There were many of us.” Chinua Achebe rejects the “father of modern African literature” label.
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ArtsJournal (Free subscription) | 11/12/2009
"It's really a serious belief of mine that it's risky for anyone to lay claim to something as huge and important as African literature ... the contribution made down the ages. I don't want to be singled out as the one behind it because there were many of us - many, many of us," said Chinua Achebe, who given the label by Nadine Gordimer....
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Thoughts from Botswana (Free subscription) | 11/12/2009
I find it quite wonderful when great people are humble.I wonder even if being humble is part of the package of greatness. Unfortunately many younger people of today confuse confidence with arrogance and that's very sad. One act of such arrogance can taint people's view of you forever. One must never forget their true place. Just recently I read about someone who met one of our young, up and coming...
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the Literary Saloon (Free subscription) | 11/12/2009
Chinua Achebe has moved from Bard to Brown, and now been officially welcomed there, and in the Brown Daily Herald Nandini Jayakrishna has a Q & A with Chinua Achebe . Among his responses: You have been referred to as the father of modern African literature. How do you feel about that title? I resisted that very, very strongly. It's really a serious belief (of mine) that it's risky for anyone to...
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the Literary Saloon (Free subscription) | 11/12/2009
Binyavanga Wainaina -- author of the much-discussed piece, How to Write about Africa and founding editor of Kwani? -- is profiled by Siena Sofia Magdalena Anstis in The Independent (Uganda) , in Way 2 impolite! : Currently, he is the Director of the Chinua Achebe Centre for African Literature and Languages at Bard College in New York. His aim is to discover new African authors and help launch them...
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