WHAT IS AFRICAN LITERATURE?

African literature refers to literature of and from Africa.
This literature can be written by Africans themselves or people with origins different from that of Africans

Africans do not radically separate art from teaching.
Rather than write or sing for beauty in itself, African writers, taking their cue from oral literature, use beauty to help communicate important truths and information to society

Themes discussed include:
colonialism; liberation; nationalism; tradition; displacement and rootlessness.

AUTHOURS & POETS

• Ngugi wa Thiong’o 🇰🇪
• Alain Mabanckou 🇨🇬
• Abdourahman A. Waberi 🇩🇯
• Nuruddin Farah 🇸🇴
• Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi 🇺🇬
• Chinua Achebe 🇳🇬
• Wole Soyinka 🇳🇬
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 🇳🇬
• Ayi Kwei Armah 🇬🇭
• Tsitsi Dangarembga 🇿🇼
• Bessie Head 🇿🇦
• Athol Fugard 🇿🇦

ESSENTIAL READS

NEW BOOKS (2010-2020)

Add to library

Add to library

Add to library

Add to library

Useful Links

A 2020 (African) Literary Calendar

More 2020 Books

2021 LiTERARY PRIZES

It’s been a rewarding year for African writing.

In June, French writer David Diop won the international Booker Prize for examining two Senegalese soldiers in the trenches of the first World War.

• At Night All Blood is Black

Zanzibar-born novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel prize for literature in October

• Afterlives

South African Damon Galgut won the Booker prize (given for works first published in English before translations.)

• The Promise

Senegalese novelist Boubacar Boris Diop scooped the Neustadt international prize

QZ

Share your faves and recs itt!

~ editing op! ~

cleansing the thread with my heroes
must watch interview!

things fall apart one of the few books i liked from high school

So long a letter by Mariama Ba
Half of a yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
The River Between by Ngugi Wa Thion'go

big fan of this account

Thank you, OP.

my pleasure gotta represent

OP this one too

Born in Rhodesia , studied in South Africa

Amazing thread

this looks amazing 😍 good looking out bruh 🙏🏾

Read Things Fall Apart earlier this year, amazing

Goat

Nuruddin Farah (Somalia)

in. need to get back into reading

Season of Migration to the North by Tayib Salih is a must read

new books added to OP! 🙌🏾

'Biko' by Donald Woods is also an essential read!

Nonfiction included itt too?

Added to my to read list.

yea nonfiction welcome 😊

ISBN: 9780099281498 (336 pages)

^^ if you wanna see and learn more about the bloody final days of Apartheid South Africa

a comprehensive list of African writers and useful tool to discover more content!

ISBN: 9780821418437 (320 pages)

CONTENTS
Publishing and selling the African Writers Series
The African Writers Series Portfolio & George Hallett’s covers
Main dates for the African Writers Series

INTRODUCTION: The establishment of African Literature
Publishing Chinua Achebe

1. WRITERS FROM WEST AFRICA
Nigeria: The country where so much started
Negritude from Senegal to Cameroun
Magic & realism from Ghana, The Gambia & Sierra Leone

2. WRITERS FROM EASTERN AFRICA
Towards the oral & the popular in Kenya, Uganda & Tanzania
Publishing Ngugi

3. WRITERS FROM THE HORN & NORTH-EASTERN AFRICA
Emperors in Ethiopia
Publishing Nuruddin Farah
Arab authors in Egypt & Sudan

4. WRITERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA
Resistance in South Africa
Publishing Alex la Guma
Publishing Dennis Brutus
Publishing Bessie Head
Publishing Masizi Kunene

5. WRITERS FROM SOUTHERN AFRICAN
Guns & Guerrillas in Mozambique &Angola
Zambia Shall be Free
Death & detention in Malawi
The struggle to become Zimbabwe
Publishing Dambudzo Marechera

CONCLUSION: Is there still a role for the African Writers Series?

ISBN: 9780394402451 (352 pages)

This book makes it possible for us to see clearly the unmistakable face and handprint of Black Africans in Pre-Columbian America, and their overwhelming impact on the civilization they found here.

I just ordered that book ^^

has anyone itt read Purple Hibiscus?