If anyone would like to read more African books here's a list you can chose from.
ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE CHAIRMAN OF THE JURY AFRICA'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 20TH CENTURY PROFESSOR NJABULO NDEBELE
TUESDAY 18 FEBRUARY 2002
GOLDEN TULIP HOTEL, ACCRA
The Top 12
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, 1958
This book has moved from its setting in a small Igbo village into universal prominence as AfricaÃ*s most widely read novel. Its portrayal of the impact of British colonisation on the life of a settled African community makes it a classic on the clash of cultures.
Meshack Asare, SosuÃ*s Call, 1999
This book received the 1st UNESCO Prize for ChildrenÃ*s Literature in the Service of Tolerance in 2000. It is a wonderful story about a physically disabled girl left in village because she is ìgood for nothingî. She however manages to alert the surrounding villages of coming floods through the miraculous use of talking drums and this way saves them all. The book is beautifully illustrated by the author.
Mariama Ba, Une si longue letter (So Long a Letter), 1979.
A spellbinding book which paved the way for contemporary womenÃ*s voices being heard through francophone literature. The central character in BaÃ*s novel narrates her life through a letter to her friend, and manages to succinctly capture the everyday frustrations that many women undergo, especially after the death of their spouses.
Mia Couto, Terra Sonambula 1992
In this novel, Couto has managed to blend, in a very unique way, African oral tradition and the Portuguese literary language. The way the plot unfolds (a boy and an old man read together a diary they found on a ravaged bus) takes the reader to an unexpected end, as the boy himself was part of the story and, thus, boundaries between reality and fiction become blurred. More than a novel about the recent civil war in Mozambique, this is a book in which broken and fragmented identities are exposed.
Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions, 1988
An excellent portrayal, exposition and interpretation of an African society whose younger generation of women struggle with varying degrees of success and almost fatal failure, to wrest it from the unrelenting complexity of patriarchal domination and colonialism. Unique in African writing for portraying anorexia, an eating disorder that affects one of the central characters.
Cheik Anta Diop, (The African Origins of Civilization: Myth or Reality) 1955
An outstanding multi-disciplinary work leading the thesis that the founders of Pharaonic Egypt and, in particular, the 1st Kingdom, were black Africans. His is a theory that has stood the test of 50 years of international scholarship in the area.
Assia Djebar, La'Amour, La fantasia, 1985
Djebar is an outstanding contemporary writer from Algeria. She is also a filmmaker. L'Amour, la fantasia is a literary work of mixed genres, historical and autobiographical narratives, and interlaced with memories of youth and childhood. It speaks of the conquest of Algeria and the war of Independence from a womanÃ*s perspective and in such a way as to produce a real feminist literary masterpiece.
Naguib Mahfouz, The Cairo Trilogy, 1945
The Cairo Trilogy is a panoramic three-part work written to explain the sensitivity and mentality of the people who lived in Cairo from the 1900s to the 1940s. It gives a rich description of their daily lives while portraying this as part of a wider historical process. Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990.
Thomas Mofolo, Chaka, 1925
This truly continental masterpiece explores the theme of power and its effect on those who have too much of it. The sweep of Zulu history and the central figure of that history, Chaka Zulu, is very impressive. In the hands of Mofolo the Sesotho language reveals its natural poetic beauty. Published in 1925, this novel from Lesotho has inspired generations of African writers across the continent. Its abiding quality is it evocative beauty and its insight into the relationship between character and history.
Wole Soyinka, Ake: The Years of Childhood, 1981
The evocation of the wonder of a childÃ*s discovery of the world and his place in it is a classic autobiography of childhood. It is a remarkable insight into the growth of a writerÃ*s imagination as well as an enchanting portrait of natural and human environment of a great writerÃ*s beginnings.
Ngugi wa Thiongo, A Grain of Wheat 1967
This is one of four novels written in English by Ngugi wa Thiongo which depict some of the dilemmas that face an emergent nation. In this novel, Ngugi moves away from the Christian literalism of his first books while retaining respect for the moral values which religions instill. His rich characterization, complex narrative and deep humanity weave together to form one of the most ambitious and fully achieved African novels ñ one which is widely studied and admired in nAfrica and beyond.
Leopold Sedar Senghor, Oeuvre Poetique 1961
Leopold Sedar Senghor, who died only recently at the age of 97, was one of the founding fathers of modern Africa. His political achievements as the first President of Senegal should not be allowed to obscure his poetic genius. Oeuvre Poetique is, without doubt, one of the expressions of African cultural identity. In poems which have been translated into many languages and which appear in anthologies throughout the world, Senghor explores the mythic origins of the African persona. His negritude philosophy influenced every subsequent African author, especially those of the 1950s and 1960s who followed in the wake of his first poems in this mode. In French of magisterial resonance, Senghor revealed the soul of Africa to Africa itself, to French literature and to the world.
The whole list can be found at
http://zibf.org/weblist.pdf
Mkosa kabila ni mtumwa :o
RE: Mkosa Kabila ni Mtumwa !!!!!!!!! -
03-14-2002, 03:59 PM
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