Heinemann's African Writers Series
[ 0001 ] Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. London. 1962. Heinemann. African Writers Series. Illustrated by Dennis Carabine. 185 pages. paperback. AWS1..

DESCRIPTION - THINGS FALL APART centers on Okonkwo, a self-made and successful man striving for an ascendant position in his village. The story takes place in a Nigerian village in the late 19th Century, and in it, Chinua Achebe, a young Nigerian writing in English, has dramatized the coherent, patterned past of his people and the effects of Western civilization upon it. Through Okonkwo's menage of three wives and many children, his ambitions and especially his honor and fierce prowess in battle, we are made to share the African's experience with his gods, his superstitions and customs, even his weather. Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of his novel is that it succeeds in presenting a way of life, unknown and alien to us, from the inside. It is a story simultaneously absorbing in its strangeness and compelling in its compassionate observation of human nature. The background of the story is the life of the village - its feasts, wrestling matches, betrothal celebrations, and also its shrouded oracles and masked gods and the net of fear that can separate a mother from her child, a man from his heir. The story culminates with the arrival of the emissaries (of both races) of the Western world, who bring their religion, government, and skill in fragmentary form to be dispersed and dismembered once more among an uncomprehending people - half hostile, half curious. Achebe writes clear, level, almost understated prose, and it is partly through his tautly controlled style that the power of the book is achieved. Chinua Achebe was born twenty-eight years ago in Nigeria. His father had been one of the earliest converts to Christianity in his village and was then a missionary teacher. Achebe attended the mission school in his village and after six years won a scholarship to a government secondary school. He says, ‘Even in the village school I had developed an interest in English - a very elementary and stilted kind of English. I was hopeless at games, and I once had a report to the effect that I hardly existed outside the classrooms. My indifference to cricket has grown with the years.' Achebe then won a scholarship to study Medicine at the University College at Iba-dan, but he soon realized that he had very little interest in science. After a year he switched to the Liberal Arts curriculum and edited the student magazine. He writes ‘In the university I was definitely certain that I would write novels, and the story of THINGS FALL APART began to form vaguely in my mind. When in the end I settled down to write it I did not need any kind of draft. My main interest is in the life of the communities in the past. I have chosen a hinterland community far from the coastal peoples who have been debased by their participation in the cruelties of the slave trade. I am also interested in the problems of present day Nigeria and intend in my next novel to bring the story of Okonkwo's family up to date.'

Chinua Achebe (16 November 1930 - 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic. His first novel Things Fall Apart (1958), often considered his masterpiece, is the most widely read book in modern African literature.
[ 0002 ] Ekwensi, Cyprian. Burning Grass: A Story of the Fulani of Northern Nigeria. London. 1962. Heinemann. African Writers Series. Illustrated by A. Folarin. 150 pages. paperback. AWS2. Cover drawing by Dennis Duerden.

DESCRIPTION - BURNING GRASS is an enthralling tale of Nothern Nigeria where, when the grass is burnt on the plains, the Fulani cattlemen move southwards towards the banks of the Niger. Mai Sunsaye, the hero of the story, is afflicted with the sokugo, the wandering sickness, and his experiences and those of his herdsmen make a fascinating tale.

Cyprian Ekwensi (September 26, 1921–November 4, 2007) was a Nigerian short story writer and author of children's books. Ekwensi, a native of Nkwelle-Ezunaka in today's Oyi local government of Anambra State, was born in Minna, Niger State. His father was David Anadumaka, a story-teller and elephant hunter. Ekwensi attended Government College in Ibadan, Oyo State, Achimota College in Ghana, and the School of Forestry, Ibadan, after which he worked for two years as a forestry officer. He also studied pharmacy at Yaba Technical Institute, Lagos School of Pharmacy, and the Chelsea School of Pharmacy of the University of London. He taught at Igbobi College. Ekwensi has nine children. His oldest son George is a well known New Jersey accountant. Ekwensi was employed as Head of Features at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and by the Ministry of Information during the First Republic; he eventually became Director of the latter. He resigned his position in 1966, before the Civil War, and moved to Enugu with his family. He later served as chair of the Bureau for External Publicity of Biafra, prior to its reabsorption by Nigeria. Ekwensi wrote hundreds of short stories, radio and television scripts, and several dozen novels, including children's books. His 1954 PEOPLE OF THE CITY was the first book by a Nigerian to garner international attention. His novel DRUMMER BOY (1960), based on the life of Benjamin 'Kokoro' Aderounmu was a perceptive and powerful description of the wandering, homeless and poverty-stricken life of a street artist. His most successful novel was JAGUA NANA (1961), about a Pidgin-speaking Nigerian woman who leaves her husband to work as a prostitute in a city and falls in love with a teacher. He also wrote a sequel to this, JAGUA NANA'S DAUGHTER. In 1968, he received the Dag Hammarskjöld International Prize in Literature. In 2006, he became a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters. Ekwensi died on 4 November 2007 at the Niger Foundation in Enugu, where he underwent an operation for an undisclosed ailment. The Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), having intended to present him with an award on November 16, 2007, converted the honor to a posthumous award.
[ 0002 ] Ekwensi, Cyprian. Burning Grass: A Story of the Fulani of Northern Nigeria. Portsmouth. 1990. Heinemann. 0435906690. African Writers Series. Illustrated by A. Folarin. 118 pages. paperback. AWS2. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Keith Pointing Design.

DESCRIPTION - BURNING GRASS is an enthralling tale of Nothern Nigeria where, when the grass is burnt on the plains, the Fulani cattlemen move southwards towards the banks of the Niger. Mai Sunsaye, the hero of the story, is afflicted with the sokugo, the wandering sickness, and his experiences and those of his herdsmen make a fascinating tale.

Cyprian Ekwensi (September 26, 1921–November 4, 2007) was a Nigerian short story writer and author of children's books. Ekwensi, a native of Nkwelle-Ezunaka in today's Oyi local government of Anambra State, was born in Minna, Niger State. His father was David Anadumaka, a story-teller and elephant hunter. Ekwensi attended Government College in Ibadan, Oyo State, Achimota College in Ghana, and the School of Forestry, Ibadan, after which he worked for two years as a forestry officer. He also studied pharmacy at Yaba Technical Institute, Lagos School of Pharmacy, and the Chelsea School of Pharmacy of the University of London. He taught at Igbobi College. Ekwensi has nine children. His oldest son George is a well known New Jersey accountant. Ekwensi was employed as Head of Features at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and by the Ministry of Information during the First Republic; he eventually became Director of the latter. He resigned his position in 1966, before the Civil War, and moved to Enugu with his family. He later served as chair of the Bureau for External Publicity of Biafra, prior to its reabsorption by Nigeria. Ekwensi wrote hundreds of short stories, radio and television scripts, and several dozen novels, including children's books. His 1954 PEOPLE OF THE CITY was the first book by a Nigerian to garner international attention. His novel DRUMMER BOY (1960), based on the life of Benjamin 'Kokoro' Aderounmu was a perceptive and powerful description of the wandering, homeless and poverty-stricken life of a street artist. His most successful novel was JAGUA NANA (1961), about a Pidgin-speaking Nigerian woman who leaves her husband to work as a prostitute in a city and falls in love with a teacher. He also wrote a sequel to this, JAGUA NANA'S DAUGHTER. In 1968, he received the Dag Hammarskjöld International Prize in Literature. In 2006, he became a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters. Ekwensi died on 4 November 2007 at the Niger Foundation in Enugu, where he underwent an operation for an undisclosed ailment. The Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), having intended to present him with an award on November 16, 2007, converted the honor to a posthumous award.
[ 0003 ] Achebe, Chinua. No Longer at Ease. London. 1963. Heinemann. African Writers Series. Illustrated by Bruce Onobrakpeya. paperback. AWS3..

DESCRIPTION - Chinua Achebe is a young Nigerian whose first book, THINGS FALL APART, which portrayed the break-up of tribal life at the end of the last century under the impact of the white man's civilization, made a considerable impression on critics both in England and the United States. This new hovel, which is marked by the same strong narrative and honesty of approach, is set in present-day Nigeria. Obi Okonkwo is an Ibo from Eastern Nigeria, a promising representative of his generation, the bright boy of. his village who returns from his studies in England to try and live up to the expectations of his family and his tribe and at the same time to breathe the heady atmosphere of Lagos, a city whose tempo and temptations are heady fare for the boy from the country. As a civil servant Obi holds a respected job; as the fiance of Clara, the girl he met on the boat, he has much to look forward to; yet nevertheless Obi falls victim to the corruption of the capital. Like its predecessor, THINGS FALL APART (whose hero was Obi's powerful grandfather), NO LONGER AT EASE tells the story of an African tragically under pressure from a changing world, a story as old as Africa and as new as today's headlines.

Chinua Achebe (16 November 1930 - 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic. His first novel Things Fall Apart (1958), often considered his masterpiece, is the most widely read book in modern African literature.
[ 0004 ] Kaunda, Kenneth D. Zambia Shall Be Free: An Autobiography. London. 1962. Heinemann. 0435900048. African Writers Series. 202 pages. paperback. AWS4. Cover photograph by courtesy of the High Commissioner for Zambia. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - When this book was first published in 1962, Northern Rhodesia was part of the Central African Federation, administered from Salisbury by Welensky's Federal Government. Kenneth Kaunda was the leader of UNIP and the British Government had finally agreed to the election of a constitutional government for Northern Rhodesia, based on majority rule. On 24 October 1964 Northern Rhodesia ceased to exist and the independent sovereign state of the Republic of Zambia was founded under Kenneth Kaunda as its first President. Zambia was free and the Federation was dismantled. Since then, Zambia has prospered under Dr Kaunda's wise and firm control. Things have not always been easy: Zambia has had unsettled neighbours and her position has called for inspired leadership and diplomacy. This-book reveals the quality of the man on whose shoulders the whole peaceful progress of Central Africa probably depends. With trouble to south and allegiances to honour to the east and the north, Zambia and its President occupy a major place in Africa's future.

Kenneth David Kaunda (born 28 April 1924), also known as KK, is a Zambian former politician who served as the first President of Zambia from 1964 to 1991. Kaunda is the youngest of eight children born to an ordained Church of Scotland missionary and teacher, an immigrant from Malawi. He was at the forefront of the struggle for independence from British rule. Dissatisfied with Harry Nkumbula's leadership of the Northern Rhodesian African National Congress, he broke away and founded the Zambian African National Congress, later becoming the head of the United National Independence Party. He was the first President of the independent Zambia. In 1973 following tribal and inter-party violence, all political parties except UNIP were banned through an amendment of the constitution after the signing of the Choma Declaration. At the same time, Kaunda oversaw the acquisition of majority stakes in key foreign-owned companies. The oil crisis of 1973 and a slump in export revenues put Zambia in a state of economic crisis. International pressure forced Kaunda to change the rules that had kept him in power. Multi-party elections took place in 1991, in which Frederick Chiluba, the leader of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy, ousted Kaunda. Kaunda was briefly stripped of Zambian citizenship in 1999, but the decision was overturned the following year. At 96, he is the oldest living former Zambian president.
[ 0005 ] Ekwensi, Cyprian. People of the City. London. 1963. Heinemann. African Writers Series. 156 pages. paperback. AWS5..

DESCRIPTION - When PEOPLE OF THE CITY was published in 1954 it was immediately acclaimed as the first major novel in English by a West African to be widely read throughout the English-speaking world. Despite the added reputation Ekwenski has achieved with his later novels, PEOPLE OF THE CITY remains a work of much greater significance in the development of modern African writing. It tells the story of a young crime reporter and dance band leader in a great West African city to comes to see that what he can do for the developing country in which he lives is more important than the considerable and varied personal pleasures he can find in the hectic life of the city.

CYPRIAN EKWENSI was born in Minna in Northern Nigeria in 1921 and educated at Government College, Ibadan, Achimota College in what was then the Gold Coast, and the Chelsea School of Pharmacy, University of London. He taught biology and chemistry before joining the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, and when PEOPLE OF THE CITY was published in 1954 was Head of the Features Department. Since then he has had several novels and short stories published, including JAGUAR NANA and BEAUTIFUL FEATHERS, and has also contributed to journals in Africa, Great Britain, and the United States. Married with five children, he now lives in Ikoyi and is a keen photographer, sportsman and traveller.
[ 0005 ] Ekwensi, Cyprian. People of the City. London. 1970. Heinemann. 0435900056. African Writers Series. 156 pages. paperback. AWS5. Cover drawing by Dennis Duerden.

DESCRIPTION - When PEOPLE OF THE CITY was published in 1954 it was immediately acclaimed as the first major novel in English by a West African to be widely read throughout the English-speaking world. Despite the added reputation Ekwenski has achieved with his later novels, PEOPLE OF THE CITY remains a work of much greater significance in the development of modern African writing. It tells the story of a young crime reporter and dance band leader in a great West African city to comes to see that what he can do for the developing country in which he lives is more important than the considerable and varied personal pleasures he can find in the hectic life of the city.

CYPRIAN EKWENSI was born in Minna in Northern Nigeria in 1921 and educated at Government College, Ibadan, Achimota College in what was then the Gold Coast, and the Chelsea School of Pharmacy, University of London. He taught biology and chemistry before joining the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, and when PEOPLE OF THE CITY was published in 1954 was Head of the Features Department. Since then he has had several novels and short stories published, including JAGUAR NANA and BEAUTIFUL FEATHERS, and has also contributed to journals in Africa, Great Britain, and the United States. Married with five children, he now lives in Ikoyi and is a keen photographer, sportsman and traveller.
[ 0006 ] Abrahams, Peter. Mine Boy. London. 1968. Heinemann. African Writers Series. Illustrated by Ruth Yudelowitz. 252 pages. paperback. AWS6..

DESCRIPTION - Mine Boy is an early novel by Peter Abrahams which was first published in war-time but went out of print almost immediately because of the paper shortage. It tells the story of Xuma, a countryman, in a large South African industrial city, and the impact on him of the new ways and new values of such a different world from the one he knows. The author writes of Xuma as a man in transition and thus as an instrument to describe the lives and ways of the people who live in the backwaters of the city. Because Xuma is new to it, he can see the hard, disturbing, under-privileged way of life with freshness and awareness. This was one of the first books which drew attention to the lives of black South Africans in a white-dominated country, and established Peter Abrahams as a major novelist.

Peter Henry Abrahams (born March 3, 1919), is a South African One of South Africa's most prominent black writers, his work deals with political and social issues, especially with racism, most prolific of South Africa's black prose writers, whose early novel MINE BOY (1946) was the first to depict the dehumanizing effect of racism upon South African blacks.
[ 0006 ] Abrahams, Peter. Mine Boy. London. 1969. Heinemann. 0435900064. African Writers Series. Illustrated by Ruth Yudelowitz. 184 pages. paperback. AWS6. Cover: Peter Sinclair.

DESCRIPTION - Young, strong, proud, and black, Xuma came from a Stone Age tribe o the Johannesburg ghetto, innocently seeking work in the gold mines and a new life in the big city. Too soon he discovered that the price of civilization was dehumanization and the cost of living, despair. He learned that running was a way of life; that justice was reserved for whites only, and that a man was no better than the color of his skin. Deep in brawling, boot-legging Malay Town he found a new kind of kinship and love - and a new kind of fear and hatred called apartheid, with its passes, beatings, and the servile compromises that often meant the difference between life and death. And deep in the rich, cruel South African mines he discovered red-haired, white-skinned Paddy who said that a man must be a man before he is a color, for this is his only hope. MINE BOY is Peter Abrahams' brilliant and moving story of a black man's struggle for life in South Africa. Told with compassion, insight, and rare understanding, it traces the violent coming-of-age of a simple up-country native in his strange and hostile land.

Peter Henry Abrahams (born March 3, 1919), is a South African One of South Africa's most prominent black writers, his work deals with political and social issues, especially with racism, most prolific of South Africa's black prose writers, whose early novel MINE BOY (1946) was the first to depict the dehumanizing effect of racism upon South African blacks.
[ 0006 ] Abrahams, Peter. Mine Boy. London. 1969. Heinemann. 0435900064. African Writers Series. Illustrated by Ruth Yudelowitz. 252 pages. paperback. AWS6..

DESCRIPTION - Mine Boy is an early novel by Peter Abrahams which was first published in war-time but went out of print almost immediately because of the paper shortage. It tells the story of Xuma, a countryman, in a large South African industrial city, and the impact on him of the new ways and new values of such a different world from the one he knows. The author writes of Xuma as a man in transition and thus as an instrument to describe the lives and ways of the people who live in the backwaters of the city. Because Xuma is new to it, he can see the hard, disturbing, under-privileged way of life with freshness and awareness. This was one of the first books which drew attention to the lives of black South Africans in a white-dominated country, and established Peter Abrahams as a major novelist.

Peter Henry Abrahams (born March 3, 1919), is a South African One of South Africa's most prominent black writers, his work deals with political and social issues, especially with racism, most prolific of South Africa's black prose writers, whose early novel MINE BOY (1946) was the first to depict the dehumanizing effect of racism upon South African blacks.
[ 0006 ] Abrahams, Peter. Mine Boy. Portsmouth. 1963. Heinemann. African Writers Series. Illustrated by Ruth Yudelowitz. 252 pages. paperback. AWS6..

DESCRIPTION - Mine Boy is an early novel by Peter Abrahams which was first published in war-time but went out of print almost immediately because of the paper shortage. It tells the story of Xuma, a countryman, in a large South African industrial city, and the impact on him of the new ways and new values of such a different world from the one he knows. The author writes of Xuma as a man in transition and thus as an instrument to describe the lives and ways of the people who live in the backwaters of the city. Because Xuma is new to it, he can see the hard, disturbing, under-privileged way of life with freshness and awareness. This was one of the first books which drew attention to the lives of black South Africans in a white-dominated country, and established Peter Abrahams as a major novelist.

Yvonne Vera was born and raised in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, gained her Ph.D. from York University in Canada, and was the Director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo. Yvonne Vera died at age 40 in 2005 Yvonne Vera's Without a Name and Under the Tongue both won first prize in the Zimbabwe Publishers Literary Awards of 1995 and 1997 respectively. Under the Tongue won the 1997 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region). Yvonne Vera won the Swedish literary award The Voice of Africa 1999.
[ 0007 ] Ngugi, James. Weep Not, Child. London. 1968. Heinemann. African Writers Series. With An Introduction & Notes by Ime Ikiddeh. 162 pages. paperback. AWS7. Cover drawing by Michael Whittelsea.

DESCRIPTION - Njoroge's only true brother was Mwangi who had died in the white man's big war in Burma, Boro, Kori, and Kamau were all sons of his father's eldest wife, but they all behaved as if they were of one mother and home was a particularly happy place. Above everything else, Njoroge, the youngest, wanted to get education and become like the eldest son of the rich farmer, Jacobo, who had finished all the learning in Kenya and would now go to England. His father, Ngotho, was employed by Mr. Howlands who had come from England to farm the land. Together the two men would go from place to place, examining a new shoot or pulling out a weed, Ngotho felt responsible for the land because he owed it to the dead, the living and the unborn of his line to guard over it until the prophecy came true; Mr. Howlands walked through the shamba with a sense of victory because he had tamed this unoccupied wilderness. At school, Njoroge was good at reading. Education was the key to the future: when Jomo was arrested and a state of emergency declared, it made very little difference at first - everyone knew that Jomo would win, But, one day, Ngotho was arrested and tortured, Boro left to join the freedom fighters in the forest, Jacobo was killed and Mwihaki, his daughter, would not see Njoroge, Gradually all the family was drawn into the struggle and the war became a day-to-day tragedy. This first novel by a young Kikuyu is a moving study of the fight for freedom and the rich red earth of Kenya. .

Ngugi wa Thiong'o (born January 5, 1938) is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gikuyu. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal, Mutiiri. In 1977, Ngugi embarked upon a novel form of theater in his native Kenya which sought to liberate the theatrical process from what he held to be ‘the general bourgeois education system', by encouraging spontaneity and audience participation in the performances. Ngugi's project sought to ‘demystify' the theatrical process, and to avoid the ‘process of alienation [which] produces a gallery of active stars and an undifferentiated mass of grateful admirers' which, according to Ngugi, encourages passivity in ‘ordinary people'. Although Ngaahika Ndeenda was a commercial success, it was shut down by the authoritarian Kenyan regime six weeks after its opening. Ngugi was subsequently imprisoned for over a year. Adopted as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, the artist was released from prison, and fled Kenya. In the United States, he taught at Yale University for some years, and has since also taught at New York University, with a dual professorship in Comparative Literature and Performance Studies, and the University of California, Irvine. Ngugi has frequently been regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His son is the author Mukoma wa Ngugi. Ngugi was born in Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kiambu district, Kenya, of Kikuyu descent, and baptised James Ngugi. His family was caught up in the Mau Mau War; his half brother Mwangi was actively involved in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, and his mother was tortured at Kamriithu homeguard post. He received a B.A. in English from Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, in 1963; during his education, a play of his, THE BLACK HERMIT, was produced in Kampala in 1962. He published his first novel, WEEP NOT, CHILD, in 1964, which he wrote while attending the University of Leeds in England. It was the first novel in English to be published by an East African. His second novel, THE RIVER BETWEEN (1965), has as its background the Mau Mau rebellion, and described an unhappy romance between Christians and non-Christians. THE RIVER BETWEEN is currently on Kenya's national secondary school syllabus. His novel A Grain of Wheat (1967) marked his embrace of Fanonist Marxism. He subsequently renounced English, Christianity, and the name James Ngugi as colonialist; he changed his name back to Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and began to write in his native Gikuyu and Swahili. The uncensored political message of his 1977 play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I WILL MARRY WHEN I WANT) provoked then Vice President Daniel arap Moi to order his arrest. While detained in the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, he wrote the first modern novel in Gikuyu, Caitaani mutharaba-Ini (DEVIL ON THE CROSS), on prison-issued toilet paper. After his release, he was not reinstated to his job as professor at Nairobi University, and his family was harassed. Due to his writing about the injustices of the dictatorial government at the time, Ngugi and his family were forced to live in exile. Only after Arap Moi was voted out of office, 22 years later, was it safe for them to return. His later works include Detained, his prison diary (1981), DECOLONISING THE MIND: THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE IN AFRICAN LITERATURE (1986), an essay arguing for African writers' expression in their native languages, rather than European languages, in order to renounce lingering colonial ties and to build an authentic African literature, and MATIGARI (1987), one of his most famous works, a satire based on a Gikuyu folktale. In 1992 he became a professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University, where he held the Erich Maria Remarque Chair. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature as well as the Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine. On August 8, 2004, Ngugi returned to Kenya as part of a month-long tour of East Africa. On August 11, robbers broke into his apartment: they assaulted both the Professor and his wife, and stole money and a computer. Since then, Ngugi has returned to America, and in the summer 2006 the American publishing firm Random House published his first new novel in nearly two decades, WIZARD OF THE CROW, translated to English from Gikuyu by the author. On November 10, 2006, while in San Francisco at Hotel Vitale at the Embarcadero, Ngugi was harassed and ordered to leave the hotel by an employee. The event led to a public outcry and angered the Kenyan community in the San Francisco Bay area and abroad, prompting an apology by the hotel.
[ 0008 ] Reed, John and Wake, Clive (editors). A Book of African Verse. London and Ibadan. 1964. Heinemann Educational Books. African Writers Series. 119 pages. paperback. AWS8..

DESCRIPTION - THIS ANTHOLOGY is a selection of poetry by thirty African poets from eleven countries and includes some translations by the editors of poems originally written in French. Thuthula is a translation into English, by the poet himself, of his original Xhosa poem. This selection is, first and foremost; an introductory anthology for students/young people and others who want to find out to what extent the life and feeling and thought of the- continent are being expressed in poetry. There is a critical introduction, biographical. notes on each poet, and twenty pages of notes on individual poems. All the poems in this book belong to the last thirty years and many of them are written by poets who are still young: Clark, DadiE, Okare, Awoonor-WilIiams, Rubadir. Okigbo, and others. These are set alongside the of poets of an earlier generation such as Senghor, RabEarivelo; and Jolobe.

JOHN REED and CLIVE WAKE are both on the staff of University College; Salisbury' Southern Rhodesia. John Reed teaches English, and Clive Wake, French. Both have taken a great interest in the writings of African authors, They have travelled widely in Africa and lectured on African literature in universities in Africa and Britain and published articles in several journals in Africa.
[ 0009 ] Rive, Richard (editor). Modern African Prose. London. 1964. Heinemann. African Writers Series. 214 pages. hardcover. AWS9. The illustrations and cover drawing are by Albert Adams, a South African artist living in London.

DESCRIPTION - Throughout Africa students have felt the lack of a suitable anthology of the work of local authors. Richard Rive has now compiled an anthology of writing from all over Africa which should serve as an introduction to modern prose writing from the Continent. It consists of short stories and excerpts from novels which are complete in themselves, and contains a critical introduction and notes which make it especially suitable for study. RICHARD RIVE is one of the leading short story writers in South Africa today. His stories have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and have appeared in journals and anthologies all over the world. A collection was published in 1963 under the title AFRICAN SONGS, and his first novel, EMERGENCY was published in 1964. He has also contributed to QUARTET, which is also published in the African Writers Series. He teaches English and Latin at a High School in Cape Town, and in 1962 was awarded a Farfield Foundation Fellowship grant to enable him to study literary tendencies in contemporary African literature in English. He travelled through twenty-four countries in Africa and Europe, lectured in many universities in Africa, taught in schools in Africa and Europe, and broadcasted and made television appearances. A former South African hurdling champion, he now does track coaching, and is a keen spear fisherman and mountaineer. An anthology compiled and edited by Richard Rive. Illustrated by Albert Adams. Contributions by Peter Abrahams, Chinua Achebe, Es'kia Mphahlele, Abioseh Nicol, Richard Rive, Alfred Hutchinson, Efua Sutherland, Jonathan Kariara, Peter Clarke, Luis Bernardo Honwana, Jack Cope, Cyprian Ekwensi, Amos Tutuola, Camara Laye, James Matthews, Alf Wannenburgh, William Conton, Onuora Nzekwu, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o.

Richard Moore Rive (Cape Town, 1 March 1931 - 4 June 1989) was a South African writer. Rive was born on 1 March 1931 in Caledon Street in the working-class coloured District Six of Cape Town. His father was African, and his mother was coloured. Rive was given the latter classification under apartheid. Rive went to St Mark's Primary School and Trafalgar High School, both in District Six, and then to Hewat College of Education in Athlone, where he qualified as a teacher. Later he acquired a BA degree from the University of Cape Town, followed by an MA degree from Columbia University in the United States, and a Doctorate from Oxford University. He was for many years the Head of the English Department at Hewat College. Rive was a visiting professor at several overseas universities, including Harvard University in 1987. He also delivered guest lectures at more than fifty universities on four continents. He was a prominent sportsman (a South African hurdles champion while a student) and a school sports administrator. In 1963 he was given a scholarship organised by the editor of Drum magazine, Es'kia Mphahlele. In 1965 he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship. He wrote a doctoral thesis on Olive Schreiner which was published posthumously, in 1996. Rive was a firm believer in anti-racism and decided to stay in his country in the hope of influencing its development there. Rive initially published his stories in collections or in South African magazines like Drum and Fighting Talk. He edited anthologies for Heinemann's African Writers Series: the short story anthology Quartet (1963) - containing stories by Alex La Guma, James Matthews, Alf Wannenburgh and Rive himself - and the prose anthology Modern African Prose (1964). His short story 'The Bench', for which he won a prize, is still anthologised. 'The Bench' takes the well known story of Rosa Parks and sets it in South Africa. He also wrote three novels. Emergency (1964) was set against the Sharpeville massacre. Buckingham Palace District Six, was published in 1986 and turned into a musical by a theatre in Cape Town. He also published an autobiography entitled Writing Black in 1981. His last novel, Emergency Continued, was published posthumously. Rive was shot to death at his home in Cape Town in 1989. On August 23, 2013, Rive and two other esteemed South African authors Ronnie Govender and Don Mattera were honoured for their contributions to the fight against apartheid through literature at the Aziz Hassim Literary Awards held in Durban. The authors all reflected on non-racial enclaves in South Africa during that era: Rive focused on District Six, Govender on Cato Manor, and Mattera on Sophiatown.
[ 0009 ] Rive, Richard (editor). Modern African Prose. London. 1965. Heinemann. African Writers Series. 214 pages. paperback. AWS9. The illustrations and cover drawing are by Albert Adams, a South African artist living in London.

DESCRIPTION - Throughout Africa students have felt the lack of a suitable anthology of the work of local authors. Richard Rive has now compiled an anthology of writing from all over Africa which should serve as an introduction to modern prose writing from the Continent. It consists of short stories and excerpts from novels which are complete in themselves, and contains a critical introduction and notes which make it especially suitable for study. RICHARD RIVE is one of the leading short story writers in South Africa today. His stories have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and have appeared in journals and anthologies all over the world. A collection was published in 1963 under the title AFRICAN SONGS, and his first novel, EMERGENCY was published in 1964. He has also contributed to QUARTET, which is also published in the African Writers Series. He teaches English and Latin at a High School in Cape Town, and in 1962 was awarded a Farfield Foundation Fellowship grant to enable him to study literary tendencies in contemporary African literature in English. He travelled through twenty-four countries in Africa and Europe, lectured in many universities in Africa, taught in schools in Africa and Europe, and broadcasted and made television appearances. A former South African hurdling champion, he now does track coaching, and is a keen spear fisherman and mountaineer. An anthology compiled and edited by Richard Rive. Illustrated by Albert Adams. Contributions by Peter Abrahams, Chinua Achebe, Es'kia Mphahlele, Abioseh Nicol, Richard Rive, Alfred Hutchinson, Efua Sutherland, Jonathan Kariara, Peter Clarke, Luis Bernardo Honwana, Jack Cope, Cyprian Ekwensi, Amos Tutuola, Camara Laye, James Matthews, Alf Wannenburgh, William Conton, Onuora Nzekwu, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o.

Richard Moore Rive (Cape Town, 1 March 1931 - 4 June 1989) was a South African writer. Rive was born on 1 March 1931 in Caledon Street in the working-class coloured District Six of Cape Town. His father was African, and his mother was coloured. Rive was given the latter classification under apartheid. Rive went to St Mark's Primary School and Trafalgar High School, both in District Six, and then to Hewat College of Education in Athlone, where he qualified as a teacher. Later he acquired a BA degree from the University of Cape Town, followed by an MA degree from Columbia University in the United States, and a Doctorate from Oxford University. He was for many years the Head of the English Department at Hewat College. Rive was a visiting professor at several overseas universities, including Harvard University in 1987. He also delivered guest lectures at more than fifty universities on four continents. He was a prominent sportsman (a South African hurdles champion while a student) and a school sports administrator. In 1963 he was given a scholarship organised by the editor of Drum magazine, Es'kia Mphahlele. In 1965 he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship. He wrote a doctoral thesis on Olive Schreiner which was published posthumously, in 1996. Rive was a firm believer in anti-racism and decided to stay in his country in the hope of influencing its development there. Rive initially published his stories in collections or in South African magazines like Drum and Fighting Talk. He edited anthologies for Heinemann's African Writers Series: the short story anthology Quartet (1963) - containing stories by Alex La Guma, James Matthews, Alf Wannenburgh and Rive himself - and the prose anthology Modern African Prose (1964). His short story 'The Bench', for which he won a prize, is still anthologised. 'The Bench' takes the well known story of Rosa Parks and sets it in South Africa. He also wrote three novels. Emergency (1964) was set against the Sharpeville massacre. Buckingham Palace District Six, was published in 1986 and turned into a musical by a theatre in Cape Town. He also published an autobiography entitled Writing Black in 1981. His last novel, Emergency Continued, was published posthumously. Rive was shot to death at his home in Cape Town in 1989. On August 23, 2013, Rive and two other esteemed South African authors Ronnie Govender and Don Mattera were honoured for their contributions to the fight against apartheid through literature at the Aziz Hassim Literary Awards held in Durban. The authors all reflected on non-racial enclaves in South Africa during that era: Rive focused on District Six, Govender on Cato Manor, and Mattera on Sophiatown.
[ 0010 ] Equiano, Olaudah. Equiano's Travels: His Autobiography; The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African. London. 1980. Heinemann. 0435900102. African Writers Series. Abridged and edited by Paul Edwards. 198 pages. paperback. AWS10..

DESCRIPTION - Olaudah Equiano was born in 1745 in a village east of the Niger River in what is now Nigeria. In 1789 his book THE INTERESTING NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF OLAUDAH EQUIANO OR GUSTAVUS VASSA THE AFRICAN was published in London. This is his own account of his varied and adventurous life in the years between. At the age of ten he was captured by slave traders and taken to the southern states of America. He was sold to a planter in the West Indies and worked there and aboard slave ships sailing between the Caribbean and England. Afterwards he worked aboard naval and merchant ships, including slave ships, before he saved enough money to buy his freedom at the age of twenty-one. He visited the Mediterranean, and took part in Phipps' expedition to the Arctic (1773) as well as crossing the Atlantic several times. As an ardent member of the Anti-Slavery movement he came to know several of the leaders of the movement such as Granville Sharp. He was appointed Commissary of Stores for the freed returning to Sierra Leone. His book was famous in its time. Between 1789 and 1827 it ran into seventeen editions in Britain and the United States, as well as translations into Dutch and German. For a long time it has been unobtainable but it is of great literary and historical importance in the context of African writing. This slightly abridged edition (the original book in two volumes is 526 pages long) has been prepared by Paul Edwards, formerly of the University of Edinburgh and of the University College of Sierra Leone. He has provided an introduction on Equiano as a writer and personality as well as full explanatory notes on the text.

Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 - 31 March 1797), known in his lifetime as Gustavus Vassa, was a prominent African in London, a freed slave who supported the British movement to end the slave trade. His autobiography, published in 1789 and attracting wide attention, was considered highly influential in gaining passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807, which ended the African trade for Britain and its colonies. Since the late 20th century, there has been some debate on his origins, but most of his account has been extensively documented. His last master was Robert King, an American Quaker merchant who allowed Equiano to trade on his own account and purchase his freedom in 1766. Equiano settled in England in 1767 and worked and traveled for another 20 years as a seafarer, merchant, and explorer in the Caribbean, the Arctic, the American colonies, South and Central America, and the United Kingdom. In London Equiano (identifying as Gustavus Vassa during his lifetime) was part of the Sons of Africa, a black group who opposed the slave trade, and he was active among leaders of the anti-slave trade movement in the 1780s. He published his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789), which depicted the horrors of slavery. The first-known slave narrative, it went through nine editions and aided passage of the British Slave Trade Act of 1807, which abolished the African slave trade. Since 1967, his memoir has been regarded as the 'true beginning of modern African literature.' As a free man, Equiano had a stressful life; he had suffered suicidal thoughts before he became a born again Christian and found peace in his faith. After settling in London, in 1792 Equiano married an English woman named Susannah Cullen and they had two daughters. He died in 1797 in London; his gravesite is unknown. Equiano's death was recognized in Britain as well as by American newspapers. Plaques commemorating his life have been placed at buildings where he lived in London. Since the late 20th century, when his autobiography was published in a new edition, he has been increasingly studied by a range of scholars, including many from Nigeria.
[ 0011 ] Aluko, T. M. One Man, One Matchet. London. 1966. Heinemann. African Writers Series. 197 pages. paperback. AWS11..

DESCRIPTION - This a novel about Yorubaland - the Western Region of Nigeria, where coca trees and cocoa trees and cocoa beans spell wealth. When a young Agricultural Officer, newly arrived from England, advises that every diseased tree in the District be cut down before the whole crop is infected, every farmer's reaction is to defend his trees, by force if necessary. Support for the Agricultural Officer comes from the ‘black white man', the new Nigerian District Officer, and the clash between him and a rabble-rousing politician and journalist, Benjamin Benjamin, involves the whole village in a situation which culminates in violence, death and imprisonment before calm is restored.

T. M. ALUKO was born in 1918 at Ilesha and educated at Government College, Ibadan. He studied civil engineering and town planning in Lagos and London, and in 1960 was appointed Director of Public Works for Western Nigeria. He has now joined the staff of the University of Lagos. He first attracted notice through short stories which won prizes in contests organized by the British Council in Nigeria. A number of his stories and articles were then published In West Africa Review and broadcast by the BBC African Service. One Man One Wife was first published in 1959 by the Nigerian Printing and Publishing Company in Lagos. Since then he has published two other novels, ONE MAN ONE MATCHET (1964) and KINSMAN AND FOREMAN (1966).
[ 0012 ] Conton, William. The African. London. 1966. Heinemann. African Writers Series. 213 pages. paperback. AWS12. Cover drawing by Charles Keeping.

DESCRIPTION - Kisimi Kamara, the bright boy of his school in West Africa, is awarded a scholarship by his government for further study in England. There he meets Greta, a white South African girl, but prejudice puts an end to their growing friendship and, shocked and embittered, Kisimi returns home to dedicate his energies to the struggle for independence. He embarks on a brilliantly successful political career, and begins to make plans for the realization of his dream for a Pan-African federation. But Kisimi has not yet forgotten Greta: so, resigning his premiership and travelling incognito, he enters the Republic of South Africa on a mission of revenge, only to find that at the last moment it turns into an act of mercy which brings with it a sense of release.

WILLIAM CONTON was born at Bathurst, Gambia, in 1925 and educated in Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom. From 1947 to 1953 he was Durham University Lecturer in History at Fourah Bay College, Sierra Leone, and from there went on to become headmaster of Accra High School. In 1953 he was appointed Principal of Government Secondary School, Bo, and in 1960 Principal of Prince of Wales School, Freetown. He is now Chief Education Officer in Sierra Leone, and lives in Freetown with his wife and five children. As well as The African he has published a two-volume study of West Africa in history.
[ 0013 ] Beti, Mongo. Mission to Kala. London. 1964. Heinemann. African Writers Series. Translated by Peter Green from the French novel Mission terminée (1957).. paperback. AWS13..

DESCRIPTION - A scholar in spite of himself - Wit, satire and ribaldry triumph as Jean-Marie Medza, fresh from the University and failed exams, is sent on a mission to an up-country Cameroonian tribe to retrieve the wayward wife of a local villager. Medza has been delivered from his father's wrath - temporarily only to meet a more questionable fate at the hands of his relatives in Kala who capitalize on their newly discovered treasure - a city boy - and a scholar as well! Soon distracted from his mission. Medza finds himself the center of the action - lionized by the uneducated villagers, exploited by his cunning uncle and terrorized by adoring females of all ages whose determination spells disaster to the only aspect of Medza's person which has escaped public notice: his virginity. 'Over and above its intrinsic merit as a piece of creative writing, this first novel by a French West African Negro is notable for its mere existence. What impresses about Beti's genuinely indigenous African novel is his tone of carefree gaiety, his adeptness in pouring new narrative wine into an old literary bottle, and his sympathetic contrast between two generations divided by a yawning gulf.' - The New York Times Book Review. ‘Very entertaining indeed an original talent.' - The Times Literary Supplement, London.

Alexandre Biyidi Awala (30 June 1932 - 8 October 2001), known as Mongo Beti, was a Cameroonian writer. Though he lived in exile for many decades, Beti's life reveals an unflagging commitment to improvement of his home country. As one critic wrote after his death, ‘The militant path of this essayist, chronicler and novelist has been governed by one obsession: the quest for the dignity of African people.'The son of Oscar Awala and REgine Alomo, Alexandre was born in 1932 at AkomEtan, a small village 10 km from Mbalmayo, itself 45 km away from YaoundE, capital of Cameroon. (The village's name comes from Akom ‘rock' and Etam ‘source': in old maps of the region, the name is written in two parts). From an early age, Beti was influenced by the currents of rebellion sweeping Africa in the wake of World War II. His father drowned when Beti was seven, and he was raised by his mother and extended family. Beti recalls arguing with his mother about religion and colonialism; he also recalls early exposure to the opinions and analysis of independence leader Ruben Um Nyobe, both in the villages and at Nyobe's private residence. He carried these views into the classroom, and was eventually expelled from the missionary school in Mbalmayo for his outspokenness. In 1945 he entered the lycEe Leclerc in YaoundE. Graduating in 1951, he came to France to continue his higher education in literature, first at Aix-en-Provence, then at the Sorbonne in Paris. By the early 1950s, Beti had turned to writing as a vehicle of protest. He wrote regularly for the journal PrEsence Africaine; among his pieces was a review of Camara Laye's Black Child that criticized Laye for what Beti saw as pandering to European tastes. He began his career in fiction with the short story Sans haine et sans amour (‘Without hatred or love'), published in the periodical PrEsence Africaine, edited by Alioune Diop, in 1953. Beti's first novel Ville cruelle (‘Cruel City'), under the pseudonym Eza Boto, followed in 1954, published in several editions of PrEsence Africaine. It was, however, in 1956 that he gained a widespread reputation; the publication of the novel Le pauvre Christ de Bomba (‘The poor Christ of Bomba') created a scandal because of its satirical and biting description of the missionary and colonial world. Under pressure from the religious hierarchy, the colonial administrator in Cameroon banned the novel in the colony. This was followed by Mission terminEe, 1957 (winner of the Prix Sainte Beuve 1958), and Le Roi miraculE, 1958. He also worked during this time for the review Preuves, for which he reported from Africa. He worked also as a substitute teacher at the lycEe of Rambouillet. In 1959, he was named certified professor at the lycEe Henri Avril in Lamballe. He took the AgrEgation de Lettres classiques in 1966 and taught at the LycEe Pierre Corneille in Rouen. from this date until 1994. Following Nyobe's assassination by French forces in 1958, however, Beti fell silent as a writer for more than a decade, remaining in exile from his homeland. After his death,Odile Tobner noted that exile was not easy on Beti; he remained tortured by his concern for his embattled country.In 1972 he re-entered the world of literature with a bang. His book Main basse sur le Cameroun, autopsie d'une dEcolonisation ('Cruel hand on Cameroon, autopsy of a decolonization') was censored upon its publication by the French Ministry of the Interior Raymond Marcellin on the request, brought forward by Jacques Foccart, of the Cameroon government, represented in Paris by the ambassador Ferdinand Oyono. The essay, a critical history of recent Cameroon, asserted that Cameroon and other colonies remained under French control in all but name, and that the post-independence political elites had actively fostered this continued dependence. Beti was inspired to write in part by the execution of Ernest Ouandie by the government of Cameroon. In 1974 he published PerpEtue and Remember Ruben; the latter was the first in a trilogy exploring the life and impact of Nyobe. After a long judicial action, Mongo Beti and his editor Francois MaspEro finally obtained, in 1976, the cancellation of the ban on the publication of Main basse. Beti returned to critical and political writing at the same time that he returned to fiction. In 1978 he and his wife Odile Tobner launched the bimonthly review Peuples Noirs. Peuples africains ('Black People. African People'), which was published until 1991. This review chronicled and denounced tirelessly the evils brought to Africa by neo-colonial regimes. During this period were published the novels La ruine presque cocasse d'un polichinelle (1979), Les deux mères de Guillaume Ismaël Dzewatama futur camionneur (1983), La revanche de Guillaume Ismaël Dzewatama (1984), also Lettre ouverte aux Camerounais ou la deuxième mort de Ruben Um NyobE (1984) and Dictionnaire de la negritude (1989, with Odile Tobner). Frustrated by what he saw as the failure of post-independence governments to bring genuine freedom to Africa, Beti adopted a more radical perspective in these works. In exile, Beti remained vitally connected to the struggle in Cameroon. Throughout the seventies and eighties, acquaintance with Beti or his work could spell trouble for a citizen of Cameroon; on numerous occasions, Beti used his connections in France to rescue one of his young readers, many of whom knew him from his periodical and his polemical essays. Ambroise Kom, arrested merely for subscribing to Peuples noirs, was saved from incarceration by Beti's actions in France on his behalf. In 1991 Mongo Beti returned to Cameroon, after 32 years of self-imposed exile. In 1993 he published La France contre l'Afrique, retour au Cameroun; this book chronicles his visits to his homeland. After retiring from teaching in 1994, he returned to Cameroon permanently. Various business endeavors in Betiland failed; eventually, he opened in YaoundE the Librairie des Peuples noirs (Bookstore of the Black Peoples) and organized agricultural activities in his village of Akometam. The goal of the bookshop was to encourage engaged literacy in the capital, and also to provide an outlet for critical texts and authors. During this period, Beti also supported John Fru Ndi, an anglophone opposition leader. He created associations for the defence of citizens and gave to the press numerous articles of protest. The government attempted to hinder his activities. On his first return to Cameroon, police prevented him from speaking at a scheduled conference; Beti instead addressed a crowd outside the locked conference room. He was subjected in January 1996, in the streets of YaoundE, to police aggression. He was challenged at a demonstration in October 1997. In response he published several novels: L'histoire du fou in 1994 then the two initial volumes Trop de soleil tue l'amour (1999) et Branle-bas en noir et blanc (2000), of a trilogy which would remain unfinished. He was hospitalized in YaoundE on October 1, 2001 for acute hepatic and kidney failure which remained untreated for lack of dialysis. Transported to the hospital at Douala on October 6, he died there on October 8, 2001. Some critics noted the similarity of his death to that of his heroine Perpetua, who also died while awaiting treatment in one of the country's overburdened hospitals. From beginning to end, Beti's work was informed by two principles. In terms of style, he was a realist. In a critical statement published in 1955, he asserted that ‘Given the modern conceptions of the beautiful in literature, given at the very least these essential conceptions, if a work is realistic it has many chances of being good; if not, supposing even that it has formal qualities, it risks lacking resonance, profundity, that of which all literature has the greatest need -- the human; from which it follows that it has much less chance of being good -- if only it had some -- than a realistic work.' Beti's fiction remains true to this credo. Thematically, Beti's work is unified by an unwavering commitment to combatting colonialism, both overt and covert. Beti's aim always, even in his harsh criticism of Cameroon's independence government, was to strengthen African autonomy and prosperity. ‘Sans haine et sans amour', 1953, is a short story and Beti's first significant work.
[ 0013 ] Beti, Mongo. Mission to Kala. London. 1964. Heinemann. 0435900137. African Writers Series. Translated by Peter Green from the French novel Mission terminée (1957). 183 pages. paperback. AWS262. Cover drawing by Charles Keeping.

DESCRIPTION - A scholar in spite of himself - Wit, satire and ribaldry triumph as Jean-Marie Medza, fresh from the University and failed exams, is sent on a mission to an up-country Cameroonian tribe to retrieve the wayward wife of a local villager. Medza has been delivered from his father's wrath - temporarily only to meet a more questionable fate at the hands of his relatives in Kala who capitalize on their newly discovered treasure - a city boy - and a scholar as well! Soon distracted from his mission. Medza finds himself the center of the action - lionized by the uneducated villagers, exploited by his cunning uncle and terrorized by adoring females of all ages whose determination spells disaster to the only aspect of Medza's person which has escaped public notice: his virginity. 'Over and above its intrinsic merit as a piece of creative writing, this first novel by a French West African Negro is notable for its mere existence. What impresses about Beti's genuinely indigenous African novel is his tone of carefree gaiety, his adeptness in pouring new narrative wine into an old literary bottle, and his sympathetic contrast between two generations divided by a yawning gulf.' - The New York Times Book Review. ‘Very entertaining indeed an original talent.' - The Times Literary Supplement, London.

Alexandre Biyidi Awala (30 June 1932 - 8 October 2001), known as Mongo Beti, was a Cameroonian writer. Though he lived in exile for many decades, Beti's life reveals an unflagging commitment to improvement of his home country. As one critic wrote after his death, ‘The militant path of this essayist, chronicler and novelist has been governed by one obsession: the quest for the dignity of African people.'The son of Oscar Awala and REgine Alomo, Alexandre was born in 1932 at AkomEtan, a small village 10 km from Mbalmayo, itself 45 km away from YaoundE, capital of Cameroon. (The village's name comes from Akom ‘rock' and Etam ‘source': in old maps of the region, the name is written in two parts). From an early age, Beti was influenced by the currents of rebellion sweeping Africa in the wake of World War II. His father drowned when Beti was seven, and he was raised by his mother and extended family. Beti recalls arguing with his mother about religion and colonialism; he also recalls early exposure to the opinions and analysis of independence leader Ruben Um Nyobe, both in the villages and at Nyobe's private residence. He carried these views into the classroom, and was eventually expelled from the missionary school in Mbalmayo for his outspokenness. In 1945 he entered the lycEe Leclerc in YaoundE. Graduating in 1951, he came to France to continue his higher education in literature, first at Aix-en-Provence, then at the Sorbonne in Paris. By the early 1950s, Beti had turned to writing as a vehicle of protest. He wrote regularly for the journal PrEsence Africaine; among his pieces was a review of Camara Laye's Black Child that criticized Laye for what Beti saw as pandering to European tastes. He began his career in fiction with the short story Sans haine et sans amour (‘Without hatred or love'), published in the periodical PrEsence Africaine, edited by Alioune Diop, in 1953. Beti's first novel Ville cruelle (‘Cruel City'), under the pseudonym Eza Boto, followed in 1954, published in several editions of PrEsence Africaine. It was, however, in 1956 that he gained a widespread reputation; the publication of the novel Le pauvre Christ de Bomba (‘The poor Christ of Bomba') created a scandal because of its satirical and biting description of the missionary and colonial world. Under pressure from the religious hierarchy, the colonial administrator in Cameroon banned the novel in the colony. This was followed by Mission terminEe, 1957 (winner of the Prix Sainte Beuve 1958), and Le Roi miraculE, 1958. He also worked during this time for the review Preuves, for which he reported from Africa. He worked also as a substitute teacher at the lycEe of Rambouillet. In 1959, he was named certified professor at the lycEe Henri Avril in Lamballe. He took the AgrEgation de Lettres classiques in 1966 and taught at the LycEe Pierre Corneille in Rouen. from this date until 1994. Following Nyobe's assassination by French forces in 1958, however, Beti fell silent as a writer for more than a decade, remaining in exile from his homeland. After his death,Odile Tobner noted that exile was not easy on Beti; he remained tortured by his concern for his embattled country.In 1972 he re-entered the world of literature with a bang. His book Main basse sur le Cameroun, autopsie d'une dEcolonisation ('Cruel hand on Cameroon, autopsy of a decolonization') was censored upon its publication by the French Ministry of the Interior Raymond Marcellin on the request, brought forward by Jacques Foccart, of the Cameroon government, represented in Paris by the ambassador Ferdinand Oyono. The essay, a critical history of recent Cameroon, asserted that Cameroon and other colonies remained under French control in all but name, and that the post-independence political elites had actively fostered this continued dependence. Beti was inspired to write in part by the execution of Ernest Ouandie by the government of Cameroon. In 1974 he published PerpEtue and Remember Ruben; the latter was the first in a trilogy exploring the life and impact of Nyobe. After a long judicial action, Mongo Beti and his editor Francois MaspEro finally obtained, in 1976, the cancellation of the ban on the publication of Main basse. Beti returned to critical and political writing at the same time that he returned to fiction. In 1978 he and his wife Odile Tobner launched the bimonthly review Peuples Noirs. Peuples africains ('Black People. African People'), which was published until 1991. This review chronicled and denounced tirelessly the evils brought to Africa by neo-colonial regimes. During this period were published the novels La ruine presque cocasse d'un polichinelle (1979), Les deux mères de Guillaume Ismaël Dzewatama futur camionneur (1983), La revanche de Guillaume Ismaël Dzewatama (1984), also Lettre ouverte aux Camerounais ou la deuxième mort de Ruben Um NyobE (1984) and Dictionnaire de la negritude (1989, with Odile Tobner). Frustrated by what he saw as the failure of post-independence governments to bring genuine freedom to Africa, Beti adopted a more radical perspective in these works. In exile, Beti remained vitally connected to the struggle in Cameroon. Throughout the seventies and eighties, acquaintance with Beti or his work could spell trouble for a citizen of Cameroon; on numerous occasions, Beti used his connections in France to rescue one of his young readers, many of whom knew him from his periodical and his polemical essays. Ambroise Kom, arrested merely for subscribing to Peuples noirs, was saved from incarceration by Beti's actions in France on his behalf. In 1991 Mongo Beti returned to Cameroon, after 32 years of self-imposed exile. In 1993 he published La France contre l'Afrique, retour au Cameroun; this book chronicles his visits to his homeland. After retiring from teaching in 1994, he returned to Cameroon permanently. Various business endeavors in Betiland failed; eventually, he opened in YaoundE the Librairie des Peuples noirs (Bookstore of the Black Peoples) and organized agricultural activities in his village of Akometam. The goal of the bookshop was to encourage engaged literacy in the capital, and also to provide an outlet for critical texts and authors. During this period, Beti also supported John Fru Ndi, an anglophone opposition leader. He created associations for the defence of citizens and gave to the press numerous articles of protest. The government attempted to hinder his activities. On his first return to Cameroon, police prevented him from speaking at a scheduled conference; Beti instead addressed a crowd outside the locked conference room. He was subjected in January 1996, in the streets of YaoundE, to police aggression. He was challenged at a demonstration in October 1997. In response he published several novels: L'histoire du fou in 1994 then the two initial volumes Trop de soleil tue l'amour (1999) et Branle-bas en noir et blanc (2000), of a trilogy which would remain unfinished. He was hospitalized in YaoundE on October 1, 2001 for acute hepatic and kidney failure which remained untreated for lack of dialysis. Transported to the hospital at Douala on October 6, he died there on October 8, 2001. Some critics noted the similarity of his death to that of his heroine Perpetua, who also died while awaiting treatment in one of the country's overburdened hospitals. From beginning to end, Beti's work was informed by two principles. In terms of style, he was a realist. In a critical statement published in 1955, he asserted that ‘Given the modern conceptions of the beautiful in literature, given at the very least these essential conceptions, if a work is realistic it has many chances of being good; if not, supposing even that it has formal qualities, it risks lacking resonance, profundity, that of which all literature has the greatest need -- the human; from which it follows that it has much less chance of being good -- if only it had some -- than a realistic work.' Beti's fiction remains true to this credo. Thematically, Beti's work is unified by an unwavering commitment to combatting colonialism, both overt and covert. Beti's aim always, even in his harsh criticism of Cameroon's independence government, was to strengthen African autonomy and prosperity. ‘Sans haine et sans amour', 1953, is a short story and Beti's first significant work.
[ 0014 ] Rive, Richard (editor). Quartet: New Voices from South Africa. London. 1965. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS14..

DESCRIPTION - Short stories by Alex La Guma, James Matthews, Richard Rive and Alf Wannenburgh.

Richard Moore Rive (Cape Town, 1 March 1931 - 4 June 1989) was a South African writer. Rive was born on 1 March 1931 in Caledon Street in the working-class coloured District Six of Cape Town. His father was African, and his mother was coloured. Rive was given the latter classification under apartheid. Rive went to St Mark's Primary School and Trafalgar High School, both in District Six, and then to Hewat College of Education in Athlone, where he qualified as a teacher. Later he acquired a BA degree from the University of Cape Town, followed by an MA degree from Columbia University in the United States, and a Doctorate from Oxford University. He was for many years the Head of the English Department at Hewat College. Rive was a visiting professor at several overseas universities, including Harvard University in 1987. He also delivered guest lectures at more than fifty universities on four continents. He was a prominent sportsman (a South African hurdles champion while a student) and a school sports administrator. In 1963 he was given a scholarship organised by the editor of Drum magazine, Es'kia Mphahlele. In 1965 he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship. He wrote a doctoral thesis on Olive Schreiner which was published posthumously, in 1996. Rive was a firm believer in anti-racism and decided to stay in his country in the hope of influencing its development there. Rive initially published his stories in collections or in South African magazines like Drum and Fighting Talk. He edited anthologies for Heinemann's African Writers Series: the short story anthology Quartet (1963) - containing stories by Alex La Guma, James Matthews, Alf Wannenburgh and Rive himself - and the prose anthology Modern African Prose (1964). His short story 'The Bench', for which he won a prize, is still anthologised. 'The Bench' takes the well known story of Rosa Parks and sets it in South Africa. He also wrote three novels. Emergency (1964) was set against the Sharpeville massacre. Buckingham Palace District Six, was published in 1986 and turned into a musical by a theatre in Cape Town. He also published an autobiography entitled Writing Black in 1981. His last novel, Emergency Continued, was published posthumously. Rive was shot to death at his home in Cape Town in 1989. On August 23, 2013, Rive and two other esteemed South African authors Ronnie Govender and Don Mattera were honoured for their contributions to the fight against apartheid through literature at the Aziz Hassim Literary Awards held in Durban. The authors all reflected on non-racial enclaves in South Africa during that era: Rive focused on District Six, Govender on Cato Manor, and Mattera on Sophiatown.
[ 0015 ] Cook, David (editor). Origin East Africa: A Makerere Anthology. London. 1965. Heinemann. African Writers Series. Devised and edited by David Cook. Prose and verse. 188 pages. paperback. AWS15. Cover drawing by Eli Kyeyune.

DESCRIPTION - Names such as John Nagenda, James Ngugi and David Rubadiri make some of their earliest appearances in this anthology of stories, plays and poems by people who have studied at Makerere. This is a volume worth reading in its own right, but will also attract those who find African writing especially interesting and significant. INCLUDES WORK BY - John Nagenda, James Ngugi, David Rubadiri, Violet Kokunda, M.M. Haji, Tom Chacha, Peter Nazareth, Solomon Kagwe, John Bing and others.

David Cook (January 22, 1929, Sydney, Australia - March 30, 2003) was a British academic, literary critic and anthologist. As a Professor of Literature at the Universities of Makerere and Ilorin, he played an important role in encouraging literature in East Africa.
[ 0016 ] Achebe, Chinua. Arrow of God. London. 1965. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS16..

DESCRIPTION - ARROW OF GOD is set in the Ibo villages of Umuaro in Eastern Nigeria in 1921. Ezeulu, old and dignified Chief Priest of Ulu, god of the six Ibo villages, finds that his authority as spiritual leader is strengthened when a war which he has tried to prevent between Umuaro and a neighboring community is stopped by the British District Officer, Captain Winter-bottom. Ezeulu is compelled to respect the knowledge and power of the white man and sends one of his young sons to learn Christianity so that he will know the secret of such strength. But this brings the conflict between old ways and new to its height as the boy, in an excess of freshly-inspired Christian enthusiasm, tries to kill a royal python, a creature most sacred in the religious traditions of Umuaro. After this, Ezeulu's opposition to the authority of the white man becomes more pronounced, but his noble obstinacy, although it achieves a temporary victory over Captain Winterbottom, brings tragedy in the end. In this moving story Chinua Achebe catches perfectly the atmosphere of African village life, the beautiful proverb-laden language of the Ibo and their touching, strangely formal customs of worship and hospitality. Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian, was appointed First Director of External Broadcasting in Nigeria in 1961, at the age of thirty-one.

CHINUA ACHEBE published THINGS FALL APART in 1958. It was followed by NO LONGER AT EASE (AWS 3) and ARROW OF GOD (AWS 16). A MAN OF THE PEOPLE (AWS 31) aroused widespread interest on publication at the time of the January 1966 coup because of its prophetic ending. The effects of his novels, and of his editorship of the African Writers Series has had a dramatic impact on the development of the literature of Africa. Some of the stories in GIRLS AT WAR (AWS 100) and some of the poems in BEWARE SOUL BROTHER (AWS 120) are set in the war. His essays were published in 1975 under the title MORNING YET ON CREATION DAY (Heinemann). He was educated at Government College, Umuahia and University College, Ibadan. By the time he left the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in 1966 he had become Director of External Broadcasting. Since the war he has been at the Universities of Nigeria, Massachusetts and Connecticut. He has now returned to Nsukka. Among many recent honours has been the award of a Fellowship of the Modern Languages Association of America and of Doctorates at the Universities of Stirling and Southampton. He has recently followed Heinrich Boll, the Nobel prizewinner, as the recipient of the Scottish Arts Council's Neil Gunn Fellowship. Chinua Achebe is best known as a novelist. But the years of the Nigerian crisis and the civil war were not, for both practical and psychological reasons, a time for work on full-length novels. He found poetry a means of expressing his distress, even though few of the poems speak directly of the war. He has added some new poems to this collection which has already been published in Nigeria.
[ 0016 ] Achebe, Chinua. Arrow of God. London. 1967. Heinemann.. 287 pages. paperback. AWS16. Cover illustration by Charles Keeping.

DESCRIPTION - ARROW OF GOD is set in the Ibo villages of Umuaro in Eastern Nigeria in 1921. Ezeulu, old and dignified Chief Priest of Ulu, god of the six Ibo villages, finds that his authority as spiritual leader is strengthened when a war which he has tried to prevent between Umuaro and a neighboring community is stopped by the British District Officer, Captain Winter-bottom. Ezeulu is compelled to respect the knowledge and power of the white man and sends one of his young sons to learn Christianity so that he will know the secret of such strength. But this brings the conflict between old ways and new to its height as the boy, in an excess of freshly-inspired Christian enthusiasm, tries to kill a royal python, a creature most sacred in the religious traditions of Umuaro. After this, Ezeulu's opposition to the authority of the white man becomes more pronounced, but his noble obstinacy, although it achieves a temporary victory over Captain Winterbottom, brings tragedy in the end. In this moving story Chinua Achebe catches perfectly the atmosphere of African village life, the beautiful proverb-laden language of the Ibo and their touching, strangely formal customs of worship and hospitality. Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian, was appointed First Director of External Broadcasting in Nigeria in 1961, at the age of thirty-one.

CHINUA ACHEBE published THINGS FALL APART in 1958. It was followed by NO LONGER AT EASE (AWS 3) and ARROW OF GOD (AWS 16). A MAN OF THE PEOPLE (AWS 31) aroused widespread interest on publication at the time of the January 1966 coup because of its prophetic ending. The effects of his novels, and of his editorship of the African Writers Series has had a dramatic impact on the development of the literature of Africa. Some of the stories in GIRLS AT WAR (AWS 100) and some of the poems in BEWARE SOUL BROTHER (AWS 120) are set in the war. His essays were published in 1975 under the title MORNING YET ON CREATION DAY (Heinemann). He was educated at Government College, Umuahia and University College, Ibadan. By the time he left the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in 1966 he had become Director of External Broadcasting. Since the war he has been at the Universities of Nigeria, Massachusetts and Connecticut. He has now returned to Nsukka. Among many recent honours has been the award of a Fellowship of the Modern Languages Association of America and of Doctorates at the Universities of Stirling and Southampton. He has recently followed Heinrich Boll, the Nobel prizewinner, as the recipient of the Scottish Arts Council's Neil Gunn Fellowship. Chinua Achebe is best known as a novelist. But the years of the Nigerian crisis and the civil war were not, for both practical and psychological reasons, a time for work on full-length novels. He found poetry a means of expressing his distress, even though few of the poems speak directly of the war. He has added some new poems to this collection which has already been published in Nigeria.
[ 0017 ] Ngugi, James. The River Between. London. 1965. Heinemann. African Writers Series. 175 pages. paperback. AWS17. Cover illustration by Eli Kyeyune.

DESCRIPTION - When Waiyaki had been born again in the manner of his people, his father, Chege, told him the legend of the founding of the tribe and about the black messiah who would one day come to reclaim the land of Kenya for its people. Chege believed in the old ways, but he knew the value of the white man's education and he sent Waiyaki to school, where he worked beside the children of Christian tribesmen from the other side of the valley. Gradually Waiyaki realized that his people could only be saved if the men from both sides of the river united to accept the best of the old and the new beliefs. Circumcision, of girls as well as boys, was an essential ritual for the purity of the tribe. The missionaries disapproved of the practice and when Muthoni, the daughter of a Christian leader, died after she had defied her father and taken part in the initiation rites, they brought the split between the people into the open by refusing to accept circumcised children at their school. Waiyaki found himself condemned both for his white man s education and for his faith in the old traditions.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o (born January 5, 1938) is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gikuyu. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal, Mutiiri. In 1977, Ngugi embarked upon a novel form of theater in his native Kenya which sought to liberate the theatrical process from what he held to be ‘the general bourgeois education system', by encouraging spontaneity and audience participation in the performances. Ngugi's project sought to ‘demystify' the theatrical process, and to avoid the ‘process of alienation [which] produces a gallery of active stars and an undifferentiated mass of grateful admirers' which, according to Ngugi, encourages passivity in ‘ordinary people'. Although Ngaahika Ndeenda was a commercial success, it was shut down by the authoritarian Kenyan regime six weeks after its opening. Ngugi was subsequently imprisoned for over a year. Adopted as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, the artist was released from prison, and fled Kenya. In the United States, he taught at Yale University for some years, and has since also taught at New York University, with a dual professorship in Comparative Literature and Performance Studies, and the University of California, Irvine. Ngugi has frequently been regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His son is the author Mukoma wa Ngugi. Ngugi was born in Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kiambu district, Kenya, of Kikuyu descent, and baptised James Ngugi. His family was caught up in the Mau Mau War; his half brother Mwangi was actively involved in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, and his mother was tortured at Kamriithu homeguard post. He received a B.A. in English from Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, in 1963; during his education, a play of his, THE BLACK HERMIT, was produced in Kampala in 1962. He published his first novel, WEEP NOT, CHILD, in 1964, which he wrote while attending the University of Leeds in England. It was the first novel in English to be published by an East African. His second novel, THE RIVER BETWEEN (1965), has as its background the Mau Mau rebellion, and described an unhappy romance between Christians and non-Christians. THE RIVER BETWEEN is currently on Kenya's national secondary school syllabus. His novel A Grain of Wheat (1967) marked his embrace of Fanonist Marxism. He subsequently renounced English, Christianity, and the name James Ngugi as colonialist; he changed his name back to Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and began to write in his native Gikuyu and Swahili. The uncensored political message of his 1977 play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I WILL MARRY WHEN I WANT) provoked then Vice President Daniel arap Moi to order his arrest. While detained in the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, he wrote the first modern novel in Gikuyu, Caitaani mutharaba-Ini (DEVIL ON THE CROSS), on prison-issued toilet paper. After his release, he was not reinstated to his job as professor at Nairobi University, and his family was harassed. Due to his writing about the injustices of the dictatorial government at the time, Ngugi and his family were forced to live in exile. Only after Arap Moi was voted out of office, 22 years later, was it safe for them to return. His later works include Detained, his prison diary (1981), DECOLONISING THE MIND: THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE IN AFRICAN LITERATURE (1986), an essay arguing for African writers' expression in their native languages, rather than European languages, in order to renounce lingering colonial ties and to build an authentic African literature, and MATIGARI (1987), one of his most famous works, a satire based on a Gikuyu folktale. In 1992 he became a professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University, where he held the Erich Maria Remarque Chair. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature as well as the Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine. On August 8, 2004, Ngugi returned to Kenya as part of a month-long tour of East Africa. On August 11, robbers broke into his apartment: they assaulted both the Professor and his wife, and stole money and a computer. Since then, Ngugi has returned to America, and in the summer 2006 the American publishing firm Random House published his first new novel in nearly two decades, WIZARD OF THE CROW, translated to English from Gikuyu by the author. On November 10, 2006, while in San Francisco at Hotel Vitale at the Embarcadero, Ngugi was harassed and ordered to leave the hotel by an employee. The event led to a public outcry and angered the Kenyan community in the San Francisco Bay area and abroad, prompting an apology by the hotel.
[ 0018 ] Ijimere, Obotunde. The Imprisonment of Obatala and Other Plays. Oxford. 1994. Heinemann. 0435980188. English adaptation by Ulli Beier. African Writers Series. 109 pages. paperback. AWS18. The cover photograph is from a batik by Suzanne Wenger.

DESCRIPTION - Includes the plays - The Imprisonment of Obatala, Everyman, Woyengi. Theatre in the Yoruba language is mostly a kind of opera in which the songs are rehearsed while the dialogue is improvised. The first to break away from this tradition was Duro Ladipo, and his plays have had considerable influence on Obotunde Ijimere. This volume contains The Imprisonment of Obata/a, Everyman and Woyengi, which is based on an Ijaw tale. Obata/a is based on a Yoruba myth, which explores the philosophy of Yoruba orisha worship. Everyman is an adaptation of Hugo von Hofmanthal's play, but the basic theme has been rethought entirely in Yoruba terms: thus the Christian mythology of Heaven and Hell has been replaced by the Yoruba concept of reincarnation. Everyman's greatest punishment would be to be 'thrown on the heaven of potshers' that is, never to return to this earth again.

OBOTUNDE IJIMERE was born in Otan Aiyegbaju, Western Nigeria, in 1930. After leaving secondary school he joined Duro Ladipo's theatre company, but soon discovered he had no talent for acting. He attended Ulli Beier's extra-mural writers' workshop in Oshogbo, and followed his advice to write in English rather than in Yoruba. Apart from the plays in this volume he has written some short stories (he is not very satisfied with the result) and several other plays, including one in pidgin, The Fall of Man, specially written for Theatre Express, the Lagos-based theatre group.
[ 0018 ] Ijimere, Obotunde. The Imprisonment of Obatala and Other Plays. Portsmouth. 1966. Heinemann. African Writers Series. Edited by Duro Ladipo and Ulli Beier. 109 pages. paperback. AWS18. The cover photograph is from a batik by Suzanne Wenger.

DESCRIPTION - Includes the plays - The Imprisonment of Obatala, Everyman, Woyengi. Theatre in the Yoruba language is mostly a kind of opera in which the songs are rehearsed while the dialogue is improvised. The first to break away from this tradition was Duro Ladipo, and his plays have had considerable influence on Obotunde Ijimere. This volume contains The Imprisonment of Obata/a, Everyman and Woyengi, which is based on an Ijaw tale. Obata/a is based on a Yoruba myth, which explores the philosophy of Yoruba orisha worship. Everyman is an adaptation of Hugo von Hofmanthal's play, but the basic theme has been rethought entirely in Yoruba terms: thus the Christian mythology of Heaven and Hell has been replaced by the Yoruba concept of reincarnation. Everyman's greatest punishment would be to be 'thrown on the heaven of potshers' that is, never to return to this earth again.

Oliver Reginald Kaizana Tambo (27 October 1917 - 24 April 1993), also known as O. R. Tambo, was a South African anti-apartheid politician and revolutionary who served as President of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1967 to 1991.
[ 0019 ] Ekwensi, Cyprian. Lokotown and Other Stories. London. 1966. Heinemann. African Writers Series. 152 pages. paperback. AWS19. Cover drawing by Ajo Ajayi.

DESCRIPTION - Cyprian Ekwensi is the outstanding chronicler of Nigerian city life. All the excitement and urgency as well as the seediness and disillusion that make up the world of the Hotel France, the Harlem, Marine Beach, and the Kano Limited are contained in this collection of short stories. Characters like Fussy Joe, Jagua, Nancy of the Grand Palm Hotel, Charlie the Coin-Diver, and the Stranger from Lagos emerge and go their various ways, crushed or triumphant after their brush with the hard, bright city. All the bustle, gaiety and hectic action are put into perspective by the controlled economy of Ekwensi's writing.

Cyprian Ekwensi (September 26, 1921–November 4, 2007) was a Nigerian short story writer and author of children's books. Ekwensi, a native of Nkwelle-Ezunaka in today's Oyi local government of Anambra State, was born in Minna, Niger State. His father was David Anadumaka, a story-teller and elephant hunter. Ekwensi attended Government College in Ibadan, Oyo State, Achimota College in Ghana, and the School of Forestry, Ibadan, after which he worked for two years as a forestry officer. He also studied pharmacy at Yaba Technical Institute, Lagos School of Pharmacy, and the Chelsea School of Pharmacy of the University of London. He taught at Igbobi College. Ekwensi has nine children. His oldest son George is a well known New Jersey accountant. Ekwensi was employed as Head of Features at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and by the Ministry of Information during the First Republic; he eventually became Director of the latter. He resigned his position in 1966, before the Civil War, and moved to Enugu with his family. He later served as chair of the Bureau for External Publicity of Biafra, prior to its reabsorption by Nigeria. Ekwensi wrote hundreds of short stories, radio and television scripts, and several dozen novels, including children's books. His 1954 PEOPLE OF THE CITY was the first book by a Nigerian to garner international attention. His novel DRUMMER BOY (1960), based on the life of Benjamin 'Kokoro' Aderounmu was a perceptive and powerful description of the wandering, homeless and poverty-stricken life of a street artist. His most successful novel was JAGUA NANA (1961), about a Pidgin-speaking Nigerian woman who leaves her husband to work as a prostitute in a city and falls in love with a teacher. He also wrote a sequel to this, JAGUA NANA'S DAUGHTER. In 1968, he received the Dag Hammarskjöld International Prize in Literature. In 2006, he became a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters. Ekwensi died on 4 November 2007 at the Niger Foundation in Enugu, where he underwent an operation for an undisclosed ailment. The Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), having intended to present him with an award on November 16, 2007, converted the honor to a posthumous award.
[ 0020 ] Gatheru, Mugo. Child of Two Worlds. London. 1966. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS20..

DESCRIPTION - This absorbing autobiography, by a sensitive and intelligent young man, whose quest for knowledge took him from Africa to schools in India, the United States, and England, is a major contribution to understanding the significance of the confrontation of tribalism with urbanization and Western customs and traditions. This simple, straightforward, and immensely human document reveals to us what it has meant to one individual to be a Kikuyu, a Kenyan, and an African amid the complexities of the modern world, It also discusses, with sympathetic insight, ancient tribal customs in which the author participated as a youth, while describing the process by which he gradually adopted new values and new customs. To understand what happened to Mugo Gatheru is to understand the experiences of thousands of other young Africans. - St. Clair Drake, Introduction to CHILD OF TWO WORLDS.

R. Mugo Gatheru (born 21 August 1925) is a Kenyan writer. His autobiographical A Child of Two Worlds describes growing up in colonial Kenya. Gatheru was born to a squatter family living on a European farm. He attended medical school in Nairobi, but was forced to continue his education abroad after he protested the treatment of Africans by the colonial rulers. After a year in India, he spent eight years from 1950 in the United States before studying law in England. He returned to Kenya when it gained independence in 1963.
[ 0021 ] Munonye, John. The Only Son. London. 1966. Heinemann. African Writers Series. 201 pages. paperback. AWS21. Cover drawing by Uche Okeke.

DESCRIPTION - Chiaku is a widow with an only son, Nnanna. Her whole life is centred round her son and devoted to bringing him up in the traditions of their people in Eastern Nigeria. Although urged to remarry, she cannot contemplate leaving Nnanna to look after himself. But the time comes when Nnanna begins to feel the attractions of Western Education and the new ideas imported into Nigerian society by the colonial government and the missionaries. He is fascinated by the skills to be learnt at the mission schools, and pressure is put on Chiaku to allow her only son to work for an Irish priest and be educated in ways she cannot understand. Nnanna goes away; distrust and misunderstanding ensue, and the break-up of Chiaku's small world seems inevitable. John Munonye's portrait of Chiaku, whose world crumbles when her son is drawn away by something she cannot combat, is sympathetically drawn, and his presentation of the missionaries both just and penetrating.

JOHN MUNONYE was born in 1929 in Akokwa, Eastern Nigeria, the fourth of seven children, and educated at Christ the King College, Onitsha. In 1948 he went to University College, Ibadan, and read Latin, Greek, and history, graduating B.A. in First Division in 1952. He spent a year doing a post-graduate course in education at London University, and in 1954 returned to Nigeria to work for the Ministry of Education. At present he is Senior inspector of Education in Eastern Nigeria. He is married with two children.
[ 0022 ] Peters, Lenrie. The Second Round. London. 1969. Heinemann Books. 0435900226. African Writers Series. 193 pages. paperback. AWS22. Cover drawing by Charles Keeping.

DESCRIPTION - Full of anticipation, Dr Kawa returns to Sierra Leone after qualifying in England. But he finds Freetown strangely alien to him, an uneasy mixture of traditional African society and the world he has left behind in England. European customs and society have made their mark; the world of the whisky and soda, the fast car, the opulent house, the credit account, is here in Freetown. Kawa's mother and his friends expect him to take up his 'proper place' in local society, and his uncertainty, his apparent reluctance to do so, to marry and settle down, to acquire possessions, only confuse them. He drifts into a friendship with Laura, but leaves her when he finds her with a lover: then he is drawn into the unhappy lives of Marshall, his wife Clare, and her lover Freddie, already dying of cancer of the nose. But even they cannot provide the anchor he needs: with the disintegration of their lives there is nothing to keep Kawa Freetown. Once again he leaves, this time to serve in a lonely up-country hospital. 'A distinguished and memorable work of imagination.' - Gerald Moore in East Africa Journal.

Lenrie Leopold Wilfred Peters (1 September 1932 - 28 May 2009) was a Gambian surgeon, novelist, poet and educationist. Peters was born in Bathurst (now Banjul). His parents were Lenrie Ernest Ingram Peters and Kezia Rosemary. Lenrie Sr. was a Sierra Leone Creole of West Indian or black American origin. Kezia Rosemary was a Gambian Creole of Sierra Leonean Creole origin. Lenrie Jr. grew up in Bathurst and moved to Sierra Leone in 1949, where he was educated at the Prince of Wales School, Freetown, gaining his Higher School Certificate in science subjects. In 1952 he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, to read Natural Sciences, graduating with a B.Sc. in 1956; from 1956 to 1959 he worked and studied at the University College Hospital, London, and 1959 was awarded a Medical and Surgery diploma from Cambridge. Peters worked for the BBC from 1955 to 1968, on their Africa programmes. While at Cambridge he was elected president of the African Students' Union, and interested himself in Pan-Africanist politics. He also began writing poetry and plays, as well as starting work on his only novel, The Second Round (published in 1965). Peters worked in hospitals in Guildford and Northampton before returning to the Gambia, where he had a surgical practice in Banjul. He was a fellow of the West African College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Surgeons in England. Peters was President of the Historic Commission of Monuments of the Gambia, was president of the board of directors of the National Library of the Gambia and Gambia College from 1979 to 1987, and was a member and President of the West African Examination Council (WAEC) from 1985 to 1991. He died in Dakar, Senegal, aged 76.
[ 0023 ] Beier, Ulli (editor). The Origin of Life and Death: African Creation Myths. London. 1966. Heinemann. African Writers Series. 65 pages. paperback. AWS23. Cover illustration by Suzanne Wenger.

DESCRIPTION - THE ORIGIN OF LIFE AND DEATH is a collection of creation myths from all parts of Africa. The stories are colourful and inventive, and as answers given by man to the problems and mysteries of life and death they are as valid as Genesis and make as fascinating reading. Some ideas will be new and startling to people reared on the Muslim or Christian traditions: all are exciting and stimulating because they throw new light on man's relationship to God and on hi attempt to come to terms with the supernatural sand the inevitable.

ULLI BEIER, having acted as a catalyst in the publication of Nigerian writers and the showing of Nigerian artists, is now in charge of the teaching of literature in English in the University of Papua and New Guinea. He was the editor of Black Orpheus and was a founder of the Mbari Clubs of Ibadan and Oshogbo. His publications are numerous, vital and important.
[ 0024 ] Kachingwe, Aubrey. No Easy Task. London. 1966. Heinemann. African Writers Series. 233 pages. paperback. AWS24. Cover drawing by Albert Adams. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - Jo Jozeni, the son of a village pastor, is offered a job on a newspaper in Kawacha, the capital of a British colony in Central Africa. Although his roots are in the country, Jo gradually takes to life in the city and through his colleagues becomes involved in politics, though always remaining a little outside the 'inner circle'. Suddenly his attitude changes: at a political rally it is his own gentle, retiring father who emerges as a hard and determined political fighter. Jo is faced with a difficult choice: should he identify himself with his father? or take the line of least resistance, marry his girl, and settle down on the newspaper? or look for something else out of life? 'A modest but moving novel about the political scenery in a British colony in Central Africa. The book has the bite of a good television documentary and the unflamboyant dialogue is exactly suited to the occasion. The mood is tense with riot squads and the uneasy manoeuvres leading up to independence.' - John Moynihan in the Sunday Telegraph

AUBREY KACHINGWE was born in 1926 in Malawi and educated there and in Tanganyika. In 1950 he joined the East African Standard group in Nairobi and in 1955 left to study journalism in London, where he worked on attachment on the foreign desk of the then Daily Herald. Later he worked in the Department of Information in Malawi (then Nyasaland). He returned to London in 1963 where he worked in the African Service and News Department of the BBC. Later he was attached to the Ghana Broadcasting Service in Accra, and then returned home to join the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation, where he is now Head of News.
[ 0025 ] Amadi, Elechi. The Concubine. London. 1966. Heinemann. African Writers Series. 279 pages. paperback. AWS25. Cover drawing by Shyam Varma.

DESCRIPTION - With moving simplicity this first novel tells the story of Ihuoma, good, respected. of great beauty and dignity, who brings suffering and death to all her lovers. There are no white men, no European values. to disturb the old truths. Human society is orderly and predictable except when the gods are wronged. ‘A highly sophisticated, measured treatment of. the fatal loves of a woman in an Eastern Nigerian village. Written in a grave and simple style, it.. reveals its author as a fine writer ruminating on a past already turning into legend.' - Richard Mayne in the New Statesman. 'Mr Amadi writes with speed and shapeliness and exhilaration. a lovely and dignified picture of a society not only still ruled by gods. but governed by a great delicacy in human relationships.' - Anne Duchene in the Guardian.

Elechi Amadi (born 12 May 1934) is a Nigerian author of plays and novels that are generally about African village life, customs, beliefs and religious practices, as they were before contact with the Western world. Amadi is best regarded for his 1966 first novel, The Concubine, which has been called ‘an outstanding work of pure fiction'. Born in 1934, in Aluu in the Ikwerre local government area of Rivers State, Nigeria, Elechi Amadi attended Government College, Umuahia (1948-1952), Survey School, Oyo (1953-1954), and the University of Ibadan (1955-1959), where he obtained a degree in Physics and Mathematics. He worked for a time as a land surveyor and later was a teacher at several schools, including the Nigerian Military School, Zaria (1963-1966). Amadi did military service in the Nigerian army and was on the Nigerian side during the Nigeria-Biafra War, retiring in the rank of Captain. After the war Amadi left the army to work for the Rivers State government. Positions he held include Permanent Secretary (1973-1983), Commissioner for Education (1987-1988) and Commissioner for Lands and Housing (1989-1990). He has been writer-in-residence and lecturer at Rivers State College of Education, where he has also been Dean of Arts, head of the Literature Department and Director of General Studies. On 13 May 1989 a symposium was held at the University of Port Harcourt to celebrate Amadi's 55th birthday. In May 2004, a conference was organized by the Association of Nigerian Authors, Rivers State Branch, to mark Elechi Amadi's 70th birthday. On 5 January 2009 Amadi was kidnapped at his home in Aluu town, Port Harcourt, by unknown gunmen. He was released 23 hours later, on the evening of 6 January. Elechi Amadi has said that his first publication was in 1957, a poem entitled ‘Penitence' in a University of Ibadan campus magazine called The Horn, edited by John Pepper Clark. Amadi's first novel, The Concubine, was published in London in 1966 and was hailed as a ‘most accomplished first performance'. Alastair Niven in his critical study of the novel wrote: ‘Rooted firmly among the hunting and fishing villages of the Niger delta, The Concubine nevertheless possesses the timelessness and universality of a major novel.' The Concubine was made into a film, written by Elechi Amadi and directed by accomplished Nollywood film director Andy Amenechi, which premiered in Abuja in March 2007. The setting of Amachi's second novel, The Great Ponds, published in 1969, is pre-colonial Eastern Nigeria, and is about the battle between two village communities over possession of a pond. In 1973 Amadi autobiographical non-fiction, Sunset in Biafra, was published. It records his personal experiences in the Nigeria-Biafra war, and according to Niven ‘is written in a compelling narrative form as though it were a novel'.
[ 0025 ] Amadi, Elechi. The Concubine. Oxford. 1966. Heinemann. 0435905562. African Writers Series. 216 pages. paperback. AWS25. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Danny Holiday.

DESCRIPTION - With moving simplicity this first novel tells the story of Ihuoma, good, respected. of great beauty and dignity, who brings suffering and death to all her lovers. There are no white men, no European values. to disturb the old truths. Human society is orderly and predictable except when the gods are wronged. ‘A highly sophisticated, measured treatment of. the fatal loves of a woman in an Eastern Nigerian village. Written in a grave and simple style, it.. reveals its author as a fine writer ruminating on a past already turning into legend.' - Richard Mayne in the New Statesman. 'Mr Amadi writes with speed and shapeliness and exhilaration. a lovely and dignified picture of a society not only still ruled by gods. but governed by a great delicacy in human relationships.' - Anne Duchene in the Guardian.

Elechi Amadi (born 12 May 1934) is a Nigerian author of plays and novels that are generally about African village life, customs, beliefs and religious practices, as they were before contact with the Western world. Amadi is best regarded for his 1966 first novel, The Concubine, which has been called ‘an outstanding work of pure fiction'.
[ 0026 ] Nwapa, Flora. Efuru. London. 1966. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS26..

DESCRIPTION - Efuru, beautiful and respected, is loved and deserted by two ordinary undistinguished husbands.

Florence Nwanzuruahu Nkiru Nwapa (13 January 1931 - 16 October 1993), was a Nigerian author who has been called the mother of modern African literature. She was the forerunner to a generation of African women writers, and was also acknowledged as the first African woman novelist to be published in the English language in Britain. She achieved international recognition, with her first novel Efuru, published in 1966 at the age of 30 years by Heinemann Educational Books. While never considering herself a feminist, she was best known for recreating life and traditions from an Igbo woman's viewpoint. Nwapa is also known for her governmental work in reconstruction after the Biafran War, in particular, she worked with orphans and refugees who were displaced during the war. Furthermore, she published African literature and promoted women in African society. She was one of the first African women publishers when she founded Tana Press in Nigeria in 1970.
[ 0026 ] Nwapa, Flora. Efuru. Portsmouth. 1978. Heinemann. 0435900269. African Writers Series. 221 pages. paperback. AWS26. Cover drawing by Shyam Varma.

DESCRIPTION - 'Efuru is a beautiful, superior woman, who cannot marry or have children successfully. Her neighbours acknowledge her distinctions, are grateful for her generosity, but cannot intervene in or comprehend her tragedy. A sage diagnoses that a river goddess has in fact chosen Efuru as her honoured worshipper. So far as earthly companions are concerned she must remain alone. The persons in Miss Nwapa's story have an objective complexity and sophistication dependent neither on chiaroscuro analogies with the behaviour of expatriate Europeans nor on the nostalgia generated by the deracinated graduate revisiting his people.'

Buchi Emecheta (born 21 July 1944, in Lagos) is a Nigerian novelist who has published over 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education have won her considerable critical acclaim and honours, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005. Emecheta once described her stories as ‘stories of the world…[where]… women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical.'
[ 0027 ] Selormey, Francis. The Narrow Path. London. 1966. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS27..

DESCRIPTION - Kofi was born on the coast of Ghana during the 1920s, his grandfather a wealthy fisherman, his father a teacher. The story that he tells, nearly 40 years later, is of his early days at home and in school, brought up in a strict mission household and conflicting with his father.

Francis Selormey (15 April 1927 - 1983) was a Ghanaian novelist, teacher, scriptwriter and sports administrator. Born in Dzelukofe, in the Volta Region of Ghana, Selormey was brought up in Keta. He attended a Catholic primary school and then St. Augustine's College, Cape Coast. He studied physical education at the University of Ghana and in Germany before becoming a teacher. He was Senior Sports Organizer for the Central Region from 1960 to 1964. In 1965 he became a scriptwriter for the Ghana Film Industry Corporation. At some point he returned to sports administration, as Director of Sports for the Sports Council of Ghana. Married with six children, he spent the last years of his life as a farmer before his death in 1983. The Narrow Path: An African Childhood, was published in Heinemann's African Writers Series in 1966. Semi-autobiographical, it was 'the Bildungsroman of a Ghanaian school boy', who is 'caught between his love for an overly strict father who insists on Christian, Western ways and his own appreciation for other, traditional influences.'
[ 0027 ] Selormey, Francis. The Narrow Path. London. 1980. Heinemann. 0435900276. African Writers Series. 184 pages. paperback. AWS27. Cover drawing by Seth Anku.

DESCRIPTION - The Narrow Path is a 1966 autobiographical novel by Ghanaian novelist Francis Selormey. The novel was part of Heineman's African Writers Series. The novel heavily focuses on recounting the unhappy and painful experiences of a child, Kofi, attending a Catholic mission school in Ghana, and the contrasting traditional education he receives. The novel, that has many of the developmental features of a bildungsroman, but utilizes an adult narrator to observe the development of the child focal character, Kofi. The novel is also unique because of its focus on the childs' primary education, only retelling the elementary years. Critic Chris Kwame Awuyah compared the novels themes and structure to Joseph Abruquah's The Torrent (1968) and Amu Djoleto's The Strange Man (1967) and notes similarities to other novels like James T. Farrell's Father and Son and Ngugi Wa Thiag'o's Weep not, Child. Awuyah said that the "major artistics strengths of [the novel] are its direct and concrete language presented with an unreflective and confessional narrative voice". Kofi was born on the coast of Ghana during the nineteen-twenties, his grandfather a wealthy fisherman, his father a teacher. The story that he tells, nearly forty years later, is of his early days at home and in school. He describes vividly the talk and customs of the fisher people of the Gold Coast; he remembers with love his kind and gentle mother. But he remembers, too, the stern, hard righteousness of his father, and the beatings he suffered in the name of a Christian education. A clash was inevitable - but when it came and destroyed whatever was left of his childhood, Kofi discovered that beneath the fear and hatred he often felt for his father had always been a kind of love. 'Kofi tells his story with charm, discretion, and amiable detail.' - Times Literary Supplement.

Francis Selormey (15 April 1927 - 1983) was a Ghanaian novelist, teacher, scriptwriter and sports administrator. Born in Dzelukofe, in the Volta Region of Ghana, Selormey was brought up in Keta. He attended a Catholic primary school and then St. Augustine's College, Cape Coast. He studied physical education at the University of Ghana and in Germany before becoming a teacher. He was Senior Sports Organizer for the Central Region from 1960 to 1964. In 1965 he became a scriptwriter for the Ghana Film Industry Corporation. At some point he returned to sports administration, as Director of Sports for the Sports Council of Ghana. Married with six children, he spent the last years of his life as a farmer before his death in 1983. The Narrow Path: An African Childhood, was published in Heinemann's African Writers Series in 1966. Semi-autobiographical, it was "the Bildungsroman of a Ghanaian school boy", who is "caught between his love for an overly strict father who insists on Christian, Western ways and his own appreciation for other, traditional influences."
[ 0028 ] Cook, David and Lee, Miles (editors). Short East African Plays in English: Ten plays in English. London. 1970. Heinemann. 0435900285. African Writers Series. 148 pages. paperback. AWS28..

DESCRIPTION - This collection of ten plays consists of five short plays, one adaptation and four sketches (three of which are translations from East African languages). Most of these have been successfully performed far and wide in Kenya and Uganda, by the Makerere Traveling Theatre and have proved highly popular both with school and teacher training college audiences, and also with community centre audiences. It is hoped that their publication will enable schools and drama groups to perform the plays themselves as well as read them. The editors have provided a most useful introduction as well as supplying notes for producers. Included are plays by Sam Tulya-Muhika, Kuldip Sondhi, Tom Omara, Ganesh Bagchi, Augustine Bukenya, Peter kinyanjui, Sadhu Kassam. and Joseph Mukasa-Balikuddembe.

David Cook (January 22, 1929, Sydney, Australia - March 30, 2003) was a British academic, literary critic and anthologist. As a Professor of Literature at the Universities of Makerere and Ilorin, he played an important role in encouraging literature in East Africa. Miles Allday Lee, later Miles Ahmed Lee, FRSA (died June 1986) was a British puppeteer and radio producer. While working for Radio Uganda, he played an important role in the encouragement of East African literature. Before World War II Lee was Stage Director at the Birmingham Repertory Company. After serving in the RAF during the war, he became an Advisor to the Scottish Community Drama Association. In 1951 he founded the Belgrave Mews Puppet Theatre in Edinburgh. He was a freelance producer for the BBC and commercial television, before moving to Uganda to work for Radio Uganda. In autumn 1964 Lee persuaded David Cook, a literature lecturer at Makarere University, to chair a monthly radio programme about East African writing. Lee and Cook collaborated on an anthology of East African plays in 1968, and some of the broadcasts they made together were later collected and published.
[ 0029 ] Oyono, Ferdinand. Houseboy. London. 1967. Heinemann. African Writers Series. Translated by John Reed from the French Une vie de boy. 140 pages. paperback. AWS29. Cover drawing by Jack Larkin.

DESCRIPTION - HOUSEBOY is written in the form of a diary kept by the Cameroonian houseboy, Toundi, an innocent, fascinated and awed by the white world, the world of his masters. When the head of the Mission, to whom he is devoted, is killed in an accident, Toundi becomes the ‘boy' of the local Commandant. His dream is all of advancement and improving himself, and to do this he studies his new world closely - too closely. Gradually his eyes are opened to its realities, and in the end he is killed because the Europeans cannot endure the gaze of the man they have destroyed. ‘.. Both very funny and inexpressively sad.. [Mr. Oyono's] sophisticated wits stings like a mosquito and he underwrites his story with real craftsmanship.' Eve Burgess in PUNCH. ‘.. a book of moving and confident mastery.' - Francis King in the Sunday Telegraph.

FERDINAND OYONO was born in 1929 in the Camerooris. and educated there and in France. He has appeared on the stage (in the title role of Louis Sapin's Papa Bon Dieu at the ThEàtre d'Aujourd'hui in Paris) but is now in the Diplomatic Service. After some years in Paris and at the French Embassy in Rome, he was appointed Permanent Delegate for the Federal Cameroon Republic to the United Nations. He was also the Cameroonian Ambassador and Consul-General in Brussels. Apart from HOUSEBOY (Une Vie de Boy) he has published Le Vieux Nègre et la MEdaille (1956) and Chemins d'Europe 1960).
[ 0030 ] Aluko, T. M. One Man, One Wife. London/Nairobi. 1967. Heinemann. African Writers Series. 201 pages. paperback. AWS30. Cover drawing by A. Adenuga.

DESCRIPTION - The village of Isolo has great difficulty in accepting the missionary concept of ‘one man, one wife': this is the story of how a large portion of the village populace becomes disillusioned with mission Christianity and returns to the worship of the old gods. This is companied by intrigue against the Christians, resulting in Teacher Royasin, the village catechist, being hounded from Isolo on suspicion of having an affair with another man's young wife. The various sub-plots introduce a number of colourful characters: Elder Joshua, a respected member of the community; Dele, a village boy who becomes a smart young man-about-town; his beautiful young sister Toro; and Bible Jeremiah, loyal pillar of the church in Isolo. An ingenious tale is woven round such characters, capturing extremely well the atmosphere of the village community.

T. M. ALUKO was born in 1918 at Ilesha and educated at Government College, Ibadan. He studied civil engineering and town planning in Lagos and London, and in 1960 was appointed Director of Public Works for Western Nigeria. He has now joined the staff of the University of Lagos. He first attracted notice through short stories which won prizes in contests organized by the British Council in Nigeria. A number of his stories and articles were then published In West Africa Review and broadcast by the BBC African Service. One Man One Wife was first published in 1959 by the Nigerian Printing and Publishing Company in Lagos. Since then he has published two other novels, ONE MAN ONE MATCHET (1964) and KINSMAN AND FOREMAN (1966).
[ 0031 ] Achebe, Chinua. A Man of the People. London. 1966. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS31..

DESCRIPTION - In Chinua Achebe's novel, A Man of the People, two contrasting groups of people from a political and social aspect based in West Africa. The groups are the old and the new generations of politics and two characters represent them. Odili, the narrator, represents the new intellectual generation, while Chief Nanga, Odili's former teacher, represents the old style of bush politicians. The conflict between the old and new ways is portrayed through the two characters as they not only disagree and quarrel over political views but also women. The story ends with a military coup that foreshadows the Nigerian Revolution of 1966. ‘Chinua Achebe proved to be a better prophet than any of the political scientists'(K.W.J. Post, xiii). Achebe captures the inside reality of the lives of the contrasting characters as he demonstrates energy and brightness as well as violence and corruption. Chinua Achebe, a strong voice for African literature, was born in 1930 in Ogidi. His father was a Christian evangelist and teacher. Achebe's full name is Albert Chinualumogu Achebe. He studied broadcasting with the BBC and received a BA in 1953. Over the course of his life he has written nearly 300 books and has become a powerful influence in the Nigerian politics. His writings are aimed toward a select group of people in Africa, not only those who can read, but those educated above the basic level, who have enough money to purchase the book. ‘Paradoxically enough, his writings are probably better known outside his own country than in it.' (K.W.J. Post, v) This idea of an ‘aimed audience'implies that Achebe wants countries with power and a say in the world to understand the lives of the people from his part of the world, West Africa. .

CHINUA ACHEBE published THINGS FALL APART in 1958. It was followed by NO LONGER AT EASE (AWS 3) and ARROW OF GOD (AWS 16). A MAN OF THE PEOPLE (AWS 31) aroused widespread interest on publication at the time of the January 1966 coup because of its prophetic ending. The effects of his novels, and of his editorship of the African Writers Series has had a dramatic impact on the development of the literature of Africa. Some of the stories in GIRLS AT WAR (AWS 100) and some of the poems in BEWARE SOUL BROTHER (AWS 120) are set in the war. His essays were published in 1975 under the title MORNING YET ON CREATION DAY (Heinemann). He was educated at Government College, Umuahia and University College, Ibadan. By the time he left the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in 1966 he had become Director of External Broadcasting. Since the war he has been at the Universities of Nigeria, Massachusetts and Connecticut. He has now returned to Nsukka. Among many recent honours has been the award of a Fellowship of the Modern Languages Association of America and of Doctorates at the Universities of Stirling and Southampton. He has recently followed Heinrich Boll, the Nobel prizewinner, as the recipient of the Scottish Arts Council's Neil Gunn Fellowship. Chinua Achebe is best known as a novelist. But the years of the Nigerian crisis and the civil war were not, for both practical and psychological reasons, a time for work on full-length novels. He found poetry a means of expressing his distress, even though few of the poems speak directly of the war. He has added some new poems to this collection which has already been published in Nigeria.
[ 0032 ] Aluko, T. M. Kinsman and Foreman. London. 1967. Heinemann. African Writers Series. 203 pages. paperback. AWS32..

DESCRIPTION - A chorus of wailing greets Titus Oti on his return to his family home in a small town in Western Nigeria. While he was away in England studying engineering his father died and now as his guardian and mentor, his family appoint his kinsman, Simeon. Titus is to take up a post in the Public Works Department in his home town: as Simeon is already a foreman in the PWD and a leading figure in Ibala society, who better to show him the ropes? Tutus soon finds that life is not so simple as it appears. He cannot afford the donations expected of him and his attempts to combat Simeon's corrupt practices bring him into conflict with his family and friends. Furthermore, Titus has to cope with a religious sect which causes havoc among his labourers. He sees no way of escaping the bonds of family and local society until religious hysteria mercifully takes a hand.

T. M. ALUKO was born in 1918 at Ilesha and educated at Government College, Ibadan. He studied civil engineering and town planning in Lagos and London, and in 1960 was appointed Director of Public Works for Western Nigeria. He has now joined the staff of the University of Lagos. He first attracted notice through short stories which won prizes in contests organized by the British Council in Nigeria. A number of his stories and articles were then published In West Africa Review and broadcast by the BBC African Service. One Man One Wife was first published in 1959 by the Nigerian Printing and Publishing Company in Lagos. Since then he has published two other novels, ONE MAN ONE MATCHET (1964) and KINSMAN AND FOREMAN (1966).
[ 0033 ] Samkange, Stanlake. On Trial For My Country. London. 1969. Heinemann. 0435900331. African Writers Series. 160 pages. paperback. AWS33..

DESCRIPTION - The white man's conquest of Rhodesia and the clash between Cecil Rhodes and Lobengula, the Matebele king, is the background to this fascinating historical novel, which casts new light on the European empire-builders and the people whose lands they took. The author, using actual letters and documents of Rhodes, Moffat, Jameson, and others, has woven the threads together to form one of the most intriguing books ever to have been written about the birth of Rhodesia. 'There is no attempt here to tell us who was right and who was wrong, but telling the story in an African folk-tale fashion is Samkange's way of providing an African perspective to this drama. It is an important addition to the literature of Rhodesia. .' Africa Report, New York.

STANLAKE SAMKANGE was born at Mariga, Chipata, in Rhodesia, in 1922. He grew up in Bulawayo where his father was a Methodist minister. He was educated at Waddilove Institution in Rhodesia, Adams College and Fort Hare University College in South Africa, and Indiana University. On his return to Rhodesia he took up teaching and became active in politics: for many years he was General Secretary of the African National Congress. He is now lecturing in African History at Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee. His historical study ORIGINS OF RHODESIA (1969) will be of great interest to readers of this book.
[ 0034 ] Pieterse, Cosmo (editor). Ten One-Act Plays. London. 1968. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS34..

DESCRIPTION - Includes 'Encounter' by Kuldip Sondhi; 'Yon Kon' by Pat Maddy; 'The Game' by Femi Euba; 'Blind Cyclos' by Ime Ikeddeh; 'With Strings' by Kuldip Sondhi; 'The Deviant' by Ganesh Bagchi; 'Fusane's Trial' by Alfred Hutchinson; 'The Opportunity' by Arthur Maimane; 'Maama' by Kwesi Kay; and 'The Occupation' by Athol Fugard.

Cosmo George Leipoldt Pieterse (born 1930 in Windhoek, Namibia) is a South African playwright, actor, poet, literary critic and anthologist.
[ 0035 ] La Guma, Alex. A Walk in the Night and Other Stories. London. 1968. Heinemann. African Writers Series. 136 pages. paperback. AWS35. Cover design by Michael Whittlesea.

DESCRIPTION - A Walk in the Night is set in District Six, Cape Town's toughest quarter, where the spivs, whores and derelicts - 'doom'd for a certain term to walk the night' - are waging a bitter struggle with the forces of oppression. They celebrate their few small moments of victory in cheap Cape wine, sex and meaningless fights. The main story is about Michael Adonis, a coloured boy, unjustly thrown out of his job. In the dank tenement where he lives. half-blind with disgust and self-pity, he unintentionally kills a harmless, decrepit old man. From that point we start to witness Mikey's gradual moral dissolution, which culminates in his friend Willieboy being mistaken for the murderer while Mikey himself joins up with a gang of thugs. This collection of a novella and six short stories shows Alex La Guma as one of the most impressive talents to come out of South Africa for a long time. It also shows, in the starkest terms, the plight of the non-white in South Africa today.

ALEX LA GUMA was born in Cape Town in 1925 and completed his formal education at the Trafalgar High School and Cape Technical College. Thereafter he worked as a clerk, factory hand, book-keeper and journalist. Interested in South African politics since an early age, he was arrested for treason with 155 others in -1956 and acquitted in 1960. During the state of emergency following the Sharpeville massacre he was detained for five months. In 1962 he was placed under house arrest for 24 hours a day for five years and was also detained, together with his wife, under the 90-day regulations, and again under the 180-day regulations. He left South Africa as a refugee in September 1966 and now lives with his family in exile in London. He has written many short stories which have appeared in Africa, Europe and the USA.
[ 0036 ] Ngugi, James. A Grain of Wheat. London. 1968. Heinemann. African Writers Series. 280 pages. paperback. AWS36. The cover design is reproduced from a photograph by courtesy of the Radio Times Hutton Picture Library.

DESCRIPTION - In the days immediately preceding Kenyan independence, Mugo, a local farmer and hero of the villagers, is asked to make a speech honouring the memory of his friend Kihika, who was hanged by the colonial administrators. A GRAIN OF WHEAT is an attempt to identify, in terms of its characters, the key racial, social and moral issues which made up pre-independent Kenya. The work of Kenyan-born Ngugi is known throughout the world and has made a powerful impact at home and overseas.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o (born January 5, 1938) is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gikuyu. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal, Mutiiri. In 1977, Ngugi embarked upon a novel form of theater in his native Kenya which sought to liberate the theatrical process from what he held to be ‘the general bourgeois education system', by encouraging spontaneity and audience participation in the performances. Ngugi's project sought to ‘demystify' the theatrical process, and to avoid the ‘process of alienation [which] produces a gallery of active stars and an undifferentiated mass of grateful admirers' which, according to Ngugi, encourages passivity in ‘ordinary people'. Although Ngaahika Ndeenda was a commercial success, it was shut down by the authoritarian Kenyan regime six weeks after its opening. Ngugi was subsequently imprisoned for over a year. Adopted as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, the artist was released from prison, and fled Kenya. In the United States, he taught at Yale University for some years, and has since also taught at New York University, with a dual professorship in Comparative Literature and Performance Studies, and the University of California, Irvine. Ngugi has frequently been regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His son is the author Mukoma wa Ngugi. Ngugi was born in Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kiambu district, Kenya, of Kikuyu descent, and baptised James Ngugi. His family was caught up in the Mau Mau War; his half brother Mwangi was actively involved in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, and his mother was tortured at Kamriithu homeguard post. He received a B.A. in English from Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, in 1963; during his education, a play of his, THE BLACK HERMIT, was produced in Kampala in 1962. He published his first novel, WEEP NOT, CHILD, in 1964, which he wrote while attending the University of Leeds in England. It was the first novel in English to be published by an East African. His second novel, THE RIVER BETWEEN (1965), has as its background the Mau Mau rebellion, and described an unhappy romance between Christians and non-Christians. THE RIVER BETWEEN is currently on Kenya's national secondary school syllabus. His novel A Grain of Wheat (1967) marked his embrace of Fanonist Marxism. He subsequently renounced English, Christianity, and the name James Ngugi as colonialist; he changed his name back to Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and began to write in his native Gikuyu and Swahili. The uncensored political message of his 1977 play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I WILL MARRY WHEN I WANT) provoked then Vice President Daniel arap Moi to order his arrest. While detained in the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, he wrote the first modern novel in Gikuyu, Caitaani mutharaba-Ini (DEVIL ON THE CROSS), on prison-issued toilet paper. After his release, he was not reinstated to his job as professor at Nairobi University, and his family was harassed. Due to his writing about the injustices of the dictatorial government at the time, Ngugi and his family were forced to live in exile. Only after Arap Moi was voted out of office, 22 years later, was it safe for them to return. His later works include Detained, his prison diary (1981), DECOLONISING THE MIND: THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE IN AFRICAN LITERATURE (1986), an essay arguing for African writers' expression in their native languages, rather than European languages, in order to renounce lingering colonial ties and to build an authentic African literature, and MATIGARI (1987), one of his most famous works, a satire based on a Gikuyu folktale. In 1992 he became a professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University, where he held the Erich Maria Remarque Chair. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature as well as the Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine. On August 8, 2004, Ngugi returned to Kenya as part of a month-long tour of East Africa. On August 11, robbers broke into his apartment: they assaulted both the Professor and his wife, and stole money and a computer. Since then, Ngugi has returned to America, and in the summer 2006 the American publishing firm Random House published his first new novel in nearly two decades, WIZARD OF THE CROW, translated to English from Gikuyu by the author. On November 10, 2006, while in San Francisco at Hotel Vitale at the Embarcadero, Ngugi was harassed and ordered to leave the hotel by an employee. The event led to a public outcry and angered the Kenyan community in the San Francisco Bay area and abroad, prompting an apology by the hotel.
[ 0037 ] Peters, Lenrie. Satellites. London. 1967. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS37. Cover illustration by Gay Galsworthy.

DESCRIPTION - Lenrie Peters's poems have appeared in several journals in Britain and Africa. In 1964 a collection of his verse was published by Mbari Publications, Ibadan. A second collection of poetry is planned. 'The poems of Lenrie Peters have for me echoes of Soyinka: not in a derivative sense as such. But you find here the same mastery of the Ehglish language and the consequent relaxed use of it. And there is also the familiar intellectual approach to themes. -But then the comparison ends just there. the poets' imagination roams over a limitless area of the earth, from Kroo Town to Tchaikovsky and Yevtushenko to the Chinese explosion of the atom bomb. Nor is this in itself a fault, since it lends to his verse a rather solid metropolitan ring, which can undoubtedly appeal, to speakers of the English language anywhere. ' Ama Ata Aidoo in WestAfrica.

LENRIE PETERS was born in Bathurst, Gambia in 1932. In 1949 he moved to Sierra Leone and went to Prince of Wales School, Freetown, where he gained his Higher School Certificate in science subjects. In 1952 he left Freetown to study in England. In between reading Natural Sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge, becoming President of the African Students' Union, interesting himself in politics (he is a Pan-Africanist) and writing poetry and plays, he started his novel The Second Round (AWS 22) which was published in 1965. He is now a qualified doctor who is specialising in surgery, but he still finds time for writing, which he says he finds painful but necessary.
[ 0037 ] Peters, Lenrie. Satellites. Portsmouth. 1971. Heinemann. 0435900374. African Writers Series. 103 pages. paperback. AWS37. Cover illustration by Gay Galsworthy.

DESCRIPTION - Lenrie Peters's poems have appeared in several journals in Britain and Africa. In 1964 a collection of his verse was published by Mbari Publications, Ibadan. A second collection of poetry is planned. 'The poems of Lenrie Peters have for me echoes of Soyinka: not in a derivative sense as such. But you find here the same mastery of the Ehglish language and the consequent relaxed use of it. And there is also the familiar intellectual approach to themes. -But then the comparison ends just there. the poets' imagination roams over a limitless area of the earth, from Kroo Town to Tchaikovsky and Yevtushenko to the Chinese explosion of the atom bomb. Nor is this in itself a fault, since it lends to his verse a rather solid metropolitan ring, which can undoubtedly appeal, to speakers of the English language anywhere. ' Ama Ata Aidoo in WestAfrica.

Adewale Maja-Pearce (born 1953) is an Anglo-Nigerian writer, journalist and critic, who is best known for his documentary essays. He is the author of several books, including the memoirs In My Father's Country (1987) and The House My Father Built (2014), several other non-fiction titles and a collection of short stories entitled Loyalties and Other Stories (1986). Adewale Maja-Pearce was born in London, England, to British and Yoruba parents. He grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, attending St. Gregory's College, Obalende (1965–69), and returned to Britain to be educated at the University College of Wales, Swansea (BA, 1972–75), and at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University (1984–86), where he gained a Master of Arts degree in African studies. He was employed a researcher at Index on Censorship and became the journal's Africa Editor (1986–97), as well as being Series Editor of the Heinemann African Writers Series (1986–94). Having returned to Nigeria, he lives in Surulere, Lagos, in a house inherited by his father, which he has written about in his 2014 memoir The House My Father Built. Maja-Pearce runs an editorial services agency called Yemaja, as well as a small publishing company, The New Gong. Maja-Pearce has written in various genres, his early published work featuring short stories drawing on his Nigerian background, with his collection Loyalties and Other Stories appearing in 1986. Most notable, however, as an essayist, he has written several non-fiction books, including the 2005 Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa and Other Essays, which in the opinion of critic Uzor Uzoatu 'affords us the opportunity of dipping into the immense world of Maja-Pearce as he, in twenty-three heartfelt essays and reviews, illuminates the benighted mores of modern Nigeria, the identity question in South Africa … and engages with seminal minds across the world. This book is a treasure, a profound testament.' Maja-Pearce was the editor of Christopher Okigbo's Collected Poems (1986), as well as of anthologies such as The Heinemann Book of African Poetry in English (1990) and Who's Afraid of Wole Soyinka?: Essays on Censorship (1991), and also wrote the 1998 and 1999 annual reports on human rights violations in Nigeria. His memoirs include 1987's In My Father's Country: A Nigerian Journey and, most recently, The House My Father Built (2014), which the reviewer for the online magazine Bakwa described in the following terms: 'a harrowing tale of Nigeria as it then was (1993-1999); a memoir of Adewale Maja-Pearce's quest to possess his birth right, his country and personal dignity. Mr Maja-Pearce presents the greatest cast of characters in the history of Nigerian literature. And nothing comes close, no clichE, except you consider Basi and Company by Ken Saro-Wiwa.' Maja-Pearce has written journalism, essays and reviews for a range of international publications, among them The New York Times, Granta, The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The London Magazine, and Prospect. He became a contributing opinion writer for The International New York Times in 2013. Maja-Pearce is married to the artist/activist Juliet Ezenwa.
[ 0038 ] Oginga Odinga. Not Yet Uhuru: The Autobiography of Oginga Odinga. London. 1967. Heinemann. African Writers Series. With a foreword by Kwame Nkrumah. paperback. AWS38..

DESCRIPTION - 'Not Yet Uhuru', the title of Oginga Odinga's autobiography, was written in the 1980s during his time under house arrest. 'Uhuru' means freedom in Swahili and he was referencing his belief that even after independence from British colonialism, the brutal oppression of opposition in political affairs in Kenya, meant that the country had still not attained real freedom.

Jaramogi Ajuma Oginga Odinga (October 1911 - 20 January 1994) was a Luo chieftain who became a prominent figure in Kenya's struggle for independence. He later served as Kenya's first Vice-President, and thereafter as opposition leader. Odinga's son Raila Odinga is the former Prime Minister, and another son, Oburu Odinga, is a former Assistant Minister in the Ministry of Finance. Jaramogi is credited for the phrase 'Not Yet Uhuru' which is the title of his autobiography written in the 1980s during his time under house arrest. 'Uhuru' means freedom in Swahili and he was referencing his belief that even after independence from British colonialism, the brutal oppression of opposition in political affairs in Kenya, meant that the country had still not attained real freedom. Jaramogi's son Raila was also in detention for a period of eight years.
[ 0039 ] Oyono, Ferdinand. The Old Man and the Medal. London. 1967. Heinemann. African Writers Series. Translated by John Reed from the French Le vieux nègre et la médaille. paperback. AWS39..

DESCRIPTION - A model Christian (black) prepares to meet his Maker (white) The news has spread and old Meka is an instant celebrity. After years of devoted adherence to the white colonial government and its authorized religion, he is about to receive a medal from its Most Distinguished Official, in a ceremony that promises to be the biggest social event of the season. The village is bursting with excitement. At last, the great day is here! But as he proudly waits in line for his medal, a lifetime of sacrifice passes before his eyes - the loss of his lands, his sons and.. his heritage. For what? For whom? For this beefy red-faced bureaucrat who is about to pin a tin badge on Meka's second-class chest? What happens to Meka and his medal after the ceremony is an appallingly funny look at the subtleties of polite society and its initiation rites: not only do all blacks look alike to colonial eyes, but, with or without medals, some look even more alike than others. Ferdinand Oyono's brilliant satire is first-class entertainment.

FERDINAND OYONO was born in 1929 in the Camerooris. and educated there and in France. He has appeared on the stage (in the title role of Louis Sapin's Papa Bon Dieu at the ThEàtre d'Aujourd'hui in Paris) but is now in the Diplomatic Service. After some years in Paris and at the French Embassy in Rome, he was appointed Permanent Delegate for the Federal Cameroon Republic to the United Nations. He was also the Cameroonian Ambassador and Consul-General in Brussels. Apart from HOUSEBOY (Une Vie de Boy) he has published Le Vieux Nègre et la MEdaille (1956) and Chemins d'Europe 1960).
[ 0040 ] Konadu, Asare. A Woman in Her Prime. London. 1973. Heinemann. 0435900404. African Writers Series. 108 pages. paperback. AWS40. Cover design by Michael Whittlesea. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - In the small Ghanaian village of Brenhoma, Pokuvvaa, though a woman, has become a successful farmer. True happiness eludes her; to have reached middle age without children is considered a grave misfortune. She has felt compelled to divorce her first two husbands. Finally she married Kwado, who grew to love her for her charm, her sympathy and her sweet conversation. As the years pass Pokuwaa's prayers and sacrifices to the great God Tano are still unanswered, and her mother's obsession with child-bearing and her nagging intrusion would be unbearable for a woman less composed and mature. Finally, she rejects her mother's interference and recourse to charms, drugs and sacrifices to ensure a successful pregnancy, and achieves fulfilment and new happiness on her own terms.

SAMUEL ASARE KONADU was born at Asamang in Ashanti, Central Ghana, in 1932, and educated at the Abuakwa State College in Southern Ghana. In 1951 he joined the Ghana information Service and worked as a reporter on a number of government newspapers and in broadcasting. He Rater went to London arid the Strasbourg University to study journalism before joining the Ghana News Agency. In 1963 he devoted himself to research into traditional customs and practices and. to writing. Ha also started his own publishing firm, Anowuo Publications and its first books have met with remarkable success. Ordained by the Oracle also appears in African Writers Series '(No. 55) and he has written several other novels.
[ 0041 ] Djoleto, Amu. The Strange Man. London. 1968. Heinemann. African Writers Series. 279 pages. paperback. AWS41. Cover illustration by Hezbon Owiti.

DESCRIPTION - The Strange Man is the story of old Mensa, a respected member of a village community in Ghana. A vivid description of his boyhood has many high points of which the catching of a he-goat is the most memorable. Always in trouble, Mensa is sent away to school. Such is the viciousness and corruption at these schools, that Mensa leaves with little regret. As a civil servant he sets about building a reputation as a man of standing. Many people are willing to discredit him. But his greatest problems are within his family, especially when his beautiful daughter becomes an object of local scandal. All these circumstances leave Mensa a sick and worried man.

Solomon Alexander Amu Djoleto (born 22 July 1929) is a Ghanaian writer and educator. Amu Djoleto was born at Manyakpogunor, Manya Krobo, Ghana, the son of Frederick Badu, a Presbyterian minister, and Victoria Shome Tetteh, ‘a modest trader'. He was educated at Accra Academy and St. Augustine's College, Cape Coast before reading English at the University of Ghana. He joined Ghana's Ministry of Education in the 1960s as a teacher and education officer. After studying textbook production at the Institute of Education, University of London, he returned to Ghana to edit the Ghana Teachers' Journal. At one point heading the Ministry of Education's publishing programme, he has continued to work for the Ministry of Education. Djoleto contributed to the poetry anthologies Voices of Ghana (1958) and Messages (1970), and his poems were collected in Amid the Swelling Act. However, he is best known for his novels, the first of which was The Strange Man (1967).
[ 0042 ] Awoonor, Kofi and Adali-Mortty, G. (editors). Messages: Poems From Ghana. London. 1971. Heinemann. 0435900420. African Writers Series. 190 pages. paperback. AWS42. Cover design is based on Ashanti gold weights.

DESCRIPTION - A new anthology from Ghana is long overdue. Voices of Ghana, which was published in 1957, was a milestone in the development of African writing. Some of the names which appeared in that collection appear here with new verse. Some of the names are new.Includes the works of Efua Sutherland, Kwesi Brew, Kofi Sey, G. Adali-Mortty, Ellis Komey, Kofi Awoonor, Joe de Graft, Albert Kayper-Mensah, Amu Djoleto, Cameron Duodu, Kojo Gyinaye Kyei, E. A. Winful, 14 poets altogether.

Kofi Awoonor (March 13, 1935, Wheta, Ghana - September 21, 2013, Nairobi, Kenya) was born George Awoonor-Williams in Wheta, Ghana, to Ewe parents. He was a poet, literary critic, professor of comparative literature and served as an ambassador for Ghana. Awoonor earned a BA from University College of Ghana, an MA from University College, London, and a PhD in comparative literature from SUNY Stony Brook. He is the author of novels, plays, political essays, literary criticism, and several volumes of poetry, including Rediscovery and Other Poems (1964), Night of My Blood (1971), Ride Me, Memory (1973), The House by the Sea (1978), The Latin American and Caribbean Notebook (1992), and a volume of collected poems, Until the Morning After (1987). Awoonor's grandmother was an Ewe dirge singer, and the form of his early poetry draws from the Ewe oral tradition. He translated Ewe poetry in his critical study Guardians of the Sacred Word and Ewe Poetry (1974). Other works of literary criticism include The Breast of the Earth: A Survey of the History, Culture, and Literature of Africa South of the Sahara (1975). In the early 1970s, Awoonor served as chairman of the Department of Comparative Literature at SUNY Stony Book. He returned to Ghana in 1975 to teach at University College of Cape Coast. In Ghana, he was arrested and tried for suspected involvement in a coup. He was imprisoned without trial and was later released; he wrote about his time in jail in The House by the Sea. Awoonor resumed teaching after his sentence was remitted. In the 1980s, he was the Ghanaian ambassador to Brazil and Cuba and served as ambassador to the United Nations from 1990 to 1994; in 1990 he published Ghana: A Political History from Pre-European to Modern Times. Awoonor is author of the novels This Earth, My Brother… (1971) and Comes the Voyager at Last: A Tale of Return to Africa (1992). He died in the Westgate shopping mall attack in Kenya in September 2013. Geormbeeyi Adali-Mortty (born 1916) is a Ghanaian poet and writer. In 1958 Adali-Mortty joined the advisory committee of the international literary journal Black Orpheus. He contributed both poetry and political commentary to the Legon Observer: for example, 'A Spent Scare' (1967) was written in response to the coup which ended Nkrumah's rule.
[ 0043 ] Armah, Ayi Kwei. The Beautyful Ones Are Not Born Yet. London/Ibadan/Nairobi. 1969. Heinemann. 0435900439. African Writers Series. 215 pages. paperback. AWS43. Jacket watercolor by Connie Nelson - 'Southern Spell Series'.

DESCRIPTION - Lust for Power, Money and Prestige.. has infected the decadent ruling clique of a new West African nation, and a young man of profound human integrity fights a desperate battle to keep the faith and uphold the ideals of the revolution. Humiliated, disillusioned, embittered by his experiences, he is forced to surrender at last to the tired hope that the ‘beautyful' ones are not yet born. ‘This brilliant novel takes the small, smouldering resentments of West Africa's perennially short-changed people and explodes them into a crackling protest against the whole of human suffering... Novelist Armah, an artist right to his sizzling nerve ends, states his dilemmas so passionately that they come to carry the force of a parable.' - Time magazine.. ‘Raw, cynical.. with exquisite moments of poetry, magnificent descriptions and evocative glimpses of urban life in Ghana.' - The Book of the Month Club News.

Ayi Kwei Armah (born 1939) is a notable Ghanaian writer. Born to Fante-speaking parents, and descending on his father's side from a royal family in the Ga nation, Armah was born in the port city of Sekondi-Takoradi in Ghana. Having attended Achimota School, he left Ghana in 1959 to attend Groton School in Groton, MA. After graduating he entered Harvard University, receiving a degree in sociology. Armah then moved to Algeria and worked as a translator for the magazine REvolution Africaine. In 1964, Armah returned to Ghana, where he was a scriptwriter for Ghana Television and later taught English at the Navrongo School. Between 1967 and 1968, he was editor of Jeune Afrique magazine in Paris. From 1968-1970, Armah studied at Columbia University, obtaining his MFA in creative writing. In the 1970s, he worked as a teacher in East Africa, at the College of National Education, Chang'ombe, Tanzania, and at the National University of Lesotho. He lived in Dakar, Senegal, in the 1980s and taught at Amherst and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In Fragments (1971), the protagonist, Baako, is a ‘been-to' - a man who has been to the United States and received his education there. Back in Ghana he is regarded with superstitious awe as a link to the Western life style. Baako's grandmother Naana, a blind-seer, stands in living contact with the ancestors. Under the strain of the unfulfilled expectations Baako finally breaks. As in his first novel, Armah contrasts the two worlds of materialism and moral values, corruption and dreams, two worlds of integrity and social pressure. Why Are We So Blest? (1972) was set largely in an American University, and focused on a student, Modin Dofu, who has dropped out of Harvard. Disillusioned Modin is torn between independence and Western values. He meets a Portuguese black African named Solo, who has already suffered a mental breakdown, and a white American girl, AimEe Reitsch. Solo, the rejected writer, keeps a diary, which is the substance of the novel. AimEe's frigidity and devotion to the revolution leads finally to destruction, when Modin is killed in the desert by O.A.S. revolutionaries. Trans Atlantic and African slave trades are the subject of Armah's Two Thousand Seasons (1973) in which a pluralized communal voice speaks through the history of Africa, its wet and dry seasons, from a period of one thousand years. Arab and European oppressors are portrayed as ‘predators,' ‘destroyers,' and ‘zombies'. The novel is written in allegorical tone, and shifts from autobiographical and realistic details to philosophical pondering, prophesying a new age. The Healers (1979) mixed fact and fiction about the fall of the celebrated Ashanti Empire. The healers in question are traditional medicine practitioners who see fragmentation as the lethal disease of Africa. Armah remained silent as a novelist for a long period until 1995 when he published Osiris Rising, depicting a radical educational reform group which reinstates ancient Egypt at the center of its curriculum. As an essayist Armah has dealt with the identity and predicament of Africa. His main concern is for the creation of a pan-African agency that will embrace all the diverse cultures and languages of the continent. Armah has called for the adoption of Kiswahili as the continental language.
[ 0044 ] Amadi, Elechi. The Great Ponds. London. 1975. Heinemann. 0435900447. African Writers Series. 192 pages. paperback. AWS44. Cover illustration by Michael Whittlesea.

DESCRIPTION - Set in eastern Nigeria and published in 1969, the story is about a ruinous feud between the two villages of Chiolu and Aliakoru. The story traces its way back to the pre colonial era, a time when Africans believed in the power of magic and supernatural healing possessed by the traditional healers (dibias, as used in the book) and divine intervention to appease the gods. For years, the village of Chiolu had fished in the ponds of Wagaba (alluded to in the book title) without hinderance. However, when the neighboring village of Aliakoru starts to encroach on the pond, war breaks out between the two villages, as the people of Chiolu seek to protect their ownership of the ponds. The war is led by Olumba the greatest warrior in Chiolu and main character in the book. His main rival is Wago, the leopard killer from Aliakoru. The Ezes (elders) from either side cannot agree to give up the pond. Eze Diali from Chiolu and Eze Okehi Aliakoru often meet to discuss about ending the war but this is not fruitful as both often do not go by the set conditions. For instance Olumba's pregnant wife Oda is kidnapped in an act that goes against local traditions. This leads to bitterness and instills a heart of vengeance within the warriors of Chiolu. Aliakoru is attacked and three women including Wago's daughter are kidnapped. Both villages become weary after months of fighting and eventually the elders of eight other villages join and to end the war on neutral grounds. The answer about who owns the ponds of Wagaba is anybody's guess as both parties had fished from the same pond at one time or the other. To resolve the competing claims, Olumba is chosen to take an oath under the god of the night Ogbunabali at Isiali. Under the oath, if he does not die in six months then the pond belongs to Aliakoru. He undergoes rituals to protect him from any ill omen. The warriors and dibia Igwu of Aliakoru cause him to fall sick but dibias Achichi of Chiolu and Anwunwu of Abii always act to save the situation. Nyoma, Olumbas first wife falls sick, the first to suffer the sickness which later begins claiming one by one from the village. The dibia confirms that the disease (wonjo as it is termed) has nothing to do with Aliakoru, since it is the same story in Aliakoru, and other villages. Olumba loses his wife and daughter in the same. Many think the gods are angry with them. Meanwhile, in the village of Alikakoru, Ikechi and his team fight and kill a leopard. Unable to stomach the loss of his esteem, Wago, the leopard killer, who for years, had been the only one who fought leopards, commits suicide. With the Great Ponds, Amadi delivers a brilliant piece of story-telling while also addressing the painful effects of war on its main victims, the local population. The fear and injustices that result are an important reminder that there are always innocent victims in every war, a message that is as relevant today as it was for the people of Chiolu and Aliakoru.

Elechi Amadi (born 12 May 1934) is a Nigerian author of plays and novels that are generally about African village life, customs, beliefs and religious practices, as they were before contact with the Western world. Amadi is best regarded for his 1966 first novel, The Concubine, which has been called ‘an outstanding work of pure fiction'. Born in 1934, in Aluu in the Ikwerre local government area of Rivers State, Nigeria, Elechi Amadi attended Government College, Umuahia (1948-1952), Survey School, Oyo (1953-1954), and the University of Ibadan (1955-1959), where he obtained a degree in Physics and Mathematics. He worked for a time as a land surveyor and later was a teacher at several schools, including the Nigerian Military School, Zaria (1963-1966). Amadi did military service in the Nigerian army and was on the Nigerian side during the Nigeria-Biafra War, retiring in the rank of Captain. After the war Amadi left the army to work for the Rivers State government. Positions he held include Permanent Secretary (1973-1983), Commissioner for Education (1987-1988) and Commissioner for Lands and Housing (1989-1990). He has been writer-in-residence and lecturer at Rivers State College of Education, where he has also been Dean of Arts, head of the Literature Department and Director of General Studies. On 13 May 1989 a symposium was held at the University of Port Harcourt to celebrate Amadi's 55th birthday. In May 2004, a conference was organized by the Association of Nigerian Authors, Rivers State Branch, to mark Elechi Amadi's 70th birthday. On 5 January 2009 Amadi was kidnapped at his home in Aluu town, Port Harcourt, by unknown gunmen. He was released 23 hours later, on the evening of 6 January. Elechi Amadi has said that his first publication was in 1957, a poem entitled ‘Penitence' in a University of Ibadan campus magazine called The Horn, edited by John Pepper Clark. Amadi's first novel, The Concubine, was published in London in 1966 and was hailed as a ‘most accomplished first performance'. Alastair Niven in his critical study of the novel wrote: ‘Rooted firmly among the hunting and fishing villages of the Niger delta, The Concubine nevertheless possesses the timelessness and universality of a major novel.' The Concubine was made into a film, written by Elechi Amadi and directed by accomplished Nollywood film director Andy Amenechi, which premiered in Abuja in March 2007. The setting of Amachi's second novel, The Great Ponds, published in 1969, is pre-colonial Eastern Nigeria, and is about the battle between two village communities over possession of a pond. In 1973 Amadi autobiographical non-fiction, Sunset in Biafra, was published. It records his personal experiences in the Nigeria-Biafra war, and according to Niven ‘is written in a compelling narrative form as though it were a novel'.
[ 0045 ] Munonye, John. Obi. London. 1969. Heinemann. 0435900455. African Writers Series. 210 pages. paperback. AWS45. Cover illustration by Peter Edwards.

DESCRIPTION - Obi convincingly depicts the struggles of an educated Christian couple, Joe and Anna, to maintain their standards and ideals when they decide to return to their village to build their Obi, or homestead, with the money they have earned in the town. Although they are an obviously happy and devoted couple, pressure is soon put upon Joe to marry another wife as, after three years of marriage, there is still no sign of Anna having a baby. As a Christian Joe will not consider this although he does take his wife to visit a witch-doctor and then sends her to hospital for treatment which eventually proves successful. In this simply yet powerfully told story, tribal and traditional ideas constantly conflict with educated and progressive ones. They thus invade even the privacy the deepest of human relationships - marriage.

JOHN MUNONYE was born in 1929 in Akokwa, Nigeria, and educated at Christ the King College, Onitsha. In 1948 he went to University College, Ibadan, and read Latin, Greek, and History, graduating B.A. in First Division in 1952. He spent a year doing a post-graduate course in education at London University and, in 1954, returned to Nigeria to work for the Ministry of Education as a Senior inspector of Education. He is married with two children. His successful first novel The Only Son is also published in the African Writers Series (No. 21).
[ 0046 ] Brutus, Dennis. Letters to Martha and other poems from a South African prison. London. 1974. Heinemann. 0435900463. African Writers Series. 57 pages. paperback. AWS46. Cover illustration by Ibrahim Salahi.

DESCRIPTION - Brutus was born in 1924 in Harara, Zimbabwe, which was then called Salisbury, South Rhodesia. His parents, teachers Francis Henry and Margaret Winifred Brutus, were South African ‘coloureds' who raised their son in Port Elizabeth. After receiving a bachelor's degree in English at Fort Hare University College in 1946, Brutus taught at several South African high schools. In the late 1950s, Brutus began to protest apartheid actively, concentrating on the conflict over race in sports. He was instrumental in the sanction to exclude South Africa's segregated sports teams from most international competitions, including the Olympics. In 1963, Brutus was arrested at a sports meeting for defying a ban which prohibited him from associating with any group. He fled the country after his release on bail but he was apprehended and returned to Johannesburg. Brutus again tried to escape but was shot in the stomach by police who pursuing. He was subsequently sentenced to 18 months of hard labor at Robben Island Prison - a notorious, escape-proof facility off the South African coast. During his imprisonment, his first volume of poetry, Sirens, Knuckles, Boots (1963) was published. In 1965, Brutus was released and allowed to leave South Africa on the condition that he never return. He emigrated to England in 1966 and then to the United States in 1970. Because Brutus was forbidden to write poetry in prison, he instead wrote letters. These formed the basis of his next collection, Letters TO MARTHA AND OTHER POEMS FROM A SOUTH AFRICAN PRISON (1968), which was not published until after he left South Africa for England in 1966. In this volume, Brutus recounted his prison experiences through letters to his sister-in-law; the poems, which describe the deprivation and fear of prison life, were praised for their objectivity and lucidity. Critics have noted that these poems are different in style from those in Brutus's first collection; Brutus acknowledged that he altered his technique in favor of simpler idioms that make his verse more accessible to the average reader.

Dennis Vincent Brutus (28 November 1924 - 26 December 2009) was a South African activist, educator, journalist and poet best known for his campaign to have apartheid South Africa banned from the Olympic Games.
[ 0047 ] Salih, Tayeb. The Wedding of Zein and Other Stories. London. 1969. Heinemann. African Writers Series. Illustrated by Ibrahim Salahi. Translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies. 120 pages. paperback. AWS47. Cover illustration by Ibrahim Salahi.

DESCRIPTION - Zein is a modern-age buffoon, an object of both ridicule and affection. The novel opens with the astounding news of his forthcoming marriage to the most sought-after girl in the village; it ends with a vivid description of the wedding feast with Zein himself standing amidst the frenzied dancers 'tall and thin... like the mast of a ship'. Within this framework lies a mosaic of the intrigues and jealousies, the loves and hates, of the principal characters in this Sudanese village on the banks of the Nile in particular the relationship of each to the spirited anti-hero of this taut short novel.

TAYEB SALIH was born in the Northern Province of the Sudan in 1929 and studied at Khartoum and London Universities. Coming from a background of small farmers and religious teachers, his original intention was to work in agriculture. Except, however, for a brief spell as a schoolmaster before coming to England, his working life has been in broadcasting and he is now Head of Drama in the B.B.C.'s Arabic Service. He began writing relatively late, and writes sporadically and primarily for his own amusement.
[ 0048 ] Gbadamosi, Bakare and Beier, Ulli. Not Even God Is Ripe Enough. Oxford. 1979. Heinemann. African Writers Series. Translated from the Yoruba. 58 pages. paperback. AWS48. Cover illustration by Georgina Beier.

DESCRIPTION - This collection of Yoruba stories is as full of fierce amusement as the title would have one believe. Lovers escape in cooking pots, and wry retribution is the order of the day.

Bakare Gbadamosi (born 1930) is a Yoruba poet, anthropologist and short story writer from Nigeria. Born in Osogbo, Hammed Gbadamosi wrote his own Yoruba poetry and short stories in the early 1960s. However, he is best known for collecting and translating Yoruba folk tales and traditional poetry in collaboration with Ulli Beier. Much of Gbadamosi's work was published by Mbari, a club founded by Beier in Ibadan.[1] In the late 1960s Gbadamosi was working as an ethnographer for the Nigerian Museum in Lagos, having previously worked 'as a letter writer, stage magician and actor'.[2] He participated in Duro Ladipo's theatre group in Osogbo.[3] According to one source, Gbadamosi later became known as Demola Onibonokuta.
[ 0049 ] Nkrumah, Kwame. Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. London. 1968. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS49. Originally published London: Nelson, 1965.

DESCRIPTION - Announced but dropped from catalog.

Kwame Nkrumah, P.C. (21 September 1909 - 27 April 1972) was the leader of Ghana and its predecessor state, the Gold Coast, from 1951 to 1966. He became the first Prime Minister of the Gold Coast in 1951, and led it to independence as Ghana in 1957, becoming the new country's first Prime Minister. After Ghana became a republic in 1960, Nkrumah became President. An influential 20th-century advocate of Pan-Africanism, he was a founding member of the Organisation of African Unity and was the winner of the Lenin Peace Prize in 1963. He saw himself as an African Lenin.
[ 0050 ] Clark, J. P. America Their America. London. 1968. Heinemann. 0435900501. African Writers Series. 224 pages. paperback. AWS50..

DESCRIPTION - The Nigerian poet and playwright's criticism of American society. This book arose from the author's experiences as a Parvin scholar at Princeton. 'His account of God's Own Country spares nobody. It does not spare himself. America their America deserves to be read for its difference. It is a vivid, prickly book.' - The Times. ‘A vehement and colourful picture of that other America their America.' - Times Literary Supplement. 'Mr Clark's brilliant tour de force.' - Daily Times. 'Mr Clark has turned a poet's angry eye on America and his work is not so much a sociological analysis as an authentic and rather harrowing slice of his own life.. what his attitude emphasizes.. is the terrifying gap between complacent, middle-class America and emergent, revolutionary Africa.' - Sydney Morning Herald. 'He reports their [his American hosts'] dialogue with witty accuracy and dismisses their pretensions with arrogant ease. He finds America old and nervous.' - New Statesman. Published in association with Andre Deutsch.

John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo (6 April 1935 - 13 October 2020) was a Nigerian poet and playwright, who also published as J. P. Clark and John Pepper Clark. Born in Kiagbodo, Nigeria, to an Ijaw father and Urhobo mother, Clark received his early education at the Native Authority School, Okrika (Ofinibenya-Ama), in Burutu LGA (then Western Ijaw) and the prestigious Government College in Ughelli, and his BA degree in English at the University of Ibadan, where he edited various magazines, including the Beacon and The Horn. Upon graduation from Ibadan in 1960, he worked as an information officer in the Ministry of Information, in the old Western Region of Nigeria, as features editor of the Daily Express, and as a research fellow at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan. He served for several years as a professor of English at the University of Lagos, a position from which he retired in 1980. While at the University of Lagos he was co-editor of the literary magazine Black Orpheus. In 1982, along with his wife Ebun Odutola (a professor and former director of the Centre for Cultural Studies at the University of Lagos), he founded the PEC Repertory Theatre in Lagos. A widely travelled man, Clark held visiting professorial appointments at several institutions of higher learning, including Yale and Wesleyan University in the United States.
[ 0051 ] Ngugi wa Thiong'o. The Black Hermit. Oxford. 1968. Heinemann. 043590051x. African Writers Series. 77 pages. paperback. AWS51. Cover illustration by Shyam Varma.

DESCRIPTION - Should Remi, the first of his Kenyan tribe to go to University, return to his people from the city? Should he return to Thoni, his brother's widow, whom he has had to marry under tribal custom? Or should he continue to be a ‘black hermit' in the town, visiting the night-clubs with his friend Jane? Should he be supporting the Africanist Party when his people feel that colonial oppression has just been replaced by another form? These are the dramatic conflicts in this play which has been performed at the Uganda National Theatre.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o (born January 5, 1938) is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gikuyu. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal, Mutiiri. In 1977, Ngugi embarked upon a novel form of theater in his native Kenya which sought to liberate the theatrical process from what he held to be ‘the general bourgeois education system', by encouraging spontaneity and audience participation in the performances. Ngugi's project sought to ‘demystify' the theatrical process, and to avoid the ‘process of alienation [which] produces a gallery of active stars and an undifferentiated mass of grateful admirers' which, according to Ngugi, encourages passivity in ‘ordinary people'. Although Ngaahika Ndeenda was a commercial success, it was shut down by the authoritarian Kenyan regime six weeks after its opening. Ngugi was subsequently imprisoned for over a year. Adopted as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, the artist was released from prison, and fled Kenya. In the United States, he taught at Yale University for some years, and has since also taught at New York University, with a dual professorship in Comparative Literature and Performance Studies, and the University of California, Irvine. Ngugi has frequently been regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His son is the author Mukoma wa Ngugi. Ngugi was born in Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kiambu district, Kenya, of Kikuyu descent, and baptised James Ngugi. His family was caught up in the Mau Mau War; his half brother Mwangi was actively involved in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, and his mother was tortured at Kamriithu homeguard post. He received a B.A. in English from Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, in 1963; during his education, a play of his, THE BLACK HERMIT, was produced in Kampala in 1962. He published his first novel, WEEP NOT, CHILD, in 1964, which he wrote while attending the University of Leeds in England. It was the first novel in English to be published by an East African. His second novel, THE RIVER BETWEEN (1965), has as its background the Mau Mau rebellion, and described an unhappy romance between Christians and non-Christians. THE RIVER BETWEEN is currently on Kenya's national secondary school syllabus. His novel A Grain of Wheat (1967) marked his embrace of Fanonist Marxism. He subsequently renounced English, Christianity, and the name James Ngugi as colonialist; he changed his name back to Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and began to write in his native Gikuyu and Swahili. The uncensored political message of his 1977 play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I WILL MARRY WHEN I WANT) provoked then Vice President Daniel arap Moi to order his arrest. While detained in the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, he wrote the first modern novel in Gikuyu, Caitaani mutharaba-Ini (DEVIL ON THE CROSS), on prison-issued toilet paper. After his release, he was not reinstated to his job as professor at Nairobi University, and his family was harassed. Due to his writing about the injustices of the dictatorial government at the time, Ngugi and his family were forced to live in exile. Only after Arap Moi was voted out of office, 22 years later, was it safe for them to return. His later works include Detained, his prison diary (1981), DECOLONISING THE MIND: THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE IN AFRICAN LITERATURE (1986), an essay arguing for African writers' expression in their native languages, rather than European languages, in order to renounce lingering colonial ties and to build an authentic African literature, and MATIGARI (1987), one of his most famous works, a satire based on a Gikuyu folktale. In 1992 he became a professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University, where he held the Erich Maria Remarque Chair. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature as well as the Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine. On August 8, 2004, Ngugi returned to Kenya as part of a month-long tour of East Africa. On August 11, robbers broke into his apartment: they assaulted both the Professor and his wife, and stole money and a computer. Since then, Ngugi has returned to America, and in the summer 2006 the American publishing firm Random House published his first new novel in nearly two decades, WIZARD OF THE CROW, translated to English from Gikuyu by the author. On November 10, 2006, while in San Francisco at Hotel Vitale at the Embarcadero, Ngugi was harassed and ordered to leave the hotel by an employee. The event led to a public outcry and angered the Kenyan community in the San Francisco Bay area and abroad, prompting an apology by the hotel.
[ 0052 ] Sellassie, B. M. Sahle. The Afersata: An Ethiopian Novel. London. 1969. Heinemann. 0435900528. African Writers Series. 90 pages. paperback. AWS52. Cover illustration by Pedro Guedes.

DESCRIPTION - 'The night Narnaga's hut was burnt down all the inhabitants of the thirty villages of Wudma were asleep.' Who is the culprit? The men set about finding out by means of the ancient institution of the Afersata, the traditional Ethiopian way of investigating crimes. Although various sessions are held and many witnesses are examined nobody is found guilty. This story centres round the Afersata and vividly shows the interaction of characters in such circumstances. There are the petty government officials who authorise the holding of the Afersata meetings, the elders who conduct the Afersata ceremony, members of the submerged class who see a recognition of their civic rights in being allowed to sit at the meetings and young civil servants who, advocate reforms. They all help to bring this African village to life.

SAHLE SELLASSIE BERHANE MARIAM was born in 1936. He has studied at the University College in Addis Ababa, l'UniversitE d'Aix-Marseille and at the University of California, Los Angeles. He contributed short stories and articles in English and Amharic to publications in Ethiopia. Shinega's Village, a novel written in Chaha, has been published in English by the University of California Press, and Wotat Yifredew, a novel in Amharic, appeared in Addis Ababa. He is now a staff training officer.
[ 0053 ] Palangyo, Peter K. Dying in the Sun. London. 1968. Heinemann. African Writers Series. 136 pages. paperback. AWS53..

DESCRIPTION - 'Word of mouth had come to him in the town, telling him that his father was sick and near death and that he wanted, before he died, to see his son, bless him, and leave him the affairs of the family. Without understanding or caring, Ntanya had sold his only good pair of trousers to get home. Without understanding or caring he had lost his sixty-shillings-a-month job because his boss would not give him time off to visit his dying father. Without understanding, he was now asking casually whether his father was dead or not. God, his father! He had never known what the word father meant, now or any other time. He never understood what brought him here. It was not filial piety. This man had caused the death of his mother through unfairly inflicting upon her the corroding sorrow of the spirit. This man's sole claim on him was fatherhood. Through days and nights Ntanya questions his relationship with his father. Out of this period of emotional upheaval grows his love for Teresa, whom he rescues from the local bar. At the same time James, an old school friend, loses his job as the Chief government official in the village. So the three of them find themselves emotionally inter-dependent at this tense period of their lives. This powerfully-felt novel brings promise of an important new writer from Tanzania.

PETER K. PALANGYO, born on 17th August 1939, is a biologist by training. Out of 150 pupils at Nmoranga in Tanzania he was one of the four who went on to Old Moshi Secondary School. At the Graduate School in the University of Minnesota he changed his mind about continuing his studies in the sciences and developed a strong interest in literature. He then took a diploma in education at MakerEre before starting to teach at his old school at Moshi. After a year at appointed Mkwawa he was Principal of Lyamungu Secondary School. A year later he became Principal of one of Dar es Salaam's leading day schools, H.H. The Aga Khan Boys' Secondary School. He is now going to do post-graduate work in English Literature.
[ 0053 ] Palangyo, Peter K. Dying in the Sun. London. 1968. Heinemann. 0435906178. African Writers Series. 136 pages. hardcover. AWS53..

DESCRIPTION - 'Word of mouth had come to him in the town, telling him that his father was sick and near death and that he wanted, before he died, to see his son, bless him, and leave him the affairs of the family. Without understanding or caring, Ntanya had sold his only good pair of trousers to get home. Without understanding or caring he had lost his sixty-shillings-a-month job because his boss would not give him time off to visit his dying father. Without understanding, he was now asking casually whether his father was dead or not. God, his father! He had never known what the word father meant, now or any other time. He never understood what brought him here. It was not filial piety. This man had caused the death of his mother through unfairly inflicting upon her the corroding sorrow of the spirit. This man's sole claim on him was fatherhood. Through days and nights Ntanya questions his relationship with his father. Out of this period of emotional upheaval grows his love for Teresa, whom he rescues from the local bar. At the same time James, an old school friend, loses his job as the Chief government official in the village. So the three of them find themselves emotionally inter-dependent at this tense period of their lives. This powerfully-felt novel brings promise of an important new writer from Tanzania.

PETER K. PALANGYO, born on 17th August 1939, is a biologist by training. Out of 150 pupils at Nmoranga in Tanzania he was one of the four who went on to Old Moshi Secondary School. At the Graduate School in the University of Minnesota he changed his mind about continuing his studies in the sciences and developed a strong interest in literature. He then took a diploma in education at MakerEre before starting to teach at his old school at Moshi. After a year at appointed Mkwawa he was Principal of Lyamungu Secondary School. A year later he became Principal of one of Dar es Salaam's leading day schools, H.H. The Aga Khan Boys' Secondary School. He is now going to do post-graduate work in English Literature.
[ 0054 ] Serumaga, Robert. Return to the Shadows. London. 1969. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS54..

DESCRIPTION - Joe Musizi, a politician at heart, must flee his country after a coup. Robert Serumaga uses cutting humor and cynicism to be the storyteller of a country, which, though split by many forces, is painfully working towards a union of 'body and spirit.' He shows the agony of the individual caught between his somewhat shaky ideals and the realities of power. 'In his first novel, Mr. Serumaga has touched on some of those strained, unanswered questions that have plagued some of the independent countries in Africa. He does not in any way condone the innocent or silent, nor condemn the wicked or unjust.'--'WestAfrica' 'Uganda as a source of the Nile has also been a source of great poetry, fiction and theater. Robert Serumuga is among the gems of Uganda's postcolonial literature. His life was a response to the Muse; his death was a response to martyrdom.'--Ali A. Mazrui, Director of Global Cultural Studies, State University of New York, Binghamton, Producer, 'The Africans' PBS Television.

Robert Bellarmino Serumaga (1939 - September 1980) was a Ugandan playwright. Born to a Roman Catholic family in Buganda, Serumaga was raised by his mother, Geraldine Namotovu. He won scholarships to study at St Mary's College, Kisubi and St Henry's College, Kitovu. He studied economics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he encountered Irish theatre and the Theatre of the Absurd. He returned to Uganda in 1966 or 1967. Initially employed as a government economist, he soon moved towards the theatre. He founded the National Theatre Company in 1967, writing A Play (1967), The Elephants (1970) and Majangwa (1971) for them. These plays were all influenced by absurdism, the lack of narrative action mirroring the stagnation of Ugandan society under Milton Obote. In 1971, the year Idi Amin came to power, Serumaga founded a private theatre group made up of fourteen school leavers. Initially known as Theatre Limited, the group was later renamed the Abafumi ('Storyteller') Theatre Company. Serumaga drew on the theories of Constantin Stanislavski and Jerzy Grotowski to train his company in the psychological identification of actor and character. More fundamentally, he created a new dramatic form for Abafumi. By means of an abstract drama of physical movement and dance, political criticism of Amin could be enacted without censorship: He developed modes of drama - based mostly on ritual and mime - that could represent the climate of violence and death that dominated this period without drawing the unwanted attention of the ruthless military class. Amayrikitti was even performed at Amin's invitation at the 1974 Organization of African Unity Meeting in Kampala, with Amin describing it approvingly as 'gymnastics'. Becoming disillusioned with Amin, Serumaga left Uganda in 1977. In exile in the late 1970s, he was involved in the liberation army that ousted Amin in 1979. He helped form the subsequent coalition government, briefly serving as Minister of Commerce under President Yusuf Lule. Robert Serumaga died in mysterious circumstances in Nairobi in 1980, reportedly of a brain haemorrhage. The Serumaga Organization, a non-profit organization run by Serumaga's daughter, is named in his memory.
[ 0055 ] Konadu, Asare. Ordained By the Oracle. London. 1969. Heinemann. 0435900552. African Writers Series. 188 pages. paperback. AWS55. Cover illustration by Pedro Guedes. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - Boateng, a prosperous trader in Elmina, has the beginnings of disbelief in the old customs. His wife dies suddenly and he is put through forty days and forty nights of ritual. At this time of emotional crisis he begins to see the reasons behind the rites. The conflicting strains of emotion and social behaviour are vividly shown by this practised writer.

SAMUEL ASARE KONADU was born at Asamang in Ashanti, Central Ghana, in 1932 and educated at the local primary/middle school and later at the Abuakwa State College in Southern Ghana. In 1951 he joined the Ghana Information Service and worked as a reporter on a number of government newspapers and in broadcasting. He later went to London and then to study journalism at Strasbourg University before joining the Ghana News Agency. In 1963 he devoted himself entirely to research into traditional customs and to writing. A novel, A Woman in her Prime, has already been published in African Writers Series. He has written several others. He has now started his own publishing firm, Anowuo Publications and its first books have met with remarkable success.
[ 0056 ] Nwapa, Flora. Idu. London. 1970. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS56..

DESCRIPTION - Idu is a 1970 novel and the second novel put out by Nigerian novelist Flora Nwapa. The book centers around Idu, a young woman in a Nigerian village whose husband has died, and her efforts to be reunited with him. The novel has been seen as one of Nwapa's more controversial works for its focus on Idu's reliance on her husband.

Florence Nwanzuruahu Nkiru Nwapa (13 January 1931 - 16 October 1993), was a Nigerian author who has been called the mother of modern African literature. She was the forerunner to a generation of African women writers, and was also acknowledged as the first African woman novelist to be published in the English language in Britain. She achieved international recognition, with her first novel Efuru, published in 1966 at the age of 30 years by Heinemann Educational Books. While never considering herself a feminist, she was best known for recreating life and traditions from an Igbo woman's viewpoint. Nwapa is also known for her governmental work in reconstruction after the Biafran War, in particular, she worked with orphans and refugees who were displaced during the war. Furthermore, she published African literature and promoted women in African society. She was one of the first African women publishers when she founded Tana Press in Nigeria in 1970.
[ 0057 ] Dipoko, Mbella Sonne. Because of Women. London. 1969. Heinemann. 0435900579. African Writers Series. 178 pages. paperback. AWS57. Cover Illustration by Ely Kyeyune.

DESCRIPTION - The author says ‘BECAUSE OF WOMEN is a study in pleasure and change. The story of a womaniser who dreams of founding a large family. The novel tries to show the deep joy there is in women.' Ngoso is faced with choosing between Ewudu, who is probably barren, and Njale, who is expecting his child. When Njale accuses him of sleeping with a third woman, Inon, who is his friend's wife, he attacks her savagely and she goes. This leaves Ngoso free to follow his passion for Ewudu. News comes to him by river that Njale has died from a miscarriage brought on by his assault. However Ngoso's problems are far from solved. It turns out that Njale and the child are alive and Ewudu leaves him only to return when it is too late.

Mbella Sonne Dipoko (1936 in Douala - December 5, 2009 in Tiko) was a novelist, poet and painter from Cameroon. He is widely considered to be one of the foremost writers of Anglophone Cameroonian literature. Dipoko was born in 1936 in Douala, Cameroon, but grew up in Western Cameroon and Nigeria. He joined the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in 1958 and became a News Reporter. He lived in France from 1960 to 1968. For a time he was on the editorial staff of PrEsEnce Africaine. He then read law at the University of Paris. He had already shown a rare talent in his novel A FEW NIGHTS AND DAYS (Longmans 1966) which was set in Paris.
[ 0058 ] Beier, Ulli (editor). Political Spider: Stories From 'Black Orpheus'. New York. 1969. Heinemann. 0435900587. African Writers Series. 118 pages. paperback. AWS58. Cover illustration by Georgian Beier.

DESCRIPTION - Many of the best-known names in African writing made an early appearance in the pioneering magazine Black Orpheus. This selection gathers together some of their stories and extracts from novels. Most were written in English but there are also translations from Yoruba, French and Portuguese. CONTENTS: Introduction; THE AFRICAN TRADITION - Kako by D. O. Fagunwa; Ajaiyi and the Witch Doctor by Amos Tutuola; The Mouth that commits an Offence by Bajare Gbadamosi; Political Spider by Andrew Salkey; The Third Gift by Jan Carew; THE ISLAMIC WORLD - A Beautiful Wedding by Mohaaed Dib; The Descendants by Ousmane Soce; Zebra by Mouloud Mammeri; Ambiguous Adventure by Cheikh Amidou Kane; THE MODERN WORK - Revenge by Henri Krea; The Hands of the Blacks by Luis Bernardo Honwana; Blankets by Alex La Guma; The Voter by Chinua Achebe; PEOPLE - Uncle Ben's Choice by Chinua Achebe; Certain Winds from the South by Ama Ata Aidoo; Constable by O. R. Dathorne; The Bark by Bishr Fares.

ULLI BEIER, having acted as a catalyst in the publication of Nigerian writers and the showing of Nigerian artists, is now in charge of the teaching of literature in English in the University of Papua and New Guinea. He was the editor of Black Orpheus and was a founder of the Mbari Clubs of Ibadan and Oshogbo. His publications are numerous, vital and important.
[ 0059 ] Asare, Bediako. Rebel. London. 1976. Heinemann. 0435900595. African Writers Series. 160 pages. paperback. AWS59. Cover photo by Werner Forman.

DESCRIPTION - Rebel is an allegorical novel of great excitement about the conflict of old and new ideas. The people of Pachanga, isolated and unknown on an island off the coast of Africa, face extinction through starvation. Ngurumo realises that the patch of land which his people are endlessly tilling for food is rapidly becoming worn out. He has seen, not far off, a wonderfully lush plain beside a river. He tries to persuade his people that, because the grass grows so well, they could produce better crops if they moved there. Mzee Matata, the conservative fetish priest and ruler, says that the gods forbid it. He is already known to have been responsible for several deaths. People who displease him die strangely. He sees Ngurumo s a threat to his authority and arranges for his murder during a hunting expedition. The plot fails but this is only the beginning of Ngurumo's hazardous fight for leadership.

Bediako Asare is an African journalist and author, initially from Ghana. He began his career working on local newspapers, then relocated to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to help launch The Nationalist newspaper. In 1969 he published his novel Rebel, about the conflict between traditional ways and modernity in Sub-Saharan Africa. Writing in Africa Report, Sheila Wilson said of The Rebel: 'The story is simple and the language unpretentious, and the impact of change and hope gives strength and quality to the novel.' Asare's novel The Stubborn was published in Nairobi in 1976. Stephen H. Arnold, reviewing it in the African Book Publishing Record, noted that its intended audience was '15-18 year olds of East African ruling classes' and that: 'The main themes are science versus superstition and the value of counsel from elders.'
[ 0060 ] Honwana, Luís Bernardo. We Killed Mangy Dog and Other Stories. Oxford. 1989. Heinemann. 0435900609. African Writers Series. Translated from the Portuguese by Dorothy Guedes. 117 pages. paperback. AWS60. Cover illustration by Pedro Guedes.

DESCRIPTION - ‘A deft and individual talent is at work in these stones set m a small village in Mozambique.' Lewis Nkosi says (South Africa: Information and Analysis) of the longest story: '.. a hauntingly beautiful story, whose simplicity of narrative conceals an extraordinarily sharp poetic insight into the theme of life and death, the impulse of love and violence. ‘We killed Mangy-Dog' is a story which skillfully uses symbols in a manner which brings into artistic unity emotions of fear and hatred, protective love and cruel victimization - a paradigm of a society in which brutality is equated with masculinity, love and protectiveness with weakness and cowardice. And yet, not once does Honwana speak directly of these things; not once does he raise his voice to harangue us.'

Luís Bernardo Honwana (born 1942) is a Mozambican author and statesman. Luís Bernardo Honwana was born Luís Augusto Bernardo Manuel in Lourenço Marques (present-day Maputo), Mozambique. His parents, Raúl Bernardo Manuel (Honwana) and Naly Jeremias Nhaca, belonged to the Ronga people from Moamba, a town about 55 km northwest of Maputo. In 1964 he became a militant with FRELIMO, a front that had the objective to liberate Mozambique from Portuguese colonial rule. Due to his political activities he was arrested by the colonial authorities and was incarcerated for three years, from 1964-1967. In 1970, he went to Portugal and did a law degree at the University of Lisbon. For some time, he worked as a journalist. In 1975, upon independence, he became Director of the Office of President Samora Machel. In 1982, he became the Secretary of State for Culture of Mozambique. In 1986, he was appointed Minister of Culture of Mozambique. In 1987, he was elected a member of the Executive Council of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). He served on the Executive Board of UNESCO from 1987 to 1991 and was chairman of UNESCO's Intergovernmental Committee for the World Decade for Culture and Development. In 1995, he was appointed director of the newly opened UNESCO office in South Africa. Since he retired from the organization in 2002, he has been active in research in the arts, history, and ethno-linguistics. In 1991, he founded Fundo Bibliográfico de Língua Portuguesa and later founded Organização Nacional dos Jornalistas de Moçambique (National Organization of Journalists of Mozambique), Associação Moçambicana de Fotografia (Mozambican Photography Association), and Associação dos Escritores Moçambicanos (Mozambican Writers Association). He was also the executive director of Fundação para a Conservação da Biodiversidade (BIOFUND, Foundation for the Conservation of Biodiversity). For decades, Honwana was the author of a single book, Nos Matámos o Cão-Tinhoso (1964), a classic of African literature and the most widely read and influential Lusophone African fiction ever published. It was translated into English by Dorothy Guedes as We Killed Mangy Dog and Other Stories (1969). He self-published Nos Matámos o Cão-Tinhoso when he was 22 while a political prisoner of PIDE. He also published the tale 'Hands of the Blacks'. We Killed Mangy Dog is a collection of short stories set in the (Portuguese) colonial era at the turn of the sixties and is reflective of the harsh life black Mozambicans lived under the Salazar regime. It 'denuncia e contesta a realidade brutal de Moçambique na Epoca do colonialismo' (denounces and challenges the brutal reality of Mozambique in the era of colonialism).[9] Honwana's stories were written for a greater purpose than entertainment and amusement. They 'raise questions about social exploration, racial segregation, and class and education distinctions.' Several of the stories are told from the point of view of children or alienated adolescents and most feature the rich mix of races, religions and ethnicities that would later preoccupy Mozambique's most internationally celebrated writer, Mia Couto. In 2017, more than fifty years after he published his first book, Honwana published a second book, nonfiction, titled A Veha Casa de Madeira e Zinco (The Old House of Wood and Zinc), a collection of previously published essays and other commentary. According to Patrick Chabal, 'Honwana greatly influenced the post-colonial generation of younger prose writers and has rightly been regarded as stylistically accomplished.' Honwana is considered 'an iconic figure in the development of Mozambican literary prose style.'
[ 0061 ] Umeasiegbu, Rems Nna. The Way We Lived: Ibo Customs and Stories. London. 1969. Heinemann. 0435900617. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS61..

DESCRIPTION - A chronicle of folk tales from pre colonial Nigeria.

Rems Nnanyelugo Umeasiegbu (born 1 October 1943), is Nigerian professor, scholar, novelist, poet and folklorist from south-eastern Nigeria. He was also a Principal Lecturer at the Institute of Management and Technology, Enugu (1978-1982), and Head of Department, Mass Communications, IMT, Nigeria (1982-1986) and professor of oral literature at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka as well as a consultant to Koruna Books Publications.
[ 0062 ] Okigbo, Christopher. Labyrinths: Poems. New York. 1971. Heinemann/Africana Publishing Corporation. 0841900167. African Writers Series. 72 pages. paperback. AWS62..

DESCRIPTION - Although these poems were written and published separately, they are, in fact, organically related. Heavensgate was originally conceived as an Easter sequence. It later grew into a ceremony of innocence, something like a mass, an offering to Idoto, the village stream of which I drank, in which I washed, as a child; the celebrant, a personage like Orpheus, is about to begin a journey. Cleansing involves total nakedness, a complete self-surrender to the water spirit that nurtures all creation. The various sections of the poem, therefore, present this celebrant at various stations of his cross. Limits and Distances are man's outer and inner worlds projected - the phenomenal and the imaginative, not in terms of their separateness but of their relationship - an attempt to reconcile the universal opposites of life and death in a live-die proposition: one is the other and either is both. ‘Siren Limits' presents a protagonist in pursuit of the white elephant. In his progression to a sacred waterfront he falls victim to his own demonic obsession, becomes disembodied or loses his second self. ‘Fragments out of the deluge' renders in retrospect certain details of the protagonist and of his milieu -the collective rape of innocence and profanation of the mysteries, in atonement for which he has had to suffer immolation. (Limits was written at the end of a journey of several centuries from Nsukka to Yola in pursuit of what turned out to be an illusion.) Distances is, on the other hand, a poem of homecoming, but of homecoming in its spiritual and psychic aspect. The quest broken off after ‘Siren Limits' is resumed, this time in the unconscious. The self that suffers, that experiences, ultimately finds fulfillment in a form of psychic union with the supreme spirit that is both destructive and creative. The process is one of sensual anaesthesia, of total liberation from all physical and emotional tension; the end result, a state of aesthetic grace. (Distances was written after my first experience of surgery under general anaesthesia.) Between Limits and Distances an interval, Silences, is provided, in which two groups of mourners explore the possibilities of poetic metaphor in an attempt to elicit the music to which all imperishable cries must aspire. Both parts of Silences were inspired by the events of the day: Lament of the Silent Sisters, by the Western Nigeria Crisis of 1962, and the death of Patrice Lumumba; Lament of the Drums, by the imprisonment of Obafemi Awolowo, and the tragic death of his eldest son. The ‘Silent Sisters' are, however, sometimes like the drowning Franciscan nuns of Hopkins' The Wreck of the Deutschland, sometimes like the ‘Sirenes' of Debussy's Nocturne - two dissonant dreams associated in the dominant motif ‘NO in thunder' (from one of Melville's letters to Hawthorne). This motif is developed by a series of related airs from sources as diverse as Malcolm Cowley, Raja Ratnam, Stephane Mallarme, Rabindranath Tagore, Garcia Lorca and the yet unpublished Peter Thomas - airs which enable the ‘Silent Sisters' to evoke, quite often by calling wolf, consonant tunes in life and letters. Section I, for instance, erects an illusion, a storm-tossed ship at mid-sea. The image of drowning virgins, and the dream of ultimate martyrdom are, however, also present. The illusion is enlarged by the motif of carrion-comfort (from one of Hopkins' poems). Section II develops this latter motif in the image of flies and splintered flames gloating over a carrion. The chorus breaks into a ‘swan song' in Section III; and in the alternation (Section IV) between the [xii] Introduction Crier and the Chorus the sea herself, hidden face of the dream, is celebrated in her many colours. In Section V the main actors in the events of the day become almost recognizable in the opening couplets. The problem ‘How does one say NO in thunder' is then finally resolved in silence. For the ultimate answer is to be sought only in terms of each poet's response to his medium. Labyrinths is thus a fable of man's perennial quest for fulfilment. (The tide may suggest Minos' legendary palace at Cnossus, but the double headed axe is as much a symbol of sovereignty in traditional Ibo society as in Crete. Besides, the long and tortuous passage to the shrine of the ‘long-juju' of the Aro Ibos may perhaps, best be described as a labyrinth.) Inevitably, several presences haunt the complex of rooms and ante-rooms, of halls and corridors that lead to the palace of the White Goddess, and in which a country visitor might easily lose his way. Nevertheless, a poet-protagonist is assumed throughout; a personage, however, much larger than Orpheus; one with a load of destiny on his head, rather like Gilgamesh, like Aeneas, like the hero of Melville's Moby Dick, like the Fisher King of Eliot's Waste Land; a personage for whom the progression through ‘Heavensgate' through ‘Limits' through ‘Distances' is like telling the beads of a rosary; except that the beads are neither stone nor agate but globules of anguish strung together on memory. Every work of this kind is necessarily a cry of anguish - of the root extending its branches of coral, of corals extending their roots into each living hour; the swell of the silent sea the great heaving dream at its highest, the thunder of splitting pods - the tears scatter, take root, the cotyledons broken, burgeon into laughter of leaf; or else rot into vital hidden roles in the nitrogen cycle. The present dream clamoured to be born a cadenced cry: silence to appease the fever of flight beyond the iron gate. - from the introduction by Christopher Okigbo.

Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo (August 16, 1932–1967) was a Nigerian poet, teacher, and librarian, who died fighting for the independence of Biafra. He is today widely acknowledged as an outstanding postcolonial English-language African poet and one of the major modernist writers of the 20th century.
[ 0063 ] Ousmane, Sembene. God’s Bits of Wood. Portsmouth. 1970. Heinemann. 0435900633. Translated from the French by Francis Price. African Writers Series. 333 pages. paperback. AWS63. Cover design by Michael Norris.

DESCRIPTION - In 1947-8 the railway workers on the Dakar-Niger line came out on strike. This novel is an imaginative evocation of how those long days affected the lives of the people who lived along the hundreds of miles of track. One sees what ordinary workers and their families put up with. But from the moment they were successful, the strikers could live with the presence of the Europeans; it showed that they could regain control of their country. This is one of the most important experiments there has been in attempting to synthesize a traditional African narrative form with the European novel.

Ousmane Sembene, who was born into a Senegalese fishing family in 1923, worked at a diversity of jobs before writing his first book, THE BLACK DOCKER, in 1956. Since then he has written several novels and short story collections, through which he tells the saga of his land and its people. He has also gained a reputation for his films, particularly BLACK GIRL and THE MONEY ORDER, which were well received both in the U.S. and abroad.
[ 0064 ] Pieterse, Cosmo (editor). Seven South African Poets: Poems of Exile. London. 0. Heinemann. African Writers Series. Collected and selected by Cosmo Pieterse. paperback. AWS64. Illustration by Dumile.

DESCRIPTION -

Cosmo George Leipoldt Pieterse (born 1930 in Windhoek, Namibia) is a South African playwright, actor, poet, literary critic and anthologist.
[ 0065 ] Emecheta, Buchi. The Joys of Motherhood. Oxford. 1980. Heinemann. 043590972x. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS65..

DESCRIPTION - Nnu Ego is a woman devoted to her children, giving them all her energy, all her worldly possessions, indeed, all her life to them -- with the result that she finds herself friendless and alone in middle age. This story of a young mother's struggles in 1950s Lagos is a powerful commentary on polygamy, patriarchy, and women's changing roles in urban Nigeria.

Buchi Emecheta (born 21 July 1944, in Lagos) is a Nigerian novelist who has published over 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education have won her considerable critical acclaim and honours, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005. Emecheta once described her stories as ‘stories of the world…[where]… women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical.'
[ 0065 ] Emecheta, Buchi. The Joys of Motherhood. Oxford. 1989. Heinemann. 0435906844. African Writers Series. 224 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing and Gary Rowland. Cover illustration by Hannah Firmin.

DESCRIPTION - Nnu Ego is a woman devoted to her children, giving them all her energy, all her worldly possessions, indeed, all her life to them -- with the result that she finds herself friendless and alone in middle age. This story of a young mother's struggles in 1950s Lagos is a powerful commentary on polygamy, patriarchy, and women's changing roles in urban Nigeria.

Buchi Emecheta (born 21 July 1944, in Lagos) is a Nigerian novelist who has published over 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education have won her considerable critical acclaim and honours, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005. Emecheta once described her stories as ‘stories of the world…[where]… women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical.'
[ 0066 ] Salih, Tayeb. Season of Migration to the North. London. 1970. Heinemann. 0435900668. African Writers Series. Translated by Denys Johnson-Davies from the Arabic. 169 pages. paperback. AWS66. Cover design by Bill Hayes.

DESCRIPTION - After years of study in Europe, the young narrator of Season of Migration to the North returns to his village along the Nile in the Sudan. It is the 1960s, and he is eager to make a contribution to the new postcolonial life of his country. Back home, he discovers a stranger among the familiar faces of childhood - the enigmatic Mustafa Sa'eed. Mustafa takes the young man into his confidence, telling him the story of his own years in London, of his brilliant career as an economist, and of the series of fraught and deadly relationships with European women that led to a terrible public reckoning and his return to his native land. But what is the meaning of Mustafa's shocking confession? Mustafa disappears without explanation, leaving the young man - whom he has asked to look after his wife - in an unsettled and violent no-man's-land between Europe and Africa, tradition and innovation, holiness and defilement, and man and woman, from which no one will escape unaltered or unharmed. Season of Migration to the North is a rich and sensual work of deep honesty and incandescent lyricism. In 2001 it was selected by a panel of Arab writers and critics as the most important Arab novel of the twentieth century.

Tayeb Salih (12 July 1929 - 18 February 2009) was a Sudanese writer. Born in Karmakol, near the village of Al Dabbah in the Northern Province of Sudan, he studied at the University of Khartoum before leaving for the University of London in England. Coming from a background of small farmers and religious teachers, his original intention was to work in agriculture. However, excluding a brief spell as a schoolmaster before coming to England, his working life was in broadcasting. For more than ten years, Salih wrote a weekly column for the London-based Arabic language newspaper al Majalla in which he explored various literary themes. He worked for the BBC's Arabic Service and later became director general of the Ministry of Information in Doha, Qatar. He spent the last 10 years of his working career with UNESCO in Paris, where he held various posts and was UNESCO's representative in the Gulf States. Tayeb Saleh's writing is drawn from his experience of communal village life that is centered on people and their complex relationships. 'At various levels and with varying degrees of psychoanalytic emphasis, he deals with themes of reality and illusion, the cultural dissonance between the West and the exotic orient, the harmony and conflict of brotherhood, and the individual's responsibility to find a fusion between his or her contradictions' (Tayeb Salih (n.d)). It can be said that the motifs of his books are derived from his Islamic background and his experience of modern Africa, both pre- and post-colonial (Tayeb Salih (n.d)). Mawsim al-Hijra ila al-Shamal was published in Arabic in 1966, and in English as Season of Migration to the North in 1969. It is narrated by a young man who returns to his village of Wad Hamad in the northern Shamaliyah province in Sudan, after studying in Europe for seven years, eager to make a contribution to the new postcolonial life of his country. Once back, the narrator discovers a stranger among the familiar faces of childhood: the enigmatic Mustafa Sa'eed. Sa'eed takes the young man into his confidence, 'telling him the story of his own years in London in the early part of the twentieth century, of his brilliant career as an economist, and of the series of fraught and deadly relationships with European women that led to a terrible public reckoning and his return to his native land.' Salih achieved immediate acclaim when Season of Migration to the North was first published in Beirut. In 2001, the book was declared the most important Arabic novel of the 20th century by the Arab Literary Academy. The novel was banned in Saleh's native Sudan for several years despite the fact that it won him prominence and fame worldwide. Urs' al-Zayn (published in English as 'The Wedding of Zein) is a comic novella published in 1969 centering on the unlikely nuptials of the town eccentric Zein. Tall and odd-looking, with just two teeth in his mouth, Zein has made a reputation for himself as the man who falls in love over and over with girls who promptly marry other men- to the point where mothers seek him out in hopes that he will draw the eye of available suitors to their eligible daughters. (The Boston Bibiophile, 2010). the year he stroke up the yearly award Yearly Award, Endorsed by Tayeb Salih during his life and organized by Abdelkarim Mirghani Cultural Centre, Omdurman,Sudan. A group of Salih's friends and fans formed a committee to honour him in 1998. The committee collected $ 20,000 for Tayeb Salih's personal use. However, he indicated his desire to utilize the money in launching a cultural initiative that supports literary life in Sudan. Abdelkarim Mirghani Cultural Centre's Board of Trustees established an independent secretariat to administer the Prize award and the associated activities. A committee of writers and academics in Sudan receives and evaluates the participating novels, and selects the winners. The winners are announced on the 21st of October of each year and the winning titles are published by Abdelkarim Mirghani Cultural Centre. The award of the Prize is usually accompanied by a conference on various aspects of Sudanese literature. The first Prize was awarded in 2003. In 2008, Abdelkarim Mirghani Cultural Centre launched another prize under the name Tayeb Salih Short Story Writing Prize for Youth.
[ 0067 ] Nwankwo, Nkem. Danda. London. 1970. Heinemann. 0435900678. African Writers Series. 208 pages. paperback. AWS67. Cover design by Michale Whittlesea.

DESCRIPTION - 'Danda is the name of Nwankwo's picaresque hero, a gay, high-spirited ‘akalogholi' (ne'er-do-well) who, dressed in a cloak adorned with small, bronze bells, jingles from one place to another in his village, dancing, singing, drinking, flirting with married and unmarried women and entertaining crowds of people with his antics and quips. Danda's buffoonery endears him to everyone except a few stuffy Elders and his father, Araba. Araba, a rich, grumpy old man who feels that he has suffered many disappointments in his life, wants Dahda, his greatest disappointment, to bring him honour, happiness and grandchildren in his old age. But Danda finds it difficult to change his frivolous ways and brings Araba only embarrassment and shame. The ill-tempered father's unsuccessful attempts to reform his impish, unpredictable son provide most of the comic thrust in this novel.. Although the structure of the novel is loose at the seams, Nwankwo's lively narrative style, capsule character sketches and keen eye for the incongruous make it a delight to read. Nwankwo like Okara and Achebe, has his characters speak in a simulated African vernacular style in which various Ibo expressions are translated verbatim into English.' - Bernth Lindfors in Books Abroad.

NKEM NWANKWO was born in 1936 in Nawfia-Awka near Onitsha. He was educated in Lagos and at University College, Ibadan. He taught at Ibadan Grammar School and then worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation. He won an Encounter prize for a play in 1960. Danda has been adapted for the stage.
[ 0068 ] Okara, Gabriel. The Voice. London. 1970. Heinemann. 0435900684. African Writers Series. Introduction by Arthur Ravenscroft. 127 pages. paperback. AWS68. Cover illustration by Pedro Guedes.

DESCRIPTION - Gabriel Okara's first novel, The Voice (1964), is a remarkable linguistic experiment in which Okara translated directly from the Ijo (Ijaw) language, imposing Ijo syntax onto English in order to give literal expression to African ideas and imagery. The novel creates a symbolic landscape in which the forces of traditional African culture and Western materialism contend. Its tragic hero, Okolo, is both an individual and a universal figure, and the ephemeral it that he is searching for could represent any number of transcendent moral values. Okara's skilled portrayal of the inner tensions of his hero distinguished him from many other Nigerian novelists.

Gabriel Okara was born at Bumoundi, Bayelsa State, in the Niger Delta in 1921 and educated at Government College Umuahia in Nigeria and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He worked as a bookbinder and printer for Federal Government Press at Lagos, served as the director of cultural and information services for the shortlived Republic of Biafra, and was the general manager of the Rivers State newspaper and broadcasting corporations. He is an honorary member of the Pan-African Writers' Association, a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, and is currently writer in residence at the University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. Brenda Marie Osbey is a poet and essayist. Her most recent volumes are History and Other Poems and All Souls: Essential Poems. A native of New Orleans, she is poet laureate emerita of Louisiana and distinguished visiting professor of Africana Studies at Brown University.
[ 0069 ] Liyong, Taban lo. Fixions: Stories by a Ugandan Writer. London. 1969. Heinemann. 0435900692. African Writers Series. 81 pages. paperback. AWS69..

DESCRIPTION - The stories in Fixions interlock experience of Africa and America, of English and Luo. They explore varieties of human tragedy. All people who enjoy good stories told well should find this collection rewarding. Taban lo Liyong has the gift of always keeping the reader alert with his literary innovations and curiousities.

Taban Lo Liyong (born 1939) is one of Africa's well-known poets and writers of fiction and literary criticism. His political views, as well as his on-going denigration of the post-colonial system of education in East Africa, have inspired criticism and controversy since the late 1960s. He was born in Uganda. After matriculation there, he attended Howard University and the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, where he was the first African to graduate in 1968. On the completion of his studies in the US, the tyrannical regime of Idi Amin prevented him from returning to Uganda. He went instead to neighbouring Kenya, and taught at the University of Nairobi. He has also taught at international universities in Sudan, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Japan, and South Africa, and maintains that his diverse experience offers an opportunity to place Africa in a position intellectually on par with the rest of the world, thereby recognising its various and valuable contributions to history and scholarship. In collaboration with Henry Owuor-Anyumba and renowned Kenyan academic and writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o, he wrote On the Abolition of the English Department in 1968. Acknowledging the formidable influence of European literature over African writing, Liyong and his colleagues called for the educational system to emphasise the oral tradition (as a key traditional African form of learning), Swahili literature, as well as prose and poetry from African-American and Caribbean society. Through On the Abolition of the English Department, Lo-Liyong and his allies attempted a re-consideration of the humanities curriculum at the University of Nairobi, most particularly of its investment in foreign (British) literature and culture. They questioned the value of an English Department in an African context: We have eyes, but we don't see. We have ears, but we don't hear. We can read, but we don't understand what we read. They suggested that the post-colonial African university must first establish a counter-curriculum of African languages and literatures and then return to a study of European and other world literatures from an African perspective: If there is a need for ‘study of the historic continuity of a single culture', why can't this be African? Why can't African literature be at the centre so that we can view other cultures in relationship to it? Liyong, Owuor-Anyumba, and wa Thiong'o were criticised for advocating cultural or even racial purity within academia. Rather, they sought to re-establish in East Africa traditional modes of knowledge and understanding in literature, in an effort towards authenticity and as a means for the region to better understand itself in the context of national independence. By placing African culture at the centre of education, all other things [would] be considered in their relevance to [the African] situation, and their contribution towards understanding [itself]'. This philosophy was also politically significant at a time when East African governing bodies were struggling against the influence of colonial powers such as the US and Britain. Independently, Liyong has had published over twenty books. These include Carrying Knowledge Up a Palm Tree (1998), an anthology of poetry that addresses various contemporary issues and follows African progress in recent history. The East African Literature Bureau (EALB) published many of Liyong's earlier works in English as well as East African languages. The EALB played an instrumental role in disseminating the opinions of African academics in the period right after Kenyan independence from Britain in 1963. Many of these publications criticised neocolonialism, the new method by which former colonial nations maintained their dominance over the newly independent states. The emerging theories held that East African governments and institutions were manipulated by money and corruption into upholding structures that undermined local culture while uplifting colonial ideals. Lo-Liyong's work emerges from this environment of cultural and political uncertainty. His work draws on the continent's tradition in its form as well as its content. Of his poetry, Liyong says: the period of introspection has arrived; personal introspection, communal introspection. Only through introspection can we appraise ourselves more exactly. In one of his most controversial assertions, Liyong rejects long-established literary conventions defined by Aristotle for effective writing. In The Uniformed Man (1971), Liyong calls for readers to approach text in a less familiar way, that is, not to follow the usual conventions of literature such as 'introduction, exposition, rising action, etc. up to the climax'. Instead, text should be unconstrained by expectation and read with a consistent appreciation for 'each word, phrase, or sentence'. Lo-Liyong addresses an African audience in the majority of his work, but mostly he attempts to universally put forward the idea that African knowledge is of benefit to the intellectual world at large. African experience, including that of the diaspora, should not be marginalised intellectually. In his introduction to The Uniformed Man, he addresses the issues raised in On the Abolition of the English Department when he claims that 'the [African] audience can only get full emotional satisfaction when they find that the world of the theatre and their world is completely evoked'. Despite his various contributions to poetry and fiction, Liyong considers his essays of most significance, calling them 'essays with a practical nature'. His eclectic and unconventional approaches to literature and literary theory make him an enduring study and a living icon of African nationalism. He remains a staunch political activist, committed to the causes of exploited communities. He was recently a professor of literature and Head of the Centre for African Studies at the University of Venda in South Africa. Professor Liyong is currently the Acting Vice-Chancellor of Juba University in South Sudan. After over 20 years of war, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement brought peace to South Sudan and Professor Liyong has returned home to contribute his outstanding intellectual and managerial prowess.
[ 0070 ] Aluko, T. M. Chief the Honourable Minister. London. 1970. Heinemann. 0435900706. African Writers Series. 214 pages. paperback. AWS70. Cover design by Peter Edwards.

DESCRIPTION - This satirical novel takes place in an imaginary African state - Afromacoland - two years after British colonial rule has come to an end and the first national ‘democratic' government is in power. The ‘Chief the Honourable Minister' of the title is Alade Moses, B.A., Dip Ed. (University of London), Headmaster of the Grammar School in his home town of Newtown. While he is in London on a visit organized by the British Council, he is suddenly informed thai he has been appointed a Minister in the Government of his country. He returns to become, unwillingly, Minister of Works, and the innocent catalyst who sparks off a train of events which ends in corruption, bloodshed, and tragedy for himself and his country.

T. M. ALUKO was born in 1918 at Ilesha in western Nigeria and educated at Ilesh and Government College, Ibadan. He studied civil engineering and town planning in Lagos and London, and in 1960 was appointed Director of Public Works for Western Nigeria. His three other equally amusing novels are all available in African Writers Series; ONE MAN, ONE MATCHET (AWS 11), ONE MAN, ONE WIFE (AWS 30) and KINSMAN AND FOREMAN (AWS 32).
[ 0071 ] Senghor, Leopold Sedar. Nocturnes. London. 1969. Heinemann. 0435900714. African Writers Series. Translated by John Reed and Clive Wake from the French. 60 pages. paperback. AWS71. Cover Illustration by Ibrahim Salahi.

DESCRIPTION - LEOPOLD SEDAR SENGHOR, born in 1906, was educated in lycEes in Dakar and Paris and at the Sorbonne. He taught in France, enlisted at the outbreak of war in Europe, and was taken prisoner by the Germans. In the year after liberation he became a Deputy in the AssemblEe Nationale. He led a group of politicians who obtained the independence of the French African colonies. His name is closely associated with the growth of the concept of negritude and he compiled the Anthologie de la nouvelle poEsie et malgache (1948). His volumes of poetry are Chants d'ombre (1945); Hosties Noires (1948) ; Chants pour Naett (1949); Ethiopiques (1956) and Nocturnes (1961 ). Nocturnes is the only book of verse that Senghor has published since he became President of Senegal after his country's independence in 1960. Senghor's poetry was associated with Africa's struggle for independence; it is perhaps logical that this volume seems to have marked the end of his career as a poet. 'Songs for Signare' are the eloquent love poems of a man who was once uncertain of his place in the world. The 'Elegies' are the easy, rhetorical, self-assured poems of the leader and the man who has reached his goal.

Leopold Sedar Senghor was born in 1906 in Joal, a small village of the Sine-Saloum region on the Atlantic coast, and was educated in France. From 1960 to 1981 he was president of the Republic of Senegal, and in 1983 he became the first African and the only black intellectual elected to the French Academy. MELVIN DIXON is Professor of English at the Graduate Center and Queens College, City University of New York. He is the author of VANISHING ROOMS, TROUBLE THE WATER, CHANGE OF TERRITORY, and RIDE OUT THE WILDERNESS: GEOGRAPHY AND IDENTITY IN AFRO-AMERICAN LITERATURE. In 1985-86 Dixon served as Fulbright Professor of American Civilization at the University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar, Senegal.
[ 0072 ] Tchicaya U Tam'si. Selected Poems. Nairobi. 1970. Heinemann. 0435900729. African Writers Series. Translated from the French by Gerald Moore. 143 pages. paperback. AWS72. Cover photograph by Anthony Crickmay.

DESCRIPTION - Asked in one of his own poems the nature of his destiny after death, the poet replies: ‘To be a pagan at the pagan renewal of the world. .' The regenerative passion of that line has shaped all the poems in this collection. It is this momentum towards a new life which makes death both expected and accepted. Tragedy resides only in living basely or in dying without self-knowledge. Hence the urgency of the poet's unceasing quest for the roots of his being, for his lost ancestry. Hence also his self-examination while, in the distant Congo, ‘the disasters unfold in silence.' Felix Tchicaya U Tam'si was born in 1931 at Mpili in the then French colony of Moyen Congo, now the Congolese Republic. At the age of fifteen he began the long series of residences in France which have continued to the present day. His father was one of the first African deputies to be elected to the newly reformed French National Assembly of 1946, and the young Tchicaya accompanied him to France in order to complete his education at French lycees in Orleans and Paris. Despite many return visits to the Congo and many travels in other parts of Africa, Paris has remained the center of his activities ever since. This tension between childhood memories of Africa and everyday mundane experience in an alien capital, between his passionate presence in the suffering Congo and his physical absence from it, is one of the dominating themes of his poetry, most notably in the called ‘Epitome.'

Tchicaya U Tam'si (25 August 1931 - 22 April 1988 ) was a Congolese author born GErald-FElix Tchicaya; his pen name means "small paper that speaks for a country" in Kikongo. Born in Mpili, near Brazzaville, French Equatorial Africa (now Congo) in 1931, U Tam'si spent his childhood in France, where he worked as a journalist until he returned to his homeland in 1960. Back in Congo, he continued to work as a journalist; during this time he maintained contact to the politician Patrice Lumumba. In 1961, he started to work for UNESCO. He died in 1988 in Bazancourt, Oise, near Paris. Since 1989, the Tchicaya U Tam'si Prize for African Poetry is awarded every two years in the Moroccan city of Asilah. U Tam'si's poetry incorporates elements of surrealism; it often has vivid historic images, and comments African life and society, as well as humanity in general.
[ 0073 ] Ortzen, Len (editor and translator). North African Writing. London. 1970. Heinemann. 0435900730. African Writers Series. Selected, translated, and with an introduction by Len Ortzen. 134 pages. hardcover. AWS73. Cover illustration by Nejib Belkhodja.

DESCRIPTION - In Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia a school of writers has developed over the last twenty years. They have been widely published in France, but their work has only occasionally been published in English translation in such journals as Black Orpheus and The London Magazine. This selection will thus provide, with the help of Len Ortzen's valuable introduction, a sample of some of North Africa's best writing. The Algerian war has obviously been a powerful influence on several of these writers; but all of them have a common urge to express the aspirations, bewilderment and resentment of their fellow countrymen in the period of decolonisation.

Len Ortzen was an English writer and translator from French. Ortzen grew up in the East End of London, and his first novel, Down Donkey Row (1938), was appreciatively reviewed by Hugh Massingham as 'a picture, at once faithful and amusing, of the East End'. However, his second novel was not so well-received, and thereafter Ortzen stuck to translation and writing non-fiction. In the late 1930s he had moved to Paris, and after the war he and his wife ran a guest house in Brittany.
[ 0074 ] Liyong, Taban lo (editor). Eating Chiefs: Lwo Culture from Lolwe to Malkal. London. 1970. Heinemann. 0435900749. African Writers Series. Selected, interpreted and transmuted by Taban lo Liyong. 113 pages. paperback. AWS74. Cover illustration by Hezbon Owiti.

DESCRIPTION - The author says of this collection of Lwo culture, ‘I have been not so much interested in collecting traditions, mythologies or folk tales. Anthropologists have done that. My idea has been to create literary works from what anthropologists collected and recorded. It is my aim to induce creative writers to take off from where the anthropologists have stopped. Greek dramatists based their plays on Greek mythology.. The retelling of these past events is likely to touch on some mini-nationalistic feelings. This is as it should be. After all, Virgil did not agree with Homer's version of the Trojan War. To live, our traditions have to be topical; to be topical they must be used as part and parcel of our contemporary contentions and controversies.'

Taban Lo Liyong (born 1939) is one of Africa's well-known poets and writers of fiction and literary criticism. His political views, as well as his on-going denigration of the post-colonial system of education in East Africa, have inspired criticism and controversy since the late 1960s. He was born in Uganda. After matriculation there, he attended Howard University and the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, where he was the first African to graduate in 1968. On the completion of his studies in the US, the tyrannical regime of Idi Amin prevented him from returning to Uganda. He went instead to neighbouring Kenya, and taught at the University of Nairobi. He has also taught at international universities in Sudan, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Japan, and South Africa, and maintains that his diverse experience offers an opportunity to place Africa in a position intellectually on par with the rest of the world, thereby recognising its various and valuable contributions to history and scholarship. In collaboration with Henry Owuor-Anyumba and renowned Kenyan academic and writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o, he wrote On the Abolition of the English Department in 1968. Acknowledging the formidable influence of European literature over African writing, Liyong and his colleagues called for the educational system to emphasise the oral tradition (as a key traditional African form of learning), Swahili literature, as well as prose and poetry from African-American and Caribbean society. Through On the Abolition of the English Department, Lo-Liyong and his allies attempted a re-consideration of the humanities curriculum at the University of Nairobi, most particularly of its investment in foreign (British) literature and culture. They questioned the value of an English Department in an African context: We have eyes, but we don't see. We have ears, but we don't hear. We can read, but we don't understand what we read. They suggested that the post-colonial African university must first establish a counter-curriculum of African languages and literatures and then return to a study of European and other world literatures from an African perspective: If there is a need for ‘study of the historic continuity of a single culture', why can't this be African? Why can't African literature be at the centre so that we can view other cultures in relationship to it? Liyong, Owuor-Anyumba, and wa Thiong'o were criticised for advocating cultural or even racial purity within academia. Rather, they sought to re-establish in East Africa traditional modes of knowledge and understanding in literature, in an effort towards authenticity and as a means for the region to better understand itself in the context of national independence. By placing African culture at the centre of education, all other things [would] be considered in their relevance to [the African] situation, and their contribution towards understanding [itself]'. This philosophy was also politically significant at a time when East African governing bodies were struggling against the influence of colonial powers such as the US and Britain. Independently, Liyong has had published over twenty books. These include Carrying Knowledge Up a Palm Tree (1998), an anthology of poetry that addresses various contemporary issues and follows African progress in recent history. The East African Literature Bureau (EALB) published many of Liyong's earlier works in English as well as East African languages. The EALB played an instrumental role in disseminating the opinions of African academics in the period right after Kenyan independence from Britain in 1963. Many of these publications criticised neocolonialism, the new method by which former colonial nations maintained their dominance over the newly independent states. The emerging theories held that East African governments and institutions were manipulated by money and corruption into upholding structures that undermined local culture while uplifting colonial ideals. Lo-Liyong's work emerges from this environment of cultural and political uncertainty. His work draws on the continent's tradition in its form as well as its content. Of his poetry, Liyong says: the period of introspection has arrived; personal introspection, communal introspection. Only through introspection can we appraise ourselves more exactly. In one of his most controversial assertions, Liyong rejects long-established literary conventions defined by Aristotle for effective writing. In The Uniformed Man (1971), Liyong calls for readers to approach text in a less familiar way, that is, not to follow the usual conventions of literature such as 'introduction, exposition, rising action, etc. up to the climax'. Instead, text should be unconstrained by expectation and read with a consistent appreciation for 'each word, phrase, or sentence'. Lo-Liyong addresses an African audience in the majority of his work, but mostly he attempts to universally put forward the idea that African knowledge is of benefit to the intellectual world at large. African experience, including that of the diaspora, should not be marginalised intellectually. In his introduction to The Uniformed Man, he addresses the issues raised in On the Abolition of the English Department when he claims that 'the [African] audience can only get full emotional satisfaction when they find that the world of the theatre and their world is completely evoked'. Despite his various contributions to poetry and fiction, Liyong considers his essays of most significance, calling them 'essays with a practical nature'. His eclectic and unconventional approaches to literature and literary theory make him an enduring study and a living icon of African nationalism. He remains a staunch political activist, committed to the causes of exploited communities. He was recently a professor of literature and Head of the Centre for African Studies at the University of Venda in South Africa. Professor Liyong is currently the Acting Vice-Chancellor of Juba University in South Sudan. After over 20 years of war, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement brought peace to South Sudan and Professor Liyong has returned home to contribute his outstanding intellectual and managerial prowess.
[ 0075 ] Knappert, Jan. Myths and Legends of the Swahili. Nairobi/London. 1975. Heinemann Educational Books. 0435900757. African Writers Series. 212 pages. paperback. AWS75. Cover design by Jan Knappert based on traditional Swahili design. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - The Swahili, leading merchants from the coast of East Africa, traded stories as they traded goods. In these myths, Oriental Sultans encounter African spirits, and the beliefs in Mohammed are intertwined with stories about the efficacy of amulets in the fight against monsters. The Swahili keep cattle and goats like so many African peoples; they are navigators like the Arabs, they are fishermen like the Malagasy, they eat curried food like the Indians, and they write beautiful poetry in an elegant Arabic script in the manner of the Persians. It is not surprising that they have one of the richest mythologies of all African peoples.

JAN KNAPPERT (January 14, 1927, Heemstede, Netherlands - May 30, 2005, Hilversum, Netherlands) was born in Holland in 1927. He holds three degrees in Oriental Languages and has studied at London, Ghent, Pretoria and Makerere. His doctorate from Leiden is in Swahili Literature. He has spent long periods on the Coast on research work. His publications are numerous and he plans further collections on Swahili poetry and on myths and legends of the Congo for African Writers Series. Since 1964 he has been a lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
[ 0076 ] Soyinka, Wole. The Interpreters. London. 1970. Heinemann. African Writers Series. With introduction and notes by Eldred Jones.. paperback. AWS76..

DESCRIPTION - THEY ARE THE INTERPRETERS - savage, satirical, poetic - caught for an instant on the canvas of time. They are the now-generation artists, lawyers, professors, journalists who speak for and of West Africa and her people and the land that was divided before it was Nigeria/Biafra. Drawn together by their color, nation, dissatisfactions, hopes, loves, hates, and the daily lives and deaths around them, four young Nigerian intellectuals evoke and interpret West Africa today. From their wild drinking bouts at the Club Cabana to their individual pursuits of personal and professional integrity, they are the lost and the found generation - simultaneously seekers and prophets as they attempt to define their identity in a world where primitive past and sophisticated present are brought into violent conflict. THE INTERPRETERS combines the uniquely sensitive observations of gifted Wole Soyinka with the kind of mad comedy seen in the works of Donleavy and Pynchon. Here is a book that speaks for modern Africa with universal relevance and irresistible appeal.

Akinwande Oluwole 'Wole' Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian playwright and poet. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. After study in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years. Soyinka has strongly criticised many Nigerian military dictators, especially late General Sanni Abacha, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with 'the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it'.
[ 0076 ] Soyinka, Wole. The Interpreters. Portsmouth. 1970. Heinemann. 0435900765. African Writers Series. With introduction and notes by Eldred Jones. 260 pages. paperback. AWS76. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Colin Williams.

DESCRIPTION - The Interpreters is concerned with a group of young Nigerian intellectuals trying to make something worthwhile of their lives and talents in a society where corruption and consequent cynicism, social climbing and conforming give them alternative cause for despair and laughter. It is elaborately, strikingly and indeed often beautifully written.' The Times. ‘.. passages that crackle up into risible scenes of social comedy.' The Observer. 'a great steaming marsh of a novel. brimful of promise and life.' New Statesman. 'The first African novel that has a texture of real complexity and depth.' Gerald Moore in The New African. Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. He is the first African winner in the Prize's history. When he heard the news, he said, 'This prize is recognition of our culture and our traditions in Africa, and I am very glad about it. This is his first novel.

Originally from Malawi, Stella and Frank Chipasula now live in the United States.
[ 0077 ] Beti, Mongo. King Lazarus. London. 1970. Heinemann. 0435900773. African Writers Series. Translated from the French Le roi miraculé. paperback. AWS77..

DESCRIPTION - THE MAGIC CHRISTIANS VS. MUMBO-JUNGLE: A BELLIGERENT BLACK COMEDY. All was well in Essazam Village until that fateful day in 1948 when Chief Essomba Mendouga was stricken by a seemingly terminal case of satyriasis. For years the Bantu chief had enjoyed unfailing health and unflagging appetites, dutifully satisfied by his twenty-three wives. But now fear shook the native street, and panic ravaged the French colonial establishment, unwilling to part with its staunch, if polygamous, prop. Complications abound when the chief suddenly recovers and is converted to Christianity by the local Roman Catholic missionary. Temporarily insane and freshly baptized, the newly risen Lazarus piously chooses monogamy with his youngest and loveliest wife as tribal hell breaks loose and twenty-two wifely rejects, their assorted relatives, and outraged tribesmen stage a comic-opera revolt - in real blood. Mongo Beti strikes out with pungent, slashing wit at a conniving, sanctimonious Catholic church, obsolete trivial customs, and neanderthal French colonialism in the lustiest, and most deadly accurate satire ever to come out of Africa.

Alexandre Biyidi Awala (30 June 1932 - 8 October 2001), known as Mongo Beti, was a Cameroonian writer. Though he lived in exile for many decades, Beti's life reveals an unflagging commitment to improvement of his home country. As one critic wrote after his death, ‘The militant path of this essayist, chronicler and novelist has been governed by one obsession: the quest for the dignity of African people.'The son of Oscar Awala and REgine Alomo, Alexandre was born in 1932 at AkomEtan, a small village 10 km from Mbalmayo, itself 45 km away from YaoundE, capital of Cameroon. (The village's name comes from Akom ‘rock' and Etam ‘source': in old maps of the region, the name is written in two parts). From an early age, Beti was influenced by the currents of rebellion sweeping Africa in the wake of World War II. His father drowned when Beti was seven, and he was raised by his mother and extended family. Beti recalls arguing with his mother about religion and colonialism; he also recalls early exposure to the opinions and analysis of independence leader Ruben Um Nyobe, both in the villages and at Nyobe's private residence. He carried these views into the classroom, and was eventually expelled from the missionary school in Mbalmayo for his outspokenness. In 1945 he entered the lycEe Leclerc in YaoundE. Graduating in 1951, he came to France to continue his higher education in literature, first at Aix-en-Provence, then at the Sorbonne in Paris. By the early 1950s, Beti had turned to writing as a vehicle of protest. He wrote regularly for the journal PrEsence Africaine; among his pieces was a review of Camara Laye's Black Child that criticized Laye for what Beti saw as pandering to European tastes. He began his career in fiction with the short story Sans haine et sans amour (‘Without hatred or love'), published in the periodical PrEsence Africaine, edited by Alioune Diop, in 1953. Beti's first novel Ville cruelle (‘Cruel City'), under the pseudonym Eza Boto, followed in 1954, published in several editions of PrEsence Africaine. It was, however, in 1956 that he gained a widespread reputation; the publication of the novel Le pauvre Christ de Bomba (‘The poor Christ of Bomba') created a scandal because of its satirical and biting description of the missionary and colonial world. Under pressure from the religious hierarchy, the colonial administrator in Cameroon banned the novel in the colony. This was followed by Mission terminEe, 1957 (winner of the Prix Sainte Beuve 1958), and Le Roi miraculE, 1958. He also worked during this time for the review Preuves, for which he reported from Africa. He worked also as a substitute teacher at the lycEe of Rambouillet. In 1959, he was named certified professor at the lycEe Henri Avril in Lamballe. He took the AgrEgation de Lettres classiques in 1966 and taught at the LycEe Pierre Corneille in Rouen. from this date until 1994. Following Nyobe's assassination by French forces in 1958, however, Beti fell silent as a writer for more than a decade, remaining in exile from his homeland. After his death,Odile Tobner noted that exile was not easy on Beti; he remained tortured by his concern for his embattled country.In 1972 he re-entered the world of literature with a bang. His book Main basse sur le Cameroun, autopsie d'une dEcolonisation ('Cruel hand on Cameroon, autopsy of a decolonization') was censored upon its publication by the French Ministry of the Interior Raymond Marcellin on the request, brought forward by Jacques Foccart, of the Cameroon government, represented in Paris by the ambassador Ferdinand Oyono. The essay, a critical history of recent Cameroon, asserted that Cameroon and other colonies remained under French control in all but name, and that the post-independence political elites had actively fostered this continued dependence. Beti was inspired to write in part by the execution of Ernest Ouandie by the government of Cameroon. In 1974 he published PerpEtue and Remember Ruben; the latter was the first in a trilogy exploring the life and impact of Nyobe. After a long judicial action, Mongo Beti and his editor Francois MaspEro finally obtained, in 1976, the cancellation of the ban on the publication of Main basse. Beti returned to critical and political writing at the same time that he returned to fiction. In 1978 he and his wife Odile Tobner launched the bimonthly review Peuples Noirs. Peuples africains ('Black People. African People'), which was published until 1991. This review chronicled and denounced tirelessly the evils brought to Africa by neo-colonial regimes. During this period were published the novels La ruine presque cocasse d'un polichinelle (1979), Les deux mères de Guillaume Ismaël Dzewatama futur camionneur (1983), La revanche de Guillaume Ismaël Dzewatama (1984), also Lettre ouverte aux Camerounais ou la deuxième mort de Ruben Um NyobE (1984) and Dictionnaire de la negritude (1989, with Odile Tobner). Frustrated by what he saw as the failure of post-independence governments to bring genuine freedom to Africa, Beti adopted a more radical perspective in these works. In exile, Beti remained vitally connected to the struggle in Cameroon. Throughout the seventies and eighties, acquaintance with Beti or his work could spell trouble for a citizen of Cameroon; on numerous occasions, Beti used his connections in France to rescue one of his young readers, many of whom knew him from his periodical and his polemical essays. Ambroise Kom, arrested merely for subscribing to Peuples noirs, was saved from incarceration by Beti's actions in France on his behalf. In 1991 Mongo Beti returned to Cameroon, after 32 years of self-imposed exile. In 1993 he published La France contre l'Afrique, retour au Cameroun; this book chronicles his visits to his homeland. After retiring from teaching in 1994, he returned to Cameroon permanently. Various business endeavors in Betiland failed; eventually, he opened in YaoundE the Librairie des Peuples noirs (Bookstore of the Black Peoples) and organized agricultural activities in his village of Akometam. The goal of the bookshop was to encourage engaged literacy in the capital, and also to provide an outlet for critical texts and authors. During this period, Beti also supported John Fru Ndi, an anglophone opposition leader. He created associations for the defence of citizens and gave to the press numerous articles of protest. The government attempted to hinder his activities. On his first return to Cameroon, police prevented him from speaking at a scheduled conference; Beti instead addressed a crowd outside the locked conference room. He was subjected in January 1996, in the streets of YaoundE, to police aggression. He was challenged at a demonstration in October 1997. In response he published several novels: L'histoire du fou in 1994 then the two initial volumes Trop de soleil tue l'amour (1999) et Branle-bas en noir et blanc (2000), of a trilogy which would remain unfinished. He was hospitalized in YaoundE on October 1, 2001 for acute hepatic and kidney failure which remained untreated for lack of dialysis. Transported to the hospital at Douala on October 6, he died there on October 8, 2001. Some critics noted the similarity of his death to that of his heroine Perpetua, who also died while awaiting treatment in one of the country's overburdened hospitals. From beginning to end, Beti's work was informed by two principles. In terms of style, he was a realist. In a critical statement published in 1955, he asserted that ‘Given the modern conceptions of the beautiful in literature, given at the very least these essential conceptions, if a work is realistic it has many chances of being good; if not, supposing even that it has formal qualities, it risks lacking resonance, profundity, that of which all literature has the greatest need -- the human; from which it follows that it has much less chance of being good -- if only it had some -- than a realistic work.' Beti's fiction remains true to this credo. Thematically, Beti's work is unified by an unwavering commitment to combatting colonialism, both overt and covert. Beti's aim always, even in his harsh criticism of Cameroon's independence government, was to strengthen African autonomy and prosperity. ‘Sans haine et sans amour', 1953, is a short story and Beti's first significant work.
[ 0078 ] Pieterse, Cosmo. Short African Plays. London. 1972. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS78..

DESCRIPTION - Including: 'Ancestral Power' by Kofi Awoonor; 'Magic Pool' by Kuldip Sondhi; 'God's Deputy' by Sanya Dosunmu; 'Resurrection' by Richard Rive; 'Life Everlasting' by Pat Amadu Maddy; 'Lament' by Kofi Awoonor; 'Ballad of the Cells' by Cosmo Pieterse; 'Overseas' by Mbella Sonne Dipoko; 'This Time Tomorrow' by Ng?g? wa Thiong'o; 'Episodes of an Easter Rising' by David Lytton.

Cosmo George Leipoldt Pieterse (born 1930 in Windhoek, Namibia) is a South African playwright, actor, poet, literary critic and anthologist.
[ 0079 ] Chraibi, Driss. Heirs to the Past. Oxford. 1972. Heinemann. 043590079x. African Writers Series. Translated from the French by Len Ortzen. 128 pages. paperback. AWS79..

DESCRIPTION - Seigneur Haj Ferdi is a very wealthy and powerful aristocratic property-owner in the Moroccan capital city of Casablanca. The aristocrat has grown his family inheritance into a very big fortune. He is a generous benefactor. The entire household fears and obeys the Seigneur. Haj Ferdi is diagnosed to be suffering from the terminal disease cirrhosis of the liver. He leaves his family and stays away on an island in his tomato plantation for five years. After the five years, he returns home; and is found dead two days later in Driss?s room. All the sons come around for Haj?s funeral ceremony. Driss, the narrator of the story, returns after sixteen years from France, leaving his French wife, his mother-in-law and son behind. The mourning lasts for ten days in Haj Ferdi?s family, during which all the sons stay and sparsely feed together with their loneliest mother. Then, it comes to sharing Haj Ferdi?s inheritance.

Driss Chraïbi (July 15, 1926 – April 1, 2007) was a Moroccan author whose novels deal with colonialism, culture clashes, generational conflict and the treatment of women and are often perceived as semi-autobiographical. Born in El Jadida and educated in Casablanca, Chraïbi went to Paris in 1945 to study chemistry before turning to literature and journalism. His works have been translated into English, Arabic, Italian, German and Russian. He viewed himself as an anarchist, writing on issues such as immigration, patriarchy and the relation between the west and the Arab world.
[ 0080 ] Farah, Nuruddin. From a Crooked Rib. London. 1970. Heinemann. 0435900803. African Writers Series. 181 pages. paperback. AWS80. Cover by Bill Heyes.

DESCRIPTION - Written with complete conviction from a woman's point of view, Nuruddin Farah's spare, shocking first novel savagely attacks the traditional values of his people yet is also a haunting celebration of the unbroken human spirit. Ebla, an orphan of eighteen, runs away from her nomadic encampment in rural Somalia when she discovers that her grandfather has promised her in marriage to an older man. But even after her escape to Mogadishu, she finds herself as powerless and dependent on men as she was out in the bush. As she is propelled through servitude, marriage, poverty, and violence, Ebla has to fight to retain her identity in a world where women are 'sold like cattle.'

Nuruddin Farah is the author of ten previous novels, most recently LINKS and KNOTS, the first two volumes of the Past Imperfect trilogy, which is completed by CROSSBONES. His books have been translated into seventeen languages and have brought him numerous awards, including the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. His plays and essays, has been featured in The New Yorker and other publications. Born in Baidoa, Somalia, Farah divides his time between Cape Town and Minneapolis, where he holds the Winton Chair in the Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota.
[ 0081 ] Mboya, Tom. The Challenge of Nationhood: A Collection of Speeches and Writings. London. 1982. Heinemann. 0435900811. African Writers Series. Foreword by H. E. Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, and postscript by Pamela Mboya.Published by Heinemann In association with André Deutsch. 279 pages. paperback. AWS81. Cover photograph by permission of The Daily Nation.

DESCRIPTION - TOM MBOYA was one of Africa's most vigorous younger statesmen. His murder at the age of thirty-eight robbed Kenya of an extremely able and articulate political leader, widely regarded as the most likely successor to Jomo Kenyatta as President. At his death he had all but finished collecting his most important speeches and occasional writings, and had written the introduction which he called The Crisis of Confidence'. As one of the chief architects of his country's independence, and as a minister in the K.A.N.U. Government since 1963, Tom Mboya played an important part in shaping the future development of Kenya. His speeches not only made clear the quality and direction of his country's leadership; they were often in themselves turning points in his country's history. His range, his impressive mastery of a wide variety of subjects, his realism, his humanity, his statesmanship are all to be found in these speeches. Moreover, The Challenge of Nationhood offers a sober warning of the hazards still to be met in reaching the goals which the first generation leaders sacrificed so much to achieve. There is no blueprint or text-book formula that can be handed over to new countries; there are no easy answers. Tom Mboya has, however, pointed out in his introduction, 'As long as there is preparedness on the part of African leaders to face these problems squarely, then there is hope.' This sensible book 'represents an attempt to study, to analyse and to answer some of the challenges and problems, the prospects and opportunities before our great continent.'

Thomas Joseph Odhiambo Mboya (15 August 1930 - 5 July 1969) was a Kenyan trade unionist, educator, Pan-Africanist, author, independence activist, and statesman. He was one of the founding fathers of the Republic of Kenya. He led the negotiations for independence at the Lancaster House Conferences[2] and was instrumental in the formation of Kenya's independence party - the Kenya African National Union (KANU) - where he served as its first Secretary-General. He laid the foundation for Kenya's capitalist and mixed economy policies at the height of the Cold War and set up several of the country's key labour institutions. Mboya's intelligence, charm, leadership, and oratory skills won him admiration from all over the world. He gave speeches, participated in debates and interviews across the world in favour of Kenya's independence from British colonial rule. He also spoke at several rallies in the goodwill of the civil rights movement in the United States. In 1958, at the age of 28, Mboya was elected Conference Chairman at the All-African Peoples' Conference convened by Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. He helped build to the Trade Union Movement in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, as well as across Africa. He also served as the Africa Representative to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). In 1959, Mboya called a conference in Lagos, Nigeria to form the first All-Africa ICFTU labour organization. Mboya worked with both John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. to create educational opportunities for African students, an effort that resulted in the Kennedy Airlifts of the 1960s enabling East African students to study at American colleges. Notable beneficiaries of this airlift include Wangari Maathai and Barack Obama Sr. In 1960, Mboya was the first Kenyan to be featured on the front page cover of Time magazine in a painting by Bernard Safran.
[ 0082 ] Dipoko, Mbella Sonne. A Few Nights and Days. London. 1980. Heinemann. 043590082x. African Writers Series. 184 pages. paperback. AWS82. Cover design by Peter Edwards.

DESCRIPTION - The few nights and days of the title cover a crisis in the lives of four friends, students living and working in Paris. Two of them wish to marry - Therèse, a nineteen-year-old French girl of conventional bourgeois background, and Doumbe, an African student from the Cameroon. Not least of the problems that face the two of them is the opposition of Therèse's father to her marring an African and the measures he takes to prevent it.

Mbella Sonne Dipoko (1936 in Douala - December 5, 2009 in Tiko) was a novelist, poet and painter from Cameroon. He is widely considered to be one of the foremost writers of Anglophone Cameroonian literature.Although born in Cameroon, Mbella Sonne Dipoko grew up in Western Cameroon and Nigeria. He joined the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in 1958 and became a News Reporter. He lived mainly in France after 1960. For a time he was on the editorial staff of Presence Africaine and he read law at the University of Paris. He is tlso the author of the novel, BECAUSE OF WOMEN (AWS 57), set in the rivers of Cameroon. A collection of his poetry BLACK AND WHITE IN LOVE (AWS 107) also appears in the African Writers Series.
[ 0083 ] Knappert, Jan. Myths and Legends of the Congo. Nairobi. 1971. Heinemann. 0435900838. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS83. Cover design by Tom and Sue Biro, Carving of Baluba girl from collection of Jan Knappert. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - These stories are rich in variety. There are interesting comparisons to be made between the style of telling and of the contents between the ten tribes represented; the Bakongo, who gave the country and river its name, tell stories of the palm groves of the lower Congo, while the Alur of the northeast tell mystical stories of people and the Lake which will be familiar to other Luo people in Uganda and Kenya. Peoples in West Africa and Zambia will also find echoes among their own stories.

JAN KNAPPERT (January 14, 1927, Heemstede, Netherlands - May 30, 2005, Hilversum, Netherlands) was born in Holland in 1927. He holds three degrees in Oriental Languages and has studied at London, Ghent, Pretoria and Makerere. His doctorate from Leiden is in Swahili Literature. He has spent long periods on the Coast on research work. His publications are numerous and he plans further collections on Swahili poetry and on myths and legends of the Congo for African Writers Series. Since 1964 he has been a lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
[ 0084 ] Ekwensi, Cyprian. Beautiful Feathers. London. 1971. Heinemann. 0435900846. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS84..

DESCRIPTION - 'However famous a man is outside, if he is not respected inside his own home, he is like a bird with beautiful feathers, wonderful on the outside but ordinary within.' So runs the Ibo proverb which provides the theme for Cyprian Ekwensi's novel. Wilson Iyari, the leader of the Nigerian movement for African and Malagasy Solidarity, commands the respect of the masses. with the leaders of African thought, his name has significance. But inside his home he has no authority. He is disregarded, then deserted by his own wife. While he pursues his desire for African and Malagasy solidarity, his home life is crumbling and he cannot concentrate on running his business: the Independence Pharmacy. Wilson does not come to terms with himself until he discovers that the unity is a complex of the judicious and proper, the overlooked and forgotten, the tolerated and rejected.'

Cyprian Ekwensi (September 26, 1921–November 4, 2007) was a Nigerian short story writer and author of children's books. Ekwensi, a native of Nkwelle-Ezunaka in today's Oyi local government of Anambra State, was born in Minna, Niger State. His father was David Anadumaka, a story-teller and elephant hunter. Ekwensi attended Government College in Ibadan, Oyo State, Achimota College in Ghana, and the School of Forestry, Ibadan, after which he worked for two years as a forestry officer. He also studied pharmacy at Yaba Technical Institute, Lagos School of Pharmacy, and the Chelsea School of Pharmacy of the University of London. He taught at Igbobi College. Ekwensi has nine children. His oldest son George is a well known New Jersey accountant. Ekwensi was employed as Head of Features at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and by the Ministry of Information during the First Republic; he eventually became Director of the latter. He resigned his position in 1966, before the Civil War, and moved to Enugu with his family. He later served as chair of the Bureau for External Publicity of Biafra, prior to its reabsorption by Nigeria. Ekwensi wrote hundreds of short stories, radio and television scripts, and several dozen novels, including children's books. His 1954 PEOPLE OF THE CITY was the first book by a Nigerian to garner international attention. His novel DRUMMER BOY (1960), based on the life of Benjamin 'Kokoro' Aderounmu was a perceptive and powerful description of the wandering, homeless and poverty-stricken life of a street artist. His most successful novel was JAGUA NANA (1961), about a Pidgin-speaking Nigerian woman who leaves her husband to work as a prostitute in a city and falls in love with a teacher. He also wrote a sequel to this, JAGUA NANA'S DAUGHTER. In 1968, he received the Dag Hammarskjöld International Prize in Literature. In 2006, he became a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters. Ekwensi died on 4 November 2007 at the Niger Foundation in Enugu, where he underwent an operation for an undisclosed ailment. The Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), having intended to present him with an award on November 16, 2007, converted the honor to a posthumous award.
[ 0085 ] Nzekwu, Onuora. Wand of Noble Wood. London. 1971. Heinemann. 0435900854. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS85..

DESCRIPTION - This novel is set in eastern Nigeria among the Onitsha Ibo, explores the cultural conflict between traditional and new society. The novel has been compared to Achebe's No Longer at Ease, and is deeply descriptive and explanatory of Ibo culture, one critic even describing it as 'ostensibly a novel which contains as much anthropological explanation as any reader could desire.' The examination of traditional culture becomes a thematic emphasis, with deep exploration of topics like tribal marriage.

Onuora Nzekwu, also known as Joseph Onuora Nzekwu (February 19, 1928 - April 21, 2017) was a Nigerian professor, writer and editor from the Igbo people. Nzekwu was born to Mr. Obiese Nzekwu and Mrs. Mary Ogugua Nzekwu (nee Aghadiuno). In January 1956, he joined the Federal Civil Service as an editorial assistant at the Nigeria Magazine Division of the Federal Ministry of Information. Nzekwu worked as an editorial assistant from 1956 to 1958. In 1958, he took over the position of editor-in-chief of the magazine. Nzekwu continued to run the Nigeria Magazine Division of the Federal Ministry of Information until 1966, when the Nigerian Crisis compelled him to transfer his services to the Eastern Nigeria Public Service. Nzekwu began as a senior information officer at Eastern Nigeria, a post that the combined the roles of Information Ministry and Cultural officer. In 1968, he was promoted deputy director of the newly created Cultural Division. At the end of hostilities in January 1970, Nzekwu returned to the Federal Ministry of Information in May and was assigned to the information division as senior information officer. Nzekwu worked as Protem general manager of News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) until July 1, 1979, when he then took over the position of substantive general manager. Nzekwu retired from the Nigeria Public Service in 1985, after presiding over the affairs of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) for nearly eight years and servicing his country's government for 39 years. Onuora Nzekwu received the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship in 1961, which enabled him to study American Methods of Magazine Production with Crafts Horizons in New York. In 1964, Nzekwu was awarded an UNESCO Fellowship which allowed him to study Copyright Administration for three months in Geneva, Prague, Paris, London, New York and Washington. On August 8, 2006, NAN observed its 30th Anniversary during celebrations at Abuja. The Agency presented a plaque to with the engraving Maker of NAN, to Nzekwu. In December, 2008, Nzekwu was conferred with the Nigerian National Honor of the Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON). Nzekwu has also authored several novels. Nzekwu co-authored Eze Goes to School and Eze Goes to College with historian Michael Crowder. The two school supplementary readers were first published by African University Press in 1964 and 1988 respectively. In 1977, Nzekwu published his first non-fiction work titled, The Chima Dynasty in Onitsha, in which he presented the history of Onitsha through an account of the reign of its monarchs. Nzekwu's novel, Faith of Our Fathers, a compendium of the arts, beliefs, social institutions and code of values that characterize the Onitsha traditional community was published in 2003. Nzekwu married Onoenyi Justina Ogbenyeanu, daughter of Chief Isaac Aniegboka Mbanefo, Odu II of Onitsha, in June 1960 and was inducted into the ancient and prestigious Agbalanze Society of Onitsha in May 1991. He died on April 21, 2017.
[ 0086 ] Bebey, Francis. Agatha Moudio's Son. London. 1971. Heinemann. African Writers Series. Translated by Joyce A. Hutchinson from the French Le fils d'Agatha Moudio. paperback. AWS86..

DESCRIPTION - Beneath the surface of this amusing deftly written novel is a serious theme: the impact of new customs and ideas on the traditional tribal life of an equatorial African village. It tells the story of Mbenda, a young fisherman, in love with a worldly, perhaps even slightly promiscuous, young girl from a neighboring community, who must marry, according to tradition, the girl his father chose for him on his death bed. He marries both girls (polygamy is still practiced in his village), and the complications of this mEnage a trois lead up to a hilarious ending which will surprise the reader almost as much as it did the villagers. Bebey writes with warmth and understanding of life in this African village, but throughout he is making gentle fun of the old-fashioned superstitions and ancient tribal customs which hold back progress and freedom. Agatha Moudio, the 'emancipated' woman who seems so brazen to the villagers, will endear herself to women's liberationists and male readers alike. AGATHA MOUDIO's SON has won wide recognition. It was awarded the Grand Prix Litteraire de l'Afrique Noir. and has been translated into German, Dutch, and Italian.

Francis Bebey (15 July 1929 in Douala, Cameroon - 28 May 2001 in Paris, France) was a Cameroonian artist, musician, and writer. Bebey attended the Sorbonne, and was further educated in the United States. In 1957, Bebey moved to Ghana at the invitation of Kwame Nkrumah, and took a job as a broadcaster. In the early 1960s, Bebey moved to France and started work in the arts, establishing himself as a musician, sculptor, and writer. His most popular novel was Agatha Moudio's Son. He also worked as a consultant for UNESCO. Bebey released his first album in 1969. His music was primarily guitar-based, although he integrated traditional African instruments as well. His style was groundbreaking, merging Cameroonian makossa with classical guitar, jazz, and pop in a mix that could be intellectual, humorous, or serious. He sang in Duala, English, and French. Bebey helped launch the career of Manu Dibango. Bebey released more than 20 albums over his career. John Williams' piece 'Hello Francis' is written as a tribute to Bebey.
[ 0087 ] Dadié, Bernard B. Climbie. London. 1971. Heinemann. 0435900870. Translated from the French by Karen C. Chapman. African Writers Series. 157 pages. paperback. AWS87..

DESCRIPTION - Although Bernard DadiE is one of the most significant of the francophone African writers of this century, none of his major works has hitherto been available to the English-speaking public. Through the combined efforts of editors and scholars in the U.S. and abroad, DadiE's first major novel, ClimbiE, now appears in Karen Chapman's expert English translation. In his foreword to this edition, Ezekiel Mphalele says: ‘a translation like Mrs. Chapman's of ClimbiE is a most significant milestone. I must stress its importance to American scholarship and the imagination of Africa. I know that Bernard DadiE's moving rEcit will add another dimension. to [ Americans'] understanding of Africa, and -perhaps of themselves.' ClimbiE is a moving, intricately wrought series of vignettes which trace the history of an African man - from his childhood in an EbriE village, through life in French schools and a voyage into the modern urban world, to his eventual return home. Sketches of village life in the first half of the book - the community of an ‘extended' family, closeness to the earth and seasons - help to dramatize the shock of an uprooted sensibility in experience to come; the movement toward independence that followed World War Il provides a background for the events of the book's second half. Social and personal history are skillfully interwoven in a painstaking and deeply-felt account of one man's life. This story of a sensibility adrift in a world where something is always missing is one of the classics of contemporary African literature. The portraits of Europeans in this novel are not flattering, but neither are they one-dimensional. The man who has drawn sustenance from village life confronts bureaucratic methods and the curiosity of ‘friends.' He longs to escape the ' 'hard-shelled' houses of the Europeans and begins to question much of what he sees of Western civilization - its depersonalization, its terrifying mass wars in the name of seemingly empty ideals. When he writes anticolonial articles, he is thrown into prison. But ClimbiE is a mature work and what gives the novel its unity is not hatred and ridicule of white society, but a passionate concern with justice. DadiE's humanism is not facile - one of the recurring words in his book is ‘struggle' - but it is all the more strongly felt for being hard won. ClimbiE describes a painful movement away from Africa and a painful return, with honesty and hope. The experience the novel chronicles goes beyond the platitudes of either blinding bitterness or easy optimism.

Bernard Binlin DadiE (or sometimes Bernard Dadie) (born 1916 near Abidjan) is a prolific Ivorian novelist, playwright, poet, and ex-administrator. Among many other senior positions, starting in 1957, he held the post of Minister of Culture in the government of Côte d'Ivoire from 1977 to 1986. DadiE was born in Assinie, Côte d'Ivoire, and attended the local Catholic school in Grand Bassam and then the Ecole William Ponty. He worked for the French government in Dakar, Senegal, but on returning to his homeland in 1947 became part of its movement for independence. Before Côte d'Ivoire's independence in 1960, he was detained for sixteen months for taking part in demonstrations that opposed the French colonial government. In his writing, influenced by his experiences of colonialism as a child, DadiE attempts to connect the messages of traditional African folktales with the contemporary world. With Germain Coffi Gadeau and F. J. Amon d'Aby, he founded the Cercle Culturel et Folklorique de la Côte d'Ivoire (CCFCI) in 1953. His humanism and desire for the equality and independence of Africans and their culture is also prevalent.
[ 0088 ] Beti, Mongo. The Poor Christ of Bomba. London. 1971. Heinemann. 0435900889. African Writers Series. Translated from the French by Gerald Moore. 219 pages. paperback. AWS88. Cover design by Bill Heyes.

DESCRIPTION - In Bomba the girls who are being prepared for Christian marriage live together in the women's camp. It is not clear whether the girls have to stay in the women's camp for such long periods for the good of their souls or for the good of the mission-building program. Only gradually does it become apparent that the local churchmen have also been using the local girls for their own purpose. Mongo Beti, a pseudonym for Alexandre Biyidi-Awala, was born in Cameroon in 1932 and was exiled for years in France, where he taught in Rouen. In addition to writing novels and essays, he is also the founder and editor of the journal Peuples noirs, peuples africains. He was one of the key Francophone African writers of the post-war and independence era. Educated in Catholic mission and public schools in YaoundE and later in France, where he studied literature and lived for most of his life, Beti's early writing reflected the tensions in colonialism and the social dislocation and disorientation in the lives of the colonised, western educated and independent African. This tension is set right from his first novel Ville Cruelle (1957), the only one written under the pseudonym of Eza Boto and in the second novel Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba (1956, trans., THE POOR CHRIST OF BOMBA, 1971), which narrates the diary of a novice in his journey with his European priest, a journey that deftly reveals the destructive nature of supposedly well-intentioned missionaries. Mongo Beti died in October 2001.

Alexandre Biyidi Awala (30 June 1932 - 8 October 2001), known as Mongo Beti, was a Cameroonian writer. Though he lived in exile for many decades, Beti's life reveals an unflagging commitment to improvement of his home country. As one critic wrote after his death, ‘The militant path of this essayist, chronicler and novelist has been governed by one obsession: the quest for the dignity of African people.'The son of Oscar Awala and REgine Alomo, Alexandre was born in 1932 at AkomEtan, a small village 10 km from Mbalmayo, itself 45 km away from YaoundE, capital of Cameroon. (The village's name comes from Akom ‘rock' and Etam ‘source': in old maps of the region, the name is written in two parts). From an early age, Beti was influenced by the currents of rebellion sweeping Africa in the wake of World War II. His father drowned when Beti was seven, and he was raised by his mother and extended family. Beti recalls arguing with his mother about religion and colonialism; he also recalls early exposure to the opinions and analysis of independence leader Ruben Um Nyobe, both in the villages and at Nyobe's private residence. He carried these views into the classroom, and was eventually expelled from the missionary school in Mbalmayo for his outspokenness. In 1945 he entered the lycEe Leclerc in YaoundE. Graduating in 1951, he came to France to continue his higher education in literature, first at Aix-en-Provence, then at the Sorbonne in Paris. By the early 1950s, Beti had turned to writing as a vehicle of protest. He wrote regularly for the journal PrEsence Africaine; among his pieces was a review of Camara Laye's Black Child that criticized Laye for what Beti saw as pandering to European tastes. He began his career in fiction with the short story Sans haine et sans amour (‘Without hatred or love'), published in the periodical PrEsence Africaine, edited by Alioune Diop, in 1953. Beti's first novel Ville cruelle (‘Cruel City'), under the pseudonym Eza Boto, followed in 1954, published in several editions of PrEsence Africaine. It was, however, in 1956 that he gained a widespread reputation; the publication of the novel Le pauvre Christ de Bomba (‘The poor Christ of Bomba') created a scandal because of its satirical and biting description of the missionary and colonial world. Under pressure from the religious hierarchy, the colonial administrator in Cameroon banned the novel in the colony. This was followed by Mission terminEe, 1957 (winner of the Prix Sainte Beuve 1958), and Le Roi miraculE, 1958. He also worked during this time for the review Preuves, for which he reported from Africa. He worked also as a substitute teacher at the lycEe of Rambouillet. In 1959, he was named certified professor at the lycEe Henri Avril in Lamballe. He took the AgrEgation de Lettres classiques in 1966 and taught at the LycEe Pierre Corneille in Rouen. from this date until 1994. Following Nyobe's assassination by French forces in 1958, however, Beti fell silent as a writer for more than a decade, remaining in exile from his homeland. After his death,Odile Tobner noted that exile was not easy on Beti; he remained tortured by his concern for his embattled country.In 1972 he re-entered the world of literature with a bang. His book Main basse sur le Cameroun, autopsie d'une dEcolonisation ('Cruel hand on Cameroon, autopsy of a decolonization') was censored upon its publication by the French Ministry of the Interior Raymond Marcellin on the request, brought forward by Jacques Foccart, of the Cameroon government, represented in Paris by the ambassador Ferdinand Oyono. The essay, a critical history of recent Cameroon, asserted that Cameroon and other colonies remained under French control in all but name, and that the post-independence political elites had actively fostered this continued dependence. Beti was inspired to write in part by the execution of Ernest Ouandie by the government of Cameroon. In 1974 he published PerpEtue and Remember Ruben; the latter was the first in a trilogy exploring the life and impact of Nyobe. After a long judicial action, Mongo Beti and his editor Francois MaspEro finally obtained, in 1976, the cancellation of the ban on the publication of Main basse. Beti returned to critical and political writing at the same time that he returned to fiction. In 1978 he and his wife Odile Tobner launched the bimonthly review Peuples Noirs. Peuples africains ('Black People. African People'), which was published until 1991. This review chronicled and denounced tirelessly the evils brought to Africa by neo-colonial regimes. During this period were published the novels La ruine presque cocasse d'un polichinelle (1979), Les deux mères de Guillaume Ismaël Dzewatama futur camionneur (1983), La revanche de Guillaume Ismaël Dzewatama (1984), also Lettre ouverte aux Camerounais ou la deuxième mort de Ruben Um NyobE (1984) and Dictionnaire de la negritude (1989, with Odile Tobner). Frustrated by what he saw as the failure of post-independence governments to bring genuine freedom to Africa, Beti adopted a more radical perspective in these works. In exile, Beti remained vitally connected to the struggle in Cameroon. Throughout the seventies and eighties, acquaintance with Beti or his work could spell trouble for a citizen of Cameroon; on numerous occasions, Beti used his connections in France to rescue one of his young readers, many of whom knew him from his periodical and his polemical essays. Ambroise Kom, arrested merely for subscribing to Peuples noirs, was saved from incarceration by Beti's actions in France on his behalf. In 1991 Mongo Beti returned to Cameroon, after 32 years of self-imposed exile. In 1993 he published La France contre l'Afrique, retour au Cameroun; this book chronicles his visits to his homeland. After retiring from teaching in 1994, he returned to Cameroon permanently. Various business endeavors in Betiland failed; eventually, he opened in YaoundE the Librairie des Peuples noirs (Bookstore of the Black Peoples) and organized agricultural activities in his village of Akometam. The goal of the bookshop was to encourage engaged literacy in the capital, and also to provide an outlet for critical texts and authors. During this period, Beti also supported John Fru Ndi, an anglophone opposition leader. He created associations for the defence of citizens and gave to the press numerous articles of protest. The government attempted to hinder his activities. On his first return to Cameroon, police prevented him from speaking at a scheduled conference; Beti instead addressed a crowd outside the locked conference room. He was subjected in January 1996, in the streets of YaoundE, to police aggression. He was challenged at a demonstration in October 1997. In response he published several novels: L'histoire du fou in 1994 then the two initial volumes Trop de soleil tue l'amour (1999) et Branle-bas en noir et blanc (2000), of a trilogy which would remain unfinished. He was hospitalized in YaoundE on October 1, 2001 for acute hepatic and kidney failure which remained untreated for lack of dialysis. Transported to the hospital at Douala on October 6, he died there on October 8, 2001. Some critics noted the similarity of his death to that of his heroine Perpetua, who also died while awaiting treatment in one of the country's overburdened hospitals. From beginning to end, Beti's work was informed by two principles. In terms of style, he was a realist. In a critical statement published in 1955, he asserted that ‘Given the modern conceptions of the beautiful in literature, given at the very least these essential conceptions, if a work is realistic it has many chances of being good; if not, supposing even that it has formal qualities, it risks lacking resonance, profundity, that of which all literature has the greatest need -- the human; from which it follows that it has much less chance of being good -- if only it had some -- than a realistic work.' Beti's fiction remains true to this credo. Thematically, Beti's work is unified by an unwavering commitment to combatting colonialism, both overt and covert. Beti's aim always, even in his harsh criticism of Cameroon's independence government, was to strengthen African autonomy and prosperity. ‘Sans haine et sans amour', 1953, is a short story and Beti's first significant work.
[ 0089 ] Maddy, Yulisa Amadu. Obasai and Other Plays. London. 1971. Heinemann. 0435900897. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS89..

DESCRIPTION - Early plays from Yulisa Amadu Maddy, initially produced on the BBC African Service and published as Obasai and Other Plays in 1968.

Yulisa Amadu Pat Maddy (27 December 1936 - 16 March 2014) was a Sierra Leonean writer, poet, actor, dancer, director and playwright. Known by his friends and colleagues as Pat Maddy or simply Prof, he had an 'immense impact' on theatre in Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Zambia. Maddy was born in Freetown, Sierra Leone, where he grew up and was educated (attending St. Edward's Secondary School) until the age of 22. In 1958 he travelled to France and then Britain. Maddy trained at the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama in the UK, and started broadcasting in Britain and Denmark, writing and producing radio plays. He was Director of Drama at the Keskidee Centre in London. His early plays, initially produced on the BBC African Service, were published as Obasai and Other Plays (1968). In the mid-1960s he lived in Denmark, where a book of his poetry, Ny afrikansk prosa, was published (1969). On his return to Sierra Leone in 1968 Maddy became Head of Drama on Radio Sierra Leone. He was a founder-director of the theatre company Gbakanda Afrikan Tiata, founded 1969 in Freetown. He subsequently worked in Zambia, where he directed the national dance troupe and trained them for the Montreal World's Fair in 1970. He also taught drama in Nigeria, at the University of Ibadan and the University of Ilorin, and in the United States. His first novel, No Past, No Present, No Future, explored the dynamics of a group of three friends (including, controversially, at the time, one gay man) growing up in colonial West Africa and their physical, psychological and emotional journeys to Europe. It was published in 1973, to great acclaim in the Heinemann African Writers Series, and his writing continued to develop. His work, which is often challenging and confrontational, has been broadcast by the BBC and published internationally. However, the uncompromising honesty of his writing, particularly in his views on the social and political inequalities in Africa, led to his political imprisonment in Sierra Leone. Upon his release, he was forced to leave the country and become a political exile. In 2007, Maddy returned to Sierra Leone to teach at Freetown's Milton Margai College of Education and continue his academic research of exploring and developing Sierra Leone's cultural heritage, providing inspiration and opportunities to a new generation of artists and performers, and continuing to give a 'voice to the voiceless' through the work of his Gbakanda Foundation. After a long period of illness, he died in March 2014, aged 78, at Choitram Hospital, Freetown. Maddy received a Sierra Leone National Arts Festival Award in 1973, a Gulbenkian Grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 1978, and in 1979 an Edinburgh Festival Award. He has also received the distinction of being commemorated in a special stained-glass window of the Pride Library in Canada, as one of 135 writers, including William Shakespeare, Federico García Lorca, W. H. Auden, James Baldwin and others who have been acknowledged for their outstanding contribution to literature.
[ 0090 ] Liyong, Taban lo. Frantz Fanon's Uneven Ribs: Poems More and More. London. 1971. Heinemann. 0435900900. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS90..

DESCRIPTION - Taban Lo Liyong, one of the most stimulating figures in East African writing, was born in Uganda in 1938. He was the first African to receive a Master of Fine Arts degree from the famous Writers Workshop of the University of Iowa. .Taban Lo Liyong's poetry bounces with insulting agility across one's prejudices. It doesn't all have to taken seriously, but the wit stings when it hits. The reader will be hard pressed to keep up with the allusions which rebound on Europe, Africa and the United States.

Taban Lo Liyong (born 1939) is one of Africa's well-known poets and writers of fiction and literary criticism. His political views, as well as his on-going denigration of the post-colonial system of education in East Africa, have inspired criticism and controversy since the late 1960s. He was born in Uganda. After matriculation there, he attended Howard University and the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, where he was the first African to graduate in 1968. On the completion of his studies in the US, the tyrannical regime of Idi Amin prevented him from returning to Uganda. He went instead to neighbouring Kenya, and taught at the University of Nairobi. He has also taught at international universities in Sudan, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Japan, and South Africa, and maintains that his diverse experience offers an opportunity to place Africa in a position intellectually on par with the rest of the world, thereby recognising its various and valuable contributions to history and scholarship. In collaboration with Henry Owuor-Anyumba and renowned Kenyan academic and writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o, he wrote On the Abolition of the English Department in 1968. Acknowledging the formidable influence of European literature over African writing, Liyong and his colleagues called for the educational system to emphasise the oral tradition (as a key traditional African form of learning), Swahili literature, as well as prose and poetry from African-American and Caribbean society. Through On the Abolition of the English Department, Lo-Liyong and his allies attempted a re-consideration of the humanities curriculum at the University of Nairobi, most particularly of its investment in foreign (British) literature and culture. They questioned the value of an English Department in an African context: We have eyes, but we don't see. We have ears, but we don't hear. We can read, but we don't understand what we read. They suggested that the post-colonial African university must first establish a counter-curriculum of African languages and literatures and then return to a study of European and other world literatures from an African perspective: If there is a need for ‘study of the historic continuity of a single culture', why can't this be African? Why can't African literature be at the centre so that we can view other cultures in relationship to it? Liyong, Owuor-Anyumba, and wa Thiong'o were criticised for advocating cultural or even racial purity within academia. Rather, they sought to re-establish in East Africa traditional modes of knowledge and understanding in literature, in an effort towards authenticity and as a means for the region to better understand itself in the context of national independence. By placing African culture at the centre of education, all other things [would] be considered in their relevance to [the African] situation, and their contribution towards understanding [itself]'. This philosophy was also politically significant at a time when East African governing bodies were struggling against the influence of colonial powers such as the US and Britain. Independently, Liyong has had published over twenty books. These include Carrying Knowledge Up a Palm Tree (1998), an anthology of poetry that addresses various contemporary issues and follows African progress in recent history. The East African Literature Bureau (EALB) published many of Liyong's earlier works in English as well as East African languages. The EALB played an instrumental role in disseminating the opinions of African academics in the period right after Kenyan independence from Britain in 1963. Many of these publications criticised neocolonialism, the new method by which former colonial nations maintained their dominance over the newly independent states. The emerging theories held that East African governments and institutions were manipulated by money and corruption into upholding structures that undermined local culture while uplifting colonial ideals. Lo-Liyong's work emerges from this environment of cultural and political uncertainty. His work draws on the continent's tradition in its form as well as its content. Of his poetry, Liyong says: the period of introspection has arrived; personal introspection, communal introspection. Only through introspection can we appraise ourselves more exactly. In one of his most controversial assertions, Liyong rejects long-established literary conventions defined by Aristotle for effective writing. In The Uniformed Man (1971), Liyong calls for readers to approach text in a less familiar way, that is, not to follow the usual conventions of literature such as 'introduction, exposition, rising action, etc. up to the climax'. Instead, text should be unconstrained by expectation and read with a consistent appreciation for 'each word, phrase, or sentence'. Lo-Liyong addresses an African audience in the majority of his work, but mostly he attempts to universally put forward the idea that African knowledge is of benefit to the intellectual world at large. African experience, including that of the diaspora, should not be marginalised intellectually. In his introduction to The Uniformed Man, he addresses the issues raised in On the Abolition of the English Department when he claims that 'the [African] audience can only get full emotional satisfaction when they find that the world of the theatre and their world is completely evoked'. Despite his various contributions to poetry and fiction, Liyong considers his essays of most significance, calling them 'essays with a practical nature'. His eclectic and unconventional approaches to literature and literary theory make him an enduring study and a living icon of African nationalism. He remains a staunch political activist, committed to the causes of exploited communities. He was recently a professor of literature and Head of the Centre for African Studies at the University of Venda in South Africa. Professor Liyong is currently the Acting Vice-Chancellor of Juba University in South Sudan. After over 20 years of war, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement brought peace to South Sudan and Professor Liyong has returned home to contribute his outstanding intellectual and managerial prowess.
[ 0091 ] Nzekwu, Onuora. Blade Among the Boys. London. 1972. Heinemann. 0435900919. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS91..

DESCRIPTION - Patrick Ikenga, like most of his friends in the little Nigerian town of Ado, is a religious two-timer. He attends Mass and he worships his ancestors. Patrick's family follows the Church's tenets just so far, and is always most careful not to jeopardize the ancient pagan concepts of fertility. When Patrick announces his complete allegiance to Christ and his intention of becoming a priest his mother is horrified. She reminds her son that he is okpala-the spiritual head of his dead and living family-and for one who is okpala to be a womanless man will be an insult to his ancestors and an object of pity and derision to his relations. Patrick gets a job in Lagos and meets girls. His mother is overjoyed and makes plans to wed him to the bride she has chosen for him. But then he becomes a noviciate for the priesthood and his mother and his rejected bride fight again to save him from the shame of celibacy. This is the second novel by Onuora Nzekwu, the Nigerian author of WAND OF NOBLE WOOD. Born in 1928, he has worked as a teacher and on the Nigeria Magazine.

Onuora Nzekwu, also known as Joseph Onuora Nzekwu (February 19, 1928 - April 21, 2017) was a Nigerian professor, writer and editor from the Igbo people. Nzekwu was born to Mr. Obiese Nzekwu and Mrs. Mary Ogugua Nzekwu (nee Aghadiuno). In January 1956, he joined the Federal Civil Service as an editorial assistant at the Nigeria Magazine Division of the Federal Ministry of Information. Nzekwu worked as an editorial assistant from 1956 to 1958. In 1958, he took over the position of editor-in-chief of the magazine. Nzekwu continued to run the Nigeria Magazine Division of the Federal Ministry of Information until 1966, when the Nigerian Crisis compelled him to transfer his services to the Eastern Nigeria Public Service. Nzekwu began as a senior information officer at Eastern Nigeria, a post that the combined the roles of Information Ministry and Cultural officer. In 1968, he was promoted deputy director of the newly created Cultural Division. At the end of hostilities in January 1970, Nzekwu returned to the Federal Ministry of Information in May and was assigned to the information division as senior information officer. Nzekwu worked as Protem general manager of News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) until July 1, 1979, when he then took over the position of substantive general manager. Nzekwu retired from the Nigeria Public Service in 1985, after presiding over the affairs of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) for nearly eight years and servicing his country's government for 39 years. Onuora Nzekwu received the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship in 1961, which enabled him to study American Methods of Magazine Production with Crafts Horizons in New York. In 1964, Nzekwu was awarded an UNESCO Fellowship which allowed him to study Copyright Administration for three months in Geneva, Prague, Paris, London, New York and Washington. On August 8, 2006, NAN observed its 30th Anniversary during celebrations at Abuja. The Agency presented a plaque to with the engraving Maker of NAN, to Nzekwu. In December, 2008, Nzekwu was conferred with the Nigerian National Honor of the Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON). Nzekwu has also authored several novels. Nzekwu co-authored Eze Goes to School and Eze Goes to College with historian Michael Crowder. The two school supplementary readers were first published by African University Press in 1964 and 1988 respectively. In 1977, Nzekwu published his first non-fiction work titled, The Chima Dynasty in Onitsha, in which he presented the history of Onitsha through an account of the reign of its monarchs. Nzekwu's novel, Faith of Our Fathers, a compendium of the arts, beliefs, social institutions and code of values that characterize the Onitsha traditional community was published in 2003. Nzekwu married Onoenyi Justina Ogbenyeanu, daughter of Chief Isaac Aniegboka Mbanefo, Odu II of Onitsha, in June 1960 and was inducted into the ancient and prestigious Agbalanze Society of Onitsha in May 1991. He died on April 21, 2017.
[ 0092 ] Ousmane, Sembene. The Money Order with White Genesis: Two Novellas. Oxford. 1972. Heinemann. 0435908944. African Writers Series. Translated from the French by Clive Wake. 138 pages. paperback. AWS92. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Fraser Taylor.

DESCRIPTION - Ousmane's theme is the state of modern Africa. Dieng's experience of bureaucratic incompetence and deceit in The Money Order leads him eventually to a public act of despair, while in White Genesis Ousmane captures the decline of a way of life through a tragic tale of incest. His vision is not, however, cynical or negative. The special excitement of his work lies in his ability, even in describing the destruction of a village or the expulsion of a lone mother with child, to see an ever-present, creative opportunity for regeneration. Sembene Ousmane is one of the leading French African writers. Born in Senegal, he worked variously as a fisherman, plumber and mason, and began to write while employed as a docker in Marseilles. His work, which includes novels, short stories and films, is characterized by a special closeness to the lives of ordinary people. He is recognized internationally and this collection won a prize at the Dakar International Festival. The Money Order went on, as a film, to win a prize at the Venice Film Festival. 'On the basis of these two first rate novelettes, Sembene Ousmane must surely rank as one of Africa's finest writers.' Eustace Palmer.

Ousmane Sembene, who was born into a Senegalese fishing family in 1923, worked at a diversity of jobs before writing his first book, THE BLACK DOCKER, in 1956. Since then he has written several novels and short story collections, through which he tells the saga of his land and its people. He has also gained a reputation for his films, particularly BLACK GIRL and THE MONEY ORDER, which were well received both in the U.S. and abroad.
[ 0092 ] Ousmane, Sembene. The Money Order with White Genesis: Two Novellas. Portsmouth. 1972. Heinemann. 0435900927. African Writers Series. Translated from the French by Clive Wake. 138 pages. paperback. AWS92..

DESCRIPTION - Ousmane's theme is the state of modern Africa. Dieng's experience of bureaucratic incompetence and deceit in The Money Order leads him eventually to a public act of despair, while in White Genesis Ousmane captures the decline of a way of life through a tragic tale of incest. His vision is not, however, cynical or negative. The special excitement of his work lies in his ability, even in describing the destruction of a village or the expulsion of a lone mother with child, to see an ever-present, creative opportunity for regeneration. Sembene Ousmane is one of the leading French African writers. Born in Senegal, he worked variously as a fisherman, plumber and mason, and began to write while employed as a docker in Marseilles. His work, which includes novels, short stories and films, is characterized by a special closeness to the lives of ordinary people. He is recognized internationally and this collection won a prize at the Dakar International Festival. The Money Order went on, as a film, to win a prize at the Venice Film Festival. 'On the basis of these two first rate novelettes, Sembene Ousmane must surely rank as one of Africa's finest writers.' Eustace Palmer.

Buchi Emecheta (born 21 July 1944, in Lagos) is a Nigerian novelist who has published over 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education have won her considerable critical acclaim and honours, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005. Emecheta once described her stories as ‘stories of the world…[where]… women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical.'
[ 0093 ] Knappert, Jan (editor and translator). A Choice of Flowers - Chaguo la Maua: an anthology of Swahili love poetry. London. 1972. Heinemann. 0435900935. African Writers Series.Edited and translated from Swahili by Jan Knappert. paperback. AWS93. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION -

JAN KNAPPERT (January 14, 1927, Heemstede, Netherlands - May 30, 2005, Hilversum, Netherlands) was born in Holland in 1927. He holds three degrees in Oriental Languages and has studied at London, Ghent, Pretoria and Makerere. His doctorate from Leiden is in Swahili Literature. He has spent long periods on the Coast on research work. His publications are numerous and he plans further collections on Swahili poetry and on myths and legends of the Congo for African Writers Series. Since 1964 he has been a lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
[ 0094 ] Munonye, John. Oil Man of Obange. London. 1971. Heinemann. 0435900943. African Writers Series. 186 pages. paperback. AWS94. Cover design by Uzo Egonu.

DESCRIPTION - The tragedy of the Oil Man of Obange is the more intense because it is on a small scale and personal. For generations his family have scratched a living from the land; they lose their land, and all die, except Jeri and his sister. He has children, and in order to send them to school, he must pedal a long and difficult road each day, with cans of palm oil balanced precariously on his bicycle, to earn the fees for their education. At last, the struggle becomes too great.

JOHN MUNONYE is proving to be one of Africa's most consistently excellent novelists. Julian Mitchell writing in The Guardian about "the extraordinary outburst of Nigerian talent" said ' 'Achebe opened the way for a whole series of Nigerian writers to investigate the cultural clash between the traditional pagan and the modern Christianised ways of life. The best of them, apart from Achebe himself, is John Munonye." Between 1954 and 1976 he worked for the Ministry of Education in Nigeria. Five other novels have been published in African Writers Series: The Only Son (AWS 21) Obi (AWS 45), A Wreath for the Maidens (AWS 121), A Dancer of Fortune (AWS 153), and Bridge to a Wedding (AWS 195).
[ 0095 ] Ibrahim, Sonallah. The Smell Of It and Other Stories. London. 1971. Heinemann. 043590633x. African Writers Series. Translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies. 118 pages. paperback. AWS95. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - Following his release from prison during the general amnesty of 1964, Ibr?h?m finished his first novel, Tilka al-r??i?ah (1966; Eng. trans. The Smell of It, & Other Stories). The work's descriptions of the experience of imprisonment made it politically subversive, and it shocked Egyptian censors with its frank treatment of sexuality between inmates. The book was banned in Egypt, and two decades passed before an uncensored version was available there. Inseparable from its political context was the novel's bold realism, which challenged Arabic literary orthodoxy.

Son'allah Ibrahim (born 1937) is an Egyptian novelist and short story writer and one of the 'Sixties Generation' who is known for his leftist and nationalist views which are expressed rather directly in his work. His novels, especially later ones, incorporate many excerpts from newspapers, magazines and other political sources as a way to enlighten the people about a certain political or social issue. Because of his political opinions he was imprisoned during the 1960s; his imprisonment is featured in his first book, That Smell, which was one of the first writings in Egyptian literature to adopt a modernist tinge. In harmony with his political ideas, in 2003 he refused to accept a prestigious literary award worth 100,000 Egyptian pounds from Egypt's Ministry of Culture.
[ 0096 ] Cook, David and Rubadiri, David (editors). Poems from East Africa. London. 1971. Heinemann. 043590096x. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS96..

DESCRIPTION - The spirit of the poetic flowering of the 1960s is encapsulated in this comprehensive anthology. The collection gives voice to some fifty poets from Kenya, Uganda and Zambia, writing in English. The diversity of the interests and styles of the individual poets is illustrated: a blend of the gentle lyricism that is a feature of East African writing. All the major poets are included, and many not so well known. Amongst the best known are Jared Angira, Jonathan Kariara, Joseph Kariuki, Taban Lo Liyong, Okot p'Bitek, and David Rubadiri - one of the editors.

David Cook (January 22, 1929, Sydney, Australia - March 30, 2003) was a British academic, literary critic and anthologist. As a Professor of Literature at the Universities of Makerere and Ilorin, he played an important role in encouraging literature in East Africa. James David Rubadiri (19 July 1930 - 15 September 2018) was a Malawian diplomat, academic and poet, playwright and novelist. Rubadiri is ranked as one of Africa's most widely anthologized and celebrated poets to emerge after independence.[
[ 0097 ] Mazrui, Ali A. The Trial of Christopher Okigbo. London. 1971. Heinemann. 0435900978. African Writers Series. 145 pages. paperback. AWS97..

DESCRIPTION - This provocative novel of ideas centers on the tragedy of Christopher Okigbo - a real person and a great poet who was killed fighting for Biafra in the Nigerian Civil War. The 'trial' takes place in 'After-Africa', and Okigbo is tried on two counts: first, that he subordinated the vision of a unified Nigeria to the Biafran ideal; and second, that he had betrayed his art by acting as an Ibo first and as a poet last. The central theme is cunningly interwoven with the stories Of Hamisi, the Counsel for Salvation, a Kenyan Muslim in love with a Hausa woman, who is himself on trial for the sin of miscalculation in the 'Herebefore'; and Apolo- Gyamfi, the Counsel for Damnation, a brilliant Ghanaian who had died in a road accident while a student at Oxford, whose sin in the 'Herebefore' was impatience. The summing up and the final verdict on Christopher Okigbo, and the judgment on Hamisi and Apolo-Gyamfi, who themselves are symbolic of some of the protagonists in the Nigerian Civil War, is unexpected and will produce much controversy about the book itself and the ideas involved.

Ali Al'amin Mazrui is an academic and political writer on African and Islamic studies and North-South relations. He is an Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities and the Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton. Mazrui obtained his B.A. with Distinction from Manchester University in Great Britain in 1960, his M.A. from Columbia University in New York in 1961, and his doctorate (DPhil) from Oxford University (Nuffield College) in 1966. Upon completing his education at Oxford University, Mazrui joined the faculty of Makerere University (Kampala, Uganda), where he served as head of the Department of Political Science and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences. He served at Makerere University until 1973, when he was forced into exile by Idi Amin. In 1974, he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan as professor and later was appointed the Director of the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies (1978-1981). In 1989, he was appointed to the faculty of Binghamton University, State University of New York as the Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities and the Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies (IGCS). Mazrui's research interests include African politics, international political culture, political Islam and North-South relations. He is author or co-author of more than twenty books. Mazrui has also published hundreds of articles in major scholastic journals and for public media. He has also served on the editorial boards of more than twenty international scholarly journals. He first rose to prominence as a critic of some of the accepted orthodoxies of African intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s. He was critical of to African socialism and all strains of Marxism. He argued that communism was a Western import just as unsuited for the African condition as the earlier colonial attempts to install European type governments. He argued that a revised liberalism could help the continent and described himself as a proponent of a unique ideology of African liberalism. At the same time he was a prominent critic of the current world order. He believed the current capitalist system was deeply exploitative of Africa, and that the West rarely if ever lived up to their liberal ideals. He has opposed Western interventions in the developing world, such as the Iraq War. He has also long been a critic of Israel's policies, being one of the first to try and link the treatment of Palestinians with South Africa's apartheid. Especially in recent years, Mazrui has also become a well known commentator on Islam and Islamism. While utterly rejecting violence and terrorism Mazrui has praised some of the anti-imperialist sentiment that plays an important role in modern Islamic fundamentalism. He has also argued that sharia law is not incompatible with democracy. In addition to his written work, Dr. Mazrui was also the creator of the television series The Africans: A Triple Heritage, which was jointly produced by the BBC and the Public Broadcasting Service (WETA, Washington) in association with the Nigerian Television Authority. A book by the same title was jointly published by BBC Publications and Little, Brown and Company.
[ 0098 ] Mulaisho, Dominic. The Tongue of the Dumb. London. 1971. Heinemann. 0435900986. African Writers Series. 249 pages. paperback. AWS98..

DESCRIPTION - Author's first novel examines the clash between mission Christianity and indigenous culture and the missiological and theological assumptions underlying these practices.

Dominic Mulaisho was born in 1933 in Feira, Zambia. He graduated from the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in what is now Zimbabwe. He has written two novels but much of his career has been spent working for the Zambian government, holding several senior positions, including governor of the Bank of Zambia. He died in 2013.
[ 0099 ] Ouologuem, Yambo. Bound to Violence. London. 1971. Heinemann. 0435900994. African Writers Series. Translated by Ralph Manheim from the French Devoi de violence. 182 pages. paperback. AWS99..

DESCRIPTION - A fictionalized account of successive black, white, and Arab colonialism in Africa, hailed as the first truly African novel. The author's perception and lyrical images have been compared to Fanon and Rimbaud, respectively. Winner of France's prestigous Prix Renaudot.

Yambo Ouologuem (born August 22, 1940) is a Malian writer. His first novel, Le Devoir de Violence (English: Bound to Violence, 1968), won the Prix Renaudot. He later published Lettre à la France nègre (1969), and Les mille et une bibles du sexe (1969) under the pseudonym Utto Rodolph. Le Devoir de Violence was initially well-received, but critics later charged that Ouologuem had plagiarized passages from Graham Greene and other established authors. Ouologuem turned away from the Western press as a result of the matter, and even today remains reclusive. Yambo Ouloguem was born an only son in an aristocratic Malian family in 1940 in Bandiagara, the main city in the Dogon region of Mali (then a part of French Soudan). His father was a prominent landowner and school inspector. He learned several African languages and gained fluency in French, English, and Spanish. After matriculating at a LycEe in the capital city of Bamako, he went to Paris in 1960, where he studied sociology, philosophy and English at LycEe Henry IV and from 1964 to 1966 he taught at the LycEe de Clarenton in suburban Paris, while studying for a doctorate in sociology at the Ecole Normale SupErieure. His major work, Le devoir de violence (1968), resulted controversy and a continuing academic debate over charges of plagiarism. In 1969, he published out a volume of biting essays, Lettre à la France nègre as well as an erotic novel, Les Milles et un bibles du sexe, published under the pseudonym of Utto Rodolph. After the plagiarism controversy over Le Devoir de violence, Ouloguem returned to Mali in the late seventies. Until 1984, he was the director of a Youth centre near Mopti in central Mali, where he wrote and edited a series of children's textbooks. He is reputed to have been leading a secluded Islamic life as a Marabout since then. His major work, Le Devoir de violence (published in English as Bound to Violence) was published in 1968 by Editions du Seuil. It was met with wide critical acclaim, winning the Prix Renaudot that very year, the first African author to do so. Ouloguem became a celebrity, and Le Monde called him one of 'the rare intellectuals of international stature presented to the world by Black Africa', comparing him to Leopold Sedar Senghor. It was translated into English (Bound to Violence) by Ralph Manheim in 1971. Ouloguem's novel is harshly critical of African nationalism, and 'reserves its greatest hostility for the violence Africans committed against other Africans'. Some critics felt that the praise and initial response of 'authenticity' for the novel, which is often historically inaccurate, was a Western response. These critics viewed it as a rejection of a glorified view of African history: a review in The Nation says that Ouologuem has 'shattered the. myth of a glorious African past'. However, it was soon mired in controversy, as some of the passages appear to have been plagiarized from Graham Greene's It's a Battlefield and the French novel The Last of the Just (Le Dernier des justes, 1959) by Andre Schwartz-Bart. After a lawsuit by Greene, the book was banned in France, and has only recently been re-published. At the time, Ouloguem claimed that he had originally used quotations on some of the controversial passages, but his original manuscript is not available to verify this. He also claimed that in some early interviews, he had openly spoken of excerpting these passages, which is why it was not as controversial in France. Since 1977, the English edition carries the note: 'The Publishers acknowledge the use of certain passages on pages 54-56 from It's a Battlefield by Graham Greene.' Le devoir de violence delineates the seven-and-a-half centuries of history of central Mali (the Dogon region), from 1202 to 1947, when a fictitious nation, Nakem-Zuiko, is on the threshold of independence. The first part of the book deals with several powerful Malian empires, particularly the pre-colonial Toucouleur Empire which had Bandiagara as its capital, and the pre-Islamic Bambara Empire it replaced. It points out how African rulers collaborated with the slave traders, selling a hundred million citizens to be carried off into slavery. The narrative is marked by violence and eroticism, depicting sorcery and black magic as natural human activity. In the second, colonial part of the story, the protagonist, Raymond Spartacus Kassoumi, descended from slaves, is sent to France to be groomed for a political career. The story also highlights the process by which servility or 'negraille' (a word coined by Ouologuem) is ingrained in the black population. The book is notable for its 'cultural sweep: legends, myths, chronicles, religious matter woven into an opulent narrative; for eloquence: the cadence and music of the prose'. The book has been defended by a number of critics including Kwame Anthony Appiah, who views it as a rejection of the 'first generation of modern African novels - the generation of Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Laye's L'Enfant noir'. Despite the controversy, the book remains one of the landmarks of postcolonial African literature. Ouologuem's best-known works were republished English in The Yambo Ouologuem Reader: The Duty of Violence, A Black Ghostwriter's Letter to France and The Thousand and One Bibles of Sex, by Africa World Press, 2008. His legacy is explored in a contemporary light in Yambo Ouologuem: Postcolonial Writer, Islamic Militant, a recent anthology edited by Christopher Wise that includes an account of Wise's own attempt to find Ouologuem in Africa. Wise has called 'Ouologuem's decision to return to Mali and wash his hands of writing in French. an incalculable loss to world literature.' Ouloguem has also written notable poetry, some of which has appeared in Nouvelle Somme. He is anthologized in Poems of Black Africa (ed. Wole Soyinka, 1975) and the Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry (1984).
[ 0100 ] Achebe, Chinua. Girls at War and Other Stories. London. 1972. Heinemann. 0435901001. African Writers Series. 118 pages. paperback. AWS100..

DESCRIPTION - These thirteen short stories range from some short pieces Achebe wrote as a student at Ibadan, right through to stories of the war. GIRLS AT WAR, the title story, was conceived during the Nigerian Civil War; it is about the tragic effects of war on the civilian population and, in particular, about the effect on one girl, who starts with high ideals which vanish as the war drags on, and the need for food replaces the need for ideals. The other stories have been taken from a wide cross-section of journals and magazines. This is the first volume of collected short stories by Chinua Achebe to be made available to a wide public. It is interesting to track the course of Achebe's work from his early student days to the publication of the four novels and to find traces of the great themes from which these are created spilling over into the short stories.

CHINUA ACHEBE published THINGS FALL APART in 1958. It was followed by NO LONGER AT EASE (AWS 3) and ARROW OF GOD (AWS 16). A MAN OF THE PEOPLE (AWS 31) aroused widespread interest on publication at the time of the January 1966 coup because of its prophetic ending. The effects of his novels, and of his editorship of the African Writers Series has had a dramatic impact on the development of the literature of Africa. Some of the stories in GIRLS AT WAR (AWS 100) and some of the poems in BEWARE SOUL BROTHER (AWS 120) are set in the war. His essays were published in 1975 under the title MORNING YET ON CREATION DAY (Heinemann). He was educated at Government College, Umuahia and University College, Ibadan. By the time he left the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in 1966 he had become Director of External Broadcasting. Since the war he has been at the Universities of Nigeria, Massachusetts and Connecticut. He has now returned to Nsukka. Among many recent honours has been the award of a Fellowship of the Modern Languages Association of America and of Doctorates at the Universities of Stirling and Southampton. He has recently followed Heinrich Boll, the Nobel prizewinner, as the recipient of the Scottish Arts Council's Neil Gunn Fellowship. Chinua Achebe is best known as a novelist. But the years of the Nigerian crisis and the civil war were not, for both practical and psychological reasons, a time for work on full-length novels. He found poetry a means of expressing his distress, even though few of the poems speak directly of the war. He has added some new poems to this collection which has already been published in Nigeria.
[ 0101 ] Head, Bessie. Maru. Exeter. 1984. Heinemann. 043590101x. African Writers Series. 128 pages. paperback. AWS101. Cover photo by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - Margaret Cadmore, an orphaned Masarwa girl, comes to Dilepe to teach, only to discover that in this remote Botswana village her own people are treated as outcasts. In the love story and intrigue that follows, Bessie Head brilliantly combines a portrait of loneliness with a rich affirmation of the mystery and spirituality of life.

Bessie Emery Head (6 July 1937 - 17 April 1986) is usually considered Botswana's most influential writer. Bessie Emery Head was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, the child of a wealthy white South African woman and a black servant when interracial relationships were illegal in South Africa. It was claimed that her mother was mentally ill so that she could be sent to a quiet location to then give birth to Bessie without the neighbors knowing. However, the exact circumstances are disputed, and some of Bessie Head's comments, though often quoted as straight autobiography, are in fact from fictionalized settings. In the 1950s and '60s she was a teacher, then a journalist for the South African magazine Drum. In 1964 she moved to Botswana (then still the Bechuanaland Protectorate) as a refugee, having been peripherally involved with Pan-African politics. It would take 15 years for Head to obtain Botswana citizenship. Head settled in Serowe, the largest of Botswana's ‘villages' (i.e. traditional settlements as opposed to settler towns). Serowe was famous both for its historical importance, as capital of the Bamangwato people, and for the experimental Swaneng school of Patrick van Rensburg. The deposed chief of the Bamangwato, Seretse Khama, was soon to become the first President of independent Botswana. Her early death in 1986 (aged 48) from hepatitis came just at the point where she was starting to achieve recognition as a writer and was no longer so desperately poor. Most of Bessie Head's important works are set in Serowe, in particular the three novels When Rain Clouds Gather, Maru, and A Question of Power. One of her best works is When Rain Clouds Gather, in which she writes about a troubled young man called Makhaya who runs away from his birthplace, South Africa, to become a refugee in a little village called Golema Mmidi, in the heart of Botswana. Here he is faced with many challenges, one of which is the fact that Chief Matenge does not allow his presence in the village. He meets a white man named Gilbert and starts a whole new journey into the unknown. Head also published a number of short stories, including the collection The Collector of Treasures. She published a book on the history of Serowe, the village she settled in, called Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind. Her last novel, A Bewitched Crossroad, is historical, set in nineteenth-century Botswana. She had also written a story of two prophets, one wealthy and one who lived poorly called ‘Jacob: The Faith-Healing Priest'. Head's work, which emphasised the value of ordinary life and humble people, was more in touch with an earlier trend in African writing than many recent writers, who have made overtly political comments. Her writing has endured nonetheless. Religious ideas feature prominently at times, as in the work A Question of Power. It is interesting to note that Head was initially brought up as a Christian; however, she was later influenced by Hinduism (to which she was exposed through South Africa's Indian community). Most of her writing took place while she was in exile in Botswana. An exception is the early novel The Cardinals (published posthumously), written before she left South Africa. In some ways Bessie Head remained an outsider in her adopted country, and some discern she had something of a love-hate relationship with it. At times she suffered mental health problems and on one occasion put up a public notice making bizarre and shocking allegations about then President Sir Seretse Khama, which led to a period in Lobatse Mental Hospital. A Question of Power is based partly on those experiences. In 2007 the Bessie Head Heritage Trust was established, along with the Bessie Head Literature Awards. In July 2007 the library in Pietermaritzburg was renamed the Bessie Head library in her honor. In 2003 she was awarded the South African ‘Order of Ikhamanga in Gold' for her ‘exceptional contribution to literature and the struggle for social change, freedom and peace.'
[ 0102 ] Omotoso, Kole. The Edifice. London. 1971. Heinemann. 0435901028. African Writers Series. 121 pages. paperback. AWS102..

DESCRIPTION - The Edifice tells the tale of a Nigerian student in a predominantly white university and the slow, painful deterioration of his marriage to an English woman. In this debut novel, Kole Omotoso captures the alienating experiences of a Black man living in 1960s Britain. Dele is a graduate from one of Nigeria's most prestigious universities. After receiving an offer to study in Britain, he is eager to travel overseas and earn his Doctorate degree. But soon the small, significant moments of prejudice he encounters each day leave Dele feeling unhappy and isolated. From the tangible coldness of his fellow students to the demeaning depiction of Africa in the press, he reluctantly concedes that this is not a place he can ever call home. Disheartened, the only remaining light in his life is his relationship with another student named Daisy. Daisy can see that Dele's love for her is overshadowed by the intolerance he faces. So she makes the life-changing decision to move back with him to Nigeria and leave everything she's ever known behind. But the decision Daisy thought would cement their love ultimately leads to its disastrous collapse.

Bankole Ajibabi Omotoso (born 21 April 1943), also known as Kole Omotoso, is a Nigerian writer and intellectual best known for his works of fiction and in South Africa as the 'Yebo Gogo man' in adverts for the telecommunications company Vodacom. His written work is known for its dedication and commitment to fusing a socio-political reappraisal of Africa and respect for human dignity into most of his works.
[ 0103 ] Peters, Lenrie. Katchikali: Poems. London. 1971. Heinemann. 0435901036. African Writers Series. 70 pages. paperback. AWS103..

DESCRIPTION - ‘Peters is considered one of the most original voices of modern African poetry. A member of the African founding generation writing in English, he showed extensive pan-Africanism in his various volumes of poetry. His poems were mixed with medical terms, and sometimes his later works were angrier at the state of Africa than were his earlier volumes of poetry.’ from Delalorm Sesi Semabia (African Soulja: African Poetry Review).

The Gambian writer and surgeon Lenrie Leopold Wilfred Peters (September 1, 1932 - May 28, 2009) was born in Bathurst, Gambia, on September 1st, 1932. In 1949 he moved to Sierra Leone and went to Prince of Wales School, Freetown, where he gained his Higher School Certificate in science subjects. In 1952 he left Freetown to study in England. In between reading Natural Sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge, becoming president of the African Students’ Union, interesting himself in politics – he is a Pan-Africanist – and writing poetry and plays, he started The Second Round. After qualifying in medicine in London he did special work in surgery and is now practising in Bathurst. . His surgery clinic in Banjul (formerly called Bathurst) operated for many years – during which Dr. Peters continued to write and publish poetry. He died in 2009 at the age of 76 in Dakar, Senegal.
[ 0104 ] Themba, Can. The Will To Die. Portsmouth. 1972. Heinemann. 0435901044. African Writers Series. Selected by Donald Stuart and Roy Holland. 115 pages. paperback. AWS104. Cover illustration by Dumile.

DESCRIPTION - ‘For Can Themba, the African township represented the strength and the will to survive by ordinary masses of the African people. In its own quiet way the township represented a dogged defiance against official persecution, for in the township the moments of splendour were very splendid indeed, surpassing anything white Johannesburg could offer.. to have know Themba, to have heard him speak, is to have known a mind both vigorous and informed, shaped by the city as few other minds are in the rest of Africa.' - From an obituary on Can Themba by Lewis Nkosi.

CAN THEMBA (June 21, 1924, Marabastad, Pretoria, City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality, South Africa - 1968, Manzini, Swaziland), born at Marabastad in the northern Transvaal in 1924, won the first Mendi Memorial Scholarship to Fort Hare. He graduated with a first class degree in English in 1947 and after studying education, took up teaching. In 1953 a prize in a short story competition in the new magazine South African Drum, started him on a life of journalism in Johannesburg. This was mainly on Drum and The Golden City Post, of each of which in turn he was Associate Editor. In 1963 Can Themba, with his wife and children, went into voluntary exile in Swaziland, where he took up teaching again. He died in Manzini in 1968.
[ 0105 ] Lubega, Bonnie. The Outcasts. London. 1971. Heinemann. 0435901052. African Writers Series. 88 pages. paperback. AWS105. Cover picture by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - Karekyesi stinks. He looks after herds of cattle and he stinks of their dung and urine and of rancid butter. His earthiness of smell and word keep the prosperous Baganda villagers well clear of his kraal where he looks after their cattle. Unknown to them he has been imposing his own tax of butter, milk and calves. And he has no reservations about taking the wealth of those cattle-owners who have stood up for him against the village council. When Karekyesi is sacked he departs for his herd in the hills bursting with laughter and bawdiness.

BONNIE LUBEGA was born in Uganda in 1930. He qualified as a teacher and taught for three years in Mission Primary Schools in Masaka District, Uganda. He then became a journalist and worked on various newspapers in Kampala until he started his own pictorial news magazine, Ssanyu. As a result he was awarded a bursary for a short course in London and on his return joined the Ministry of Information; at the time of Uganda's independence he was news editor of the Daily Nation newspaper group. After a scholarship course for higher journalism in West Germany's residential college at Bergneustadt, he returned to Uganda as first information officer in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He later worked in Nairobi as a scriptwriter and radio programme producer and also editor-in-chief of a news agency. He is now a public relations consultant and writes in his spare time.
[ 0106 ] Reed, John and Wake, Clive (editors and translators). French African Verse. London. 1980. Heinemann. 0435901060. African Writers Series. With English translations by John Reed & Clive Wake. 213 pages. paperback. AWS106..

DESCRIPTION - Works from contemporary poets of French from Africa.

John O. Reed (1929 London - 2012 Manchester) was an anthologist and translator of African literature. With Clive Wake he published several anthologies, as well as translations from French of the work of LEopold SEdar Senghor and Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, in Heinemann's African Writers Series. He also translated work by Ferdinand Oyono. Together, they also translated some of the poetry of Yves Bonnefoy in 1967, but these translations were never published. Posthumously, Wake published their introductory essay to these translations online in tribute. John Reed made a journal entry every day of his life in his diaries (now held at Chetham's Library, Manchester) from the age of ten until his death in 2012. For the first years of his life, they offer an insight into the life of a schoolboy during World War Two. After school, Reed recorded the daily details of his National Service. On his discharge, he studied English at Oxford under C.S. Lewis. However, it is his life as a university lecturer in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) that is perhaps of greatest interest. In 1957 he travelled to Salisbury to take up a teaching post, soon becoming involved in the anti-colonial political struggle, and developing a close friendship with Terence Ranger. The diaries offer a unique insight into the daily lives of those involved in the Liberation movement, and reveal how he was drawn deeper and deeper into what would become a very dark and dangerous situation. He was later forced to leave Rhodesia or face arrest, and took up a professorship at the University of Zambia at Lusaka. There he worked to develop theatre which drew on indigenous traditions and promoted the growth of a new generation of African dramatists. He also taught at universities in China and Japan and upon retirement lived in Manchester, U.K. Clive Wake is a critic, editor and translator of modern African and French literature. Born in Cape Town, Clive Wake studied at Cape Town University and the Sorbonne. He taught at the University of Rhodesia, and the University of Kent at Canterbury, where he is Emeritus Professor of French and African Literature. He served as Lord Mayor of Canterbury for the Liberal Democrats party and was Vice-Chancellor of Chaucer College Canterbury.
[ 0107 ] Dipoko, Mbella Sonne. Black and White in Love: poems. London. 1972. Heinemann. 0435901079. African Writers Series. 72 pages. paperback. AWS107..

DESCRIPTION - Black and White in Love is love poetry to a girl, but also to the world. Dipoko expresses his joy for the world in spite of the horror he sometimes sees in it. The book includes such poems as 'Pain,' 'Persecution,' and 'The Tenderness Manifesto.'

Mbella Sonne Dipoko (1936 in Douala - December 5, 2009 in Tiko) was a novelist, poet and painter from Cameroon. He is widely considered to be one of the foremost writers of Anglophone Cameroonian literature. Dipoko was born in 1936 in Douala, Cameroon, but grew up in Western Cameroon and Nigeria. He joined the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in 1958 and became a News Reporter. He lived in France from 1960 to 1968. For a time he was on the editorial staff of PrEsEnce Africaine. He then read law at the University of Paris. He had already shown a rare talent in his novel A FEW NIGHTS AND DAYS (Longmans 1966) which was set in Paris.
[ 0108 ] Awoonor, Kofi. This Earth, My Brother. London. 1972. Heinemann. 0435901087. African Writers Series. 183 pages. paperback. AWS108. Cover design by Joint Graphics.

DESCRIPTION - This is not so much a novel as an allegory of the African predicament, an extraordinary fictional evocation of the quintessence of life in Africa today - the tragic spectre of people, existing, suffering, and dying. Set in Ghana, the 'novel' deals with a young African lawyer, Amamu, who suffers a nervous breakdown and ultimately death, with the parallel degeneration of Africa herself. Using a highly poetic, impressionistic style, alternating with stark sections of realistic narrative, the author conjures up a grimly depressing African world dominated by decay, corruption and death. Two of his most recurrent images, the dunghill and a meadow of yellow butterflies, indicate his conflicting feelings about his continent. However, it is a dark and degenerative universe in which the dung- hill prevails over all else. In between the narrative the author deals with political structures, African education and the ravages of the sordid colonial era and the equally hopeless post-independence era on the African psyche. Beyond all this Africa is, in effect, indicted and proven guilty with no extenuating circumstances.

Kofi Awoonor (March 13, 1935, Wheta, Ghana - September 21, 2013, Nairobi, Kenya) was born George Awoonor-Williams in Wheta, Ghana, to Ewe parents. He was a poet, literary critic, professor of comparative literature and served as an ambassador for Ghana. Awoonor earned a BA from University College of Ghana, an MA from University College, London, and a PhD in comparative literature from SUNY Stony Brook. He is the author of novels, plays, political essays, literary criticism, and several volumes of poetry, including Rediscovery and Other Poems (1964), Night of My Blood (1971), Ride Me, Memory (1973), The House by the Sea (1978), The Latin American and Caribbean Notebook (1992), and a volume of collected poems, Until the Morning After (1987). Awoonor's grandmother was an Ewe dirge singer, and the form of his early poetry draws from the Ewe oral tradition. He translated Ewe poetry in his critical study Guardians of the Sacred Word and Ewe Poetry (1974). Other works of literary criticism include The Breast of the Earth: A Survey of the History, Culture, and Literature of Africa South of the Sahara (1975). In the early 1970s, Awoonor served as chairman of the Department of Comparative Literature at SUNY Stony Book. He returned to Ghana in 1975 to teach at University College of Cape Coast. In Ghana, he was arrested and tried for suspected involvement in a coup. He was imprisoned without trial and was later released; he wrote about his time in jail in The House by the Sea. Awoonor resumed teaching after his sentence was remitted. In the 1980s, he was the Ghanaian ambassador to Brazil and Cuba and served as ambassador to the United Nations from 1990 to 1994; in 1990 he published Ghana: A Political History from Pre-European to Modern Times. Awoonor is author of the novels This Earth, My Brother… (1971) and Comes the Voyager at Last: A Tale of Return to Africa (1992). He died in the Westgate shopping mall attack in Kenya in September 2013.
[ 0109 ] Obiechina, Emmanuel N. Onitsha Market Literature. London. 1972. Heinemann. 0435901095. African Writers Series. Paperback Original. 182 pages. paperback. AWS109. Cover design by Uzo Egonu.

DESCRIPTION - Onitsha Market pamphlets have been a remarkable feature of the literary history of the last twenty (sic) years in Nigeria. They have been much discussed in magazines but many people have only seen isolated examples. Here is an anthology which allows readers to see their full diversity. They will not only amuse and entertain but give a true insight into popular tastes The cultural and social lessons to be drawn are of interest throughout Africa and wherever comparative literature is studied. For example, why did the first popular market in written literature in English emerge in Onitsha? And why did it emerge at the time it did?'

Emmanuel Obiechina (Born 20 September 1933, Nkpo, Igboland) is the pioneering and distinguished scholar of the historic Onicha (Oshimiri Delta) market literature genre and versatile literary critic and author
[ 0110 ] La Guma, Alex. In the Fog of the Season’s End. London. 1972. Heinemann. 0435901109. African Writers Series. 182 pages. paperback. AWS110..

DESCRIPTION - This is the story of those people who daily risked their lives in the underground movement against apartheid. This novel is purposely low key. This was what happened every day. This was the grind of political organization. This was the day-to-day work of dedicated people. Only at moments of crisis where their dying bodies flashed up on the television screens.

Alex La Guma (20 February 1925 - 11 October 1985) was a South African novelist, leader of the South African Coloured People's Organisation (SACPO) and a defendant in the Treason Trial, whose works helped characterise the movement against the apartheid era in South Africa. La Guma's vivid style, distinctive dialogue, and realistic, sympathetic portrayal of oppressed groups have made him one of the most notable South African writers of the 20th century. La Guma was awarded the 1969 Lotus Prize for Literature. La Guma was born in District Six, Cape Town. He was the son of James La Guma, a leading figure in both the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union and the South African Communist Party. La Guma attended Trafalgar High School in District Six in Cape Town. After graduating from a technical school in 1945, he was an active member of the Plant Workers Union of the Metal Box Company. He was fired after organizing a strike, and he became active in politics, joining the Young Communists League in 1947 and the South African Communist Party in 1948. In 1956 he helped organise the South Africa representatives who drew up the Freedom Charter, and consequently he was one of the 156 accused at the Treason Trials that same year. He published his first short story, 'Nocturn', in 1957. In 1960, he began writing for New Age, a progressive newspaper, and in 1962 he was placed under house arrest. Before his five-year sentence could elapse, A No Trial Act was passed and he and his wife were put into solitary confinement. On their release from prison, they returned to house arrest. He, along with his wife Blanche and their two children, went into exile to the UK in 1966. La Guma spent the rest of his life in exile. He was chief representative of the African National Congress in the Caribbean at the time of his death Havana, Cuba, in 1985. In 1984, he was appointed Officer of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture. Although La Guma was an inspiration of and inspired by the growing resistance to apartheid, notably the Black Consciousness Movement, his connection to these groups was indirect.
[ 0111 ] Angira, Jared. Silent Voices: Poems. London. 1972. Heinemann. 0435901117. African Writers Series. 88 pages. paperback. AWS111. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - Jared Angira says of his collection of poetry: ‘Silent Voices consists of crude voices gasping in the dark, of voices trapped in between despair and existence, of voices caught up in a maze but always seeking to get through. They are voices from rusty tincans of the slums, seeking an outlet into the gay city, they are voices corked up in empty gourds. They are the searching voices that must achieve their goals in a strange silent quietness, quietness that defeats the drums. Yet in themselves the voices are drumbeats, pulsations, heartbeats. They are the yodelling of the slum drums, they are the bugles from ancient limbos, they are the bridge from the past into the present and then into that transparent layer of the future. Some of the voices are everyday voices, even of children thrown by their mothers into latrine pits, some are of progressives caught up in competition and self promotion. Here is a conglomeration of voices.'

Jared Angira (born 21 November 1947) is a Kenyan poet. He has been called 'the country's first truly significant poet,' Jared Angira studied commerce at the University of Nairobi from 1968 until 1971. He was editor of Busara which is published by the literature department. He is Africa's representative on the International Executive Committee of the World University Service. is first collection of poems, Juices (EAPH) was published in 1970. He was a founder and is treasurer of the Writers' Association of Kenya. He turned down a scholarship to go to Canada and now works for the East African Harbours Corporation in Dar es Salaam.
[ 0112 ] Vambe, Lawrence. An Ill-Fated People: Zimbabwe before and after Rhodes. London. 1972. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS112..

DESCRIPTION - This book is a testimony. Written in the first person, it has few footnotes, no bibliography, and a tiny index. But it does not need those forms of scholarly references, for it is not a research study. It is a personal history. Filled with anecdotes, character sketches, and observations, it is an exile's recollection of what has happened during part of his sixty-year lifetime to make his homeland what it is today, a pit filled with the terror of racial war.

Lawrence Vambe, who has died aged 102, was a journalist and historian who chronicled the history of Zimbabwe from the time of the arrival of the white colonists until the middle of the 20th century. He was born in the village of Chishawasha in what was then Southern Rhodesia, where his father, Joseph, was a peasant farmer. Lawrence was born during an influenza pandemic, which killed his mother when he was a baby. He was taken into care by Jesuits who had a mission there. Lawrence attended Kutama College, where Robert Mugabe was also educated. Although Mugabe was seven years younger, the two became well acquainted when Lawrence returned as a teacher. He had been destined for the priesthood and he spent three years at a seminary. However, he decided instead to become a teacher and travelled to South Africa to do his training at the South African Native College, which became the University of Fort Hare. After teaching for around five years, he joined African Newspapers as a journalist in 1946 and rose to become editor-in-chief of the group in Rhodesia. As a result of his experience, in 1959 he was sent to London as the press attache of the embassy of the Central African Federation, consisting of what were then Southern and Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland (later Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi). In the 1940s he had married Cathleen Rolands. He brought his young family of three daughters and a son with him to London, while their mother remained in Rhodesia. The marriage ended in divorce. A second marriage in London, to Kay Boyer, which also ended in divorce, produced two daughters. Lawrence was a strong proponent of the Federation; but this was doomed when the Rhodesia Front, which was intent on white supremacy, came to power. When violence and repression broke out in Southern Rhodesia, he resigned his post to become, in 1962, an employee of the Anglo-American mining corporation. This employment lasted until 1970 and it took him to Salisbury (now Harare), to Lusaka and, finally, back to London. It was in London that he wrote An Ill-fated People: Zimbabwe Before and After Rhodes (1972), which covered the country's history from 1890 until the 1950s. A subsequent book, From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe (1976), updated the story. With the advent of independence in 1980, Lawrence returned to Zimbabwe as a businessman and as an occasional journalist. His byline in the African daily paper was Zingese, which translates, by his own account, as madcap bumblebee. He wrote stinging and humorous political commentaries. Lawrence had high hopes for the future of his country at the time, but he became increasingly doubtful of the Mugabe regime. In 2001, Lawrence returned to the UK to spend his retirement with his third wife, Mary (nee Fletcher), in Telford, in her home county of Shropshire.
[ 0113 ] Mezu, S. Okechukwu. Behind the Rising Sun. London. 1978. Heinemann. 0434352705. African Writers Series. 241 pages. paperback. AWS113. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - This epic novel is about the Nigerian Civil War. In Paris Obiora Ifedi, a representative from the East, lives luxuriously while negotiating for charter planes. Large deposits are paid to European dealers who don't in fact have aircraft. There is excitement and unreality which contrasts very vividly with what is happening in Nigeria. Suddenly Freddy Onuoha, witness to these futile efforts, grows impatient - he must return dangerously by night to a shrinking Biafra. Everything, except the suffering, now looks less absolute than it did outside. The war, like all wars, throws up people who are willing to sacrifice all for people who are selling all. ‘.. the most substantial work of fiction yet produced by the war.' - The Times Literary Supplement.

S. OKECHUKWU MEZU is Associate Professor of Languages in the State University of New York. He was born in Owerri in Eastern Nigeria. After schooling in Nigeria he went to Georgetown and La Salle Universities in the United States. He took his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University and was a UNESCO fellow at the Sorbonne. He has published some of his poetry and several other books including Leopold SEdar Senghor et la dEfense et illustration de la civilisation noire (Didier 1968) and The Poetry of L. S. Senghor (Heinemann 1972).
[ 0114 ] Pieterse, Cosmo (editor). Five African Plays. London. 1972. Heinemann. 0435901141. African Writers Series. 217 pages. paperback. AWS114..

DESCRIPTION -

Cosmo George Leipoldt Pieterse (born 1930 in Windhoek, Namibia) is a South African playwright, actor, poet, literary critic and anthologist.
[ 0115 ] Brutus, Dennis. A Simple Lust: Selected Poems. London. 1973. Heinemann. 043590115x. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS115..

DESCRIPTION - Including Sirens Knuckles Boots; Letters to Martha; Poems from Algiers; Thoughts Abroad.

Dennis Vincent Brutus (28 November 1924 - 26 December 2009) was a South African activist, educator, journalist and poet best known for his campaign to have apartheid South Africa banned from the Olympic Games.
[ 0116 ] Liyong, Taban lo. Another Nigger Dead: Poems. London. 1972. Heinemann. 0435901168. African Writers Series. 72 pages. paperback. AWS116. Cover photograph by Nicholas Battye.

DESCRIPTION - Here are the darting thoughts of Taban lo Liyong. The attack and deftness of these poems will be familiar of those who have enjoyed Frantz Fanon's Uneven Ribs with Poems, More and More (AWS 90).

Taban Lo Liyong (born 1939) is one of Africa's well-known poets and writers of fiction and literary criticism. His political views, as well as his on-going denigration of the post-colonial system of education in East Africa, have inspired criticism and controversy since the late 1960s. He was born in Uganda. After matriculation there, he attended Howard University and the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, where he was the first African to graduate in 1968. On the completion of his studies in the US, the tyrannical regime of Idi Amin prevented him from returning to Uganda. He went instead to neighbouring Kenya, and taught at the University of Nairobi. He has also taught at international universities in Sudan, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Japan, and South Africa, and maintains that his diverse experience offers an opportunity to place Africa in a position intellectually on par with the rest of the world, thereby recognising its various and valuable contributions to history and scholarship. In collaboration with Henry Owuor-Anyumba and renowned Kenyan academic and writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o, he wrote On the Abolition of the English Department in 1968. Acknowledging the formidable influence of European literature over African writing, Liyong and his colleagues called for the educational system to emphasise the oral tradition (as a key traditional African form of learning), Swahili literature, as well as prose and poetry from African-American and Caribbean society. Through On the Abolition of the English Department, Lo-Liyong and his allies attempted a re-consideration of the humanities curriculum at the University of Nairobi, most particularly of its investment in foreign (British) literature and culture. They questioned the value of an English Department in an African context: We have eyes, but we don't see. We have ears, but we don't hear. We can read, but we don't understand what we read. They suggested that the post-colonial African university must first establish a counter-curriculum of African languages and literatures and then return to a study of European and other world literatures from an African perspective: If there is a need for ‘study of the historic continuity of a single culture', why can't this be African? Why can't African literature be at the centre so that we can view other cultures in relationship to it? Liyong, Owuor-Anyumba, and wa Thiong'o were criticised for advocating cultural or even racial purity within academia. Rather, they sought to re-establish in East Africa traditional modes of knowledge and understanding in literature, in an effort towards authenticity and as a means for the region to better understand itself in the context of national independence. By placing African culture at the centre of education, all other things [would] be considered in their relevance to [the African] situation, and their contribution towards understanding [itself]'. This philosophy was also politically significant at a time when East African governing bodies were struggling against the influence of colonial powers such as the US and Britain. Independently, Liyong has had published over twenty books. These include Carrying Knowledge Up a Palm Tree (1998), an anthology of poetry that addresses various contemporary issues and follows African progress in recent history. The East African Literature Bureau (EALB) published many of Liyong's earlier works in English as well as East African languages. The EALB played an instrumental role in disseminating the opinions of African academics in the period right after Kenyan independence from Britain in 1963. Many of these publications criticised neocolonialism, the new method by which former colonial nations maintained their dominance over the newly independent states. The emerging theories held that East African governments and institutions were manipulated by money and corruption into upholding structures that undermined local culture while uplifting colonial ideals. Lo-Liyong's work emerges from this environment of cultural and political uncertainty. His work draws on the continent's tradition in its form as well as its content. Of his poetry, Liyong says: the period of introspection has arrived; personal introspection, communal introspection. Only through introspection can we appraise ourselves more exactly. In one of his most controversial assertions, Liyong rejects long-established literary conventions defined by Aristotle for effective writing. In The Uniformed Man (1971), Liyong calls for readers to approach text in a less familiar way, that is, not to follow the usual conventions of literature such as 'introduction, exposition, rising action, etc. up to the climax'. Instead, text should be unconstrained by expectation and read with a consistent appreciation for 'each word, phrase, or sentence'. Lo-Liyong addresses an African audience in the majority of his work, but mostly he attempts to universally put forward the idea that African knowledge is of benefit to the intellectual world at large. African experience, including that of the diaspora, should not be marginalised intellectually. In his introduction to The Uniformed Man, he addresses the issues raised in On the Abolition of the English Department when he claims that 'the [African] audience can only get full emotional satisfaction when they find that the world of the theatre and their world is completely evoked'. Despite his various contributions to poetry and fiction, Liyong considers his essays of most significance, calling them 'essays with a practical nature'. His eclectic and unconventional approaches to literature and literary theory make him an enduring study and a living icon of African nationalism. He remains a staunch political activist, committed to the causes of exploited communities. He was recently a professor of literature and Head of the Centre for African Studies at the University of Venda in South Africa. Professor Liyong is currently the Acting Vice-Chancellor of Juba University in South Sudan. After over 20 years of war, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement brought peace to South Sudan and Professor Liyong has returned home to contribute his outstanding intellectual and managerial prowess.
[ 0117 ] Achebe, Chinua. No Longer at Ease. London. 1963. Heinemann. African Writers Series. Illustrated by Bruce Onobrakpeya. 170 pages. paperback. AWS117..

DESCRIPTION - Chinua Achebe is a young Nigerian whose first book, THINGS FALL APART, which portrayed the break-up of tribal life at the end of the last century under the impact of the white man's civilization, made a considerable impression on critics both in England and the United States. This new hovel, which is marked by the same strong narrative and honesty of approach, is set in present-day Nigeria. Obi Okonkwo is an Ibo from Eastern Nigeria, a promising representative of his generation, the bright boy of. his village who returns from his studies in England to try and live up to the expectations of his family and his tribe and at the same time to breathe the heady atmosphere of Lagos, a city whose tempo and temptations are heady fare for the boy from the country. As a civil servant Obi holds a respected job; as the fiance of Clara, the girl he met on the boat, he has much to look forward to; yet nevertheless Obi falls victim to the corruption of the capital. Like its predecessor, THINGS FALL APART (whose hero was Obi's powerful grandfather), NO LONGER AT EASE tells the story of an African tragically under pressure from a changing world, a story as old as Africa and as new as today's headlines.

Chinua Achebe (16 November 1930 - 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic. His first novel Things Fall Apart (1958), often considered his masterpiece, is the most widely read book in modern African literature.
[ 0118 ] Amadu, Malum. Amadu's Bundle: Fulani Tales of Love and Djinns. London. 1972. Heinemann. 0435901184. African Writers Series. Collected by Malum Amadu; edited by Gulla Kell and translated into English by Ronald Moody. 88 pages. paperback. AWS118. Cover design by Uzo Egonu.

DESCRIPTION - These tales of love and djinns come from the Fulani people of Northern Cameroun and Nigeria. They give a rare insight into the vivid, everyday lives of a people. Some of the stories are classics which Amadu wrote down in the Fulani language using Arabic script. He also dictated tales, riddles and songs which had only existed in the oral tradition.

MALUM AMADU belonged to an old town-Fulani ruling family in Yola. He came from a long line of malums, or scribes. He first of all went to a Koranic school. For the next few years he went as a day-boy to a malum and then as a boarder to a teacher where he studied the sciences, of which theology was the most important, Naturally he too became a scribe. GULLA KELL, who obtained a doctorate from the University of Berlin, worked for some time among the Fulani. where she met Malum Amadu. RONALD MOODY is a sculptor who lives in London. He was born in Jamaica and studied art in London and Paris.
[ 0119 ] Kane, Cheikh Hamidou. Ambiguous Adventure. London. 1988. Heinemann. 0435901192. African Writers Series. Translated from the French by Katherine Woods. 178 pages. paperback. AWS119. Cover photograph by George Hallett..

DESCRIPTION - Samba Diallo comes from an aristocratic family, the Diallobes. He is brought up along strictly Islamic lines and Thierno, the spiritual leader of the society, sees him as a natural successor. But his family, strongly influenced by his dominating aunt, decides after long and agonizing debate to send him to the French school to learn the secrets of the White man's power. Initially Samba Diallo is excited by his contact with Western culture and when he chooses to study philosophy at Paris he sees it as offering the most direct access to the European mind. But he rapidly finds that he is in an ambiguous situation for, while he has become estranged from the simple faith of his people, he is unable to identify with the soulless material civilization he sees in France. ‘.. it is a work that summarizes and brings into focus the ideas and attitudes that lie at the centre of inspiration of all French African writing.' - Abiola Irele in Lectures Africaines.

CHEIKH HAMIDOU KANE was born in 1928 in Mataru in Senegal. Having started at a Koranic school he eventually went to read philosophy and law at the University of Paris before training as an administrator at the Ecole Nationale de la France d'Outre-Mer. He returned to Senegal in 1959 and has become in turn the Director of the Department of Economic Planning and Development, Governor of the Region of Thies and Commissioner of Planning in Mamadou Dia's government. He has worked for UNICEF in Lagos and Abidjan. L'Aventure Ambigue was published by Juillard in 1961 and won the 1962 Grand Prix Litteraire de l'Afrique Noir.
[ 0120 ] Achebe, Chinua. Beware Soul Brother: Poems. London. 1972. Heinemann. 0435901206. African Writers Series. 68 pages. paperback. AWS120. Cover design by Shyam Varma.

DESCRIPTION - Written during the Nigerian Civil War, this collection of poetry won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1972. Most of the poems in BEWARE SOUL BROTHER were first published in Nigeria in 1971. They were written after the publication of his novel, A MAN OF THE PEOPLE (1966), and during a period of four years of military coups, massacres of Igbos, and the secession of Biafra in 1967. Achebe was forced to leave Lagos during the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-70. BEWARE SOUL BROTHER represents Achebe's literary response to the war.

CHINUA ACHEBE published THINGS FALL APART in 1958. It was followed by NO LONGER AT EASE (AWS 3) and ARROW OF GOD (AWS 16). A MAN OF THE PEOPLE (AWS 31) aroused widespread interest on publication at the time of the January 1966 coup because of its prophetic ending. The effects of his novels, and of his editorship of the African Writers Series has had a dramatic impact on the development of the literature of Africa. Some of the stories in GIRLS AT WAR (AWS 100) and some of the poems in BEWARE SOUL BROTHER (AWS 120) are set in the war. His essays were published in 1975 under the title MORNING YET ON CREATION DAY (Heinemann). He was educated at Government College, Umuahia and University College, Ibadan. By the time he left the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in 1966 he had become Director of External Broadcasting. Since the war he has been at the Universities of Nigeria, Massachusetts and Connecticut. He has now returned to Nsukka. Among many recent honours has been the award of a Fellowship of the Modern Languages Association of America and of Doctorates at the Universities of Stirling and Southampton. He has recently followed Heinrich Boll, the Nobel prizewinner, as the recipient of the Scottish Arts Council's Neil Gunn Fellowship. Chinua Achebe is best known as a novelist. But the years of the Nigerian crisis and the civil war were not, for both practical and psychological reasons, a time for work on full-length novels. He found poetry a means of expressing his distress, even though few of the poems speak directly of the war. He has added some new poems to this collection which has already been published in Nigeria.
[ 0121 ] Munonye, John. A Wreath For the Maidens. London. 1973. Heinemann. 0435901214. African Writers Series. 248 pages. paperback. AWS121. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - Eric and Biere have much in common. They suffer the same humiliations while growing up in a country which is still a colony. As students and teachers they welcome independence but find events building up to the bloody confrontation of civil war. The two friends are forced by their principles to take sides. But their ideals are soon shattered in this futile conflict, this sacrifice of the maidens. John Munonye's new novel shows his customary skill at making the experiences of ordinary people come alive.

JOHN MUNONYE was born in 1929 in Akokwa, Nigeria, and educated at Christ the King College, Onitsha. In 1948 he went to University College, Ibadan, graduating B.A. in First Division in 1952. He spent a year doing a post-graduate course in education at London University. Since 1954 he has worked for the Ministry of Education in Nigeria; he is at present Principal of the Advanced Teacher Training College, Owerri, Three other novels have been published in African Writers Series: The Only Son (AWS 21), Obi (AWS 45) and Oil of Obange (AWS 94).
[ 0122 ] Omotoso, Kole. The Combat. London. 1972. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS122..

DESCRIPTION - 'The Combat' unforgettably recounts the torn friendship between two contenders over the paternity rights of a child they once jointly seem to have fathered by a market girl, now a sophisticated businesswoman.

Bankole Ajibabi Omotoso (born 21 April 1943), also known as Kole Omotoso, is a Nigerian writer and intellectual best known for his works of fiction and in South Africa as the 'Yebo Gogo man' in adverts for the telecommunications company Vodacom. His written work is known for its dedication and commitment to fusing a socio-political reappraisal of Africa and respect for human dignity into most of his works.
[ 0123 ] Mandela, Nelson. No Easy Walk to Freedom. London. 1973. Heinemann. 0435901230. African Writers Series. Some b/w illustrations. 189 pages. paperback. AWS123..

DESCRIPTION - ‘THERE IS NO EASY WALK TO FREEDOM anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountain tops of our desires,' observes Nelson Mandela in this eloquent, sharply revealing document. Banned from all public gatherings and under constant police surveillance for nine years, Mandela - who has been on trial three separate times for his role in the struggle against apartheid - was sentenced to serve a life sentence in South Africa's maximum-security penal institution. As The New York Times wrote at the time, Mandela and the others sentenced with him are ‘the George Washingtons and Benjamin Franklins of South Africa.' The protests, The Times continued, ‘reflect the outraged conscience of the world; they mirror the growing moral disgust among men of every color at the rigid racism of the South African government.' NO EASY WALK TO FREEDOM is the dramatic story of ‘the Black Pimpernel's' struggle. It movingly exposes the discriminatory conditions of life under apartheid, the tactics of the fight against it, and the role of the underground resistance through Mandela's own speeches, articles, trial addresses, and actual transcripts of the trials in which he was the chief accused. Perhaps more than anything else that has been said or written about apartheid, these writings expose the horrors of racial hatred and distinguish Mandela as a political leader of vision and humanity.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (born 18 July 1918) is a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and politician who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the first black South African to hold the office, and the first elected in a fully representative, multiracial election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid through tackling institutionalised racism, poverty and inequality, and fostering racial reconciliation. Politically a democratic socialist, he served as the President of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1991 to 1997. Internationally, Mandela was the Secretary General of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998 to 1999. A Xhosa born to the Thembu royal family, Mandela attended Fort Hare University and the University of Witwatersrand, where he studied law. Living in Johannesburg, he became involved in anti-colonial politics, joining the ANC and becoming a founding member of its Youth League. After the Afrikaner nationalists of the National Party came to power in 1948 and began implementing the policy of apartheid, he rose to prominence in the ANC's 1952 Defiance Campaign, was elected President of the Transvaal ANC Branch and oversaw the 1955 Congress of the People. Working as a lawyer, he was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and, with the ANC leadership, was prosecuted in the Treason Trial from 1956 to 1961 but was found not guilty. Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the South African Communist Party he co-founded the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in 1961, leading a bombing campaign against government targets. In 1962 he was arrested, convicted of sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government, and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial. Mandela served 27 years in prison, first on Robben Island, and later in Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison. An international campaign lobbied for his release, which was granted in 1990. Becoming ANC President, Mandela published his autobiography and led negotiations with President F.W. de Klerk to abolish apartheid and establish multi-racial elections in 1994, in which he led the ANC to victory. He was elected President and formed a Government of National Unity. As President, he established a new constitution and initiated the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses, while introducing policies to encourage land reform, combat poverty and expand healthcare services. Internationally, he acted as mediator between Libya and the United Kingdom in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial, and oversaw military intervention in Lesotho. He declined to run for a second term, and was succeeded by his deputy Thabo Mbeki, subsequently becoming an elder statesman, focusing on charitable work in combating poverty and HIV/AIDS through the Nelson Mandela Foundation. Controversial for much of his life, right-wing critics denounced Mandela as a terrorist and communist sympathiser. He has nevertheless received international acclaim for his anti-colonial and anti-apartheid stance, having received over 250 awards, including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Soviet Order of Lenin. He is held in deep respect within South Africa as the ‘Father of the Nation' and is often known under his Xhosa clan name of Madiba.
[ 0124 ] Dikobe, Modikwe. The Marabi Dance. London. 1973. Heinemann. 0435901249. African Writers Series. 118 pages. paperback. AWS124. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - Martha has grown up in the Molefe Yard, a slum in Johannesburg, during the 1930s. Her parents are bewildered people, caught between the half-remembered ritual law of their tribal inheritance and the cultural waste tips of the giant gold city. Martha is caught between a retreat to the tribal world she herself has never known and destruction among the chaos of the Marabi parties and the city gangs. Most of the other characters are faced with the same dilemma, as can be seen especially clearly in the tragi-comedy of the bogus Reverend Ndlovu. Many writers have been drawn to describe the life of Africans in Johannesburg, but Modikwe Dikobe has remained among, and of, the people: his is an insider's picture, intimate, authentic, and matter-of-fact.

Modikwe Dikobe (pseudonym of Marks Rammitloa, born 1913) was a novelist, poet, trade unionist and squatter leader in Johannesburg, South Africa in the 1940s. He wrote one book and one collection of poetry, whilst working as a hawker, clerk, domestic servant and night watchman.
[ 0125 ] Worku, Daniachew. The Thirteenth Sun. London. 1973. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS125..

DESCRIPTION - In part, The Thirteenth Sun reflects Worku's own long record of political activism, which cost him his academic position at Haile Selassie I University in Addis Ababa, where he specialized in Amharic language and literature. The Thirteenth Sun (a reference to the last month of the 13-month Ethiopian calendar) is an allegory of Ethiopia under the reactionary rule of Haile Selassie, but this allegory is submerged in an extraordinarily concrete, vivid, and poetic portrayal of Ethiopian society in the microcosm of a pilgrimage to a mountain shrine. Ethiopian society and culture and the country's diverse national character are all dealt with in an often sardonic but compassionate narrative.

Daniachew Worku, (born 1936, Addis Ababa, Eth. - died 1994/95), Ethiopian writer of drama, fiction, poetry, and literary history, best known outside Ethiopia for his novel in English, The Thirteenth Sun (1973).
[ 0126 ] Cheney-Coker, Syl. Concerto for an Exile: poems. London. 1973. Heinemann. 0435901265. African Writers Series. 40 pages. paperback. AWS126..

DESCRIPTION - The poem 'Concerto for an exile' explores Syl Cheney-Coker’s outrage over political events in contemporary Sierra Leone, specifically as a result of the execution of army chief of staff Brigadier John Bangura in 1971 by Sierra Leone leader Siaka Stevens in an atmosphere of political corruption and violence.

Syl Cheney-Coker (b. 1945) is a poet, novelist, and journalist from Sierra Leone. Educated in the United States, he has a global sense of literary history, and has introduced styles and techniques from French and Latin American literatures to Sierra Leone. He has spent much of his life in exile from his native country, and has written extensively (in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction) about the condition of exile and the view of Africa from an African abroad. Cheney-Coker was born in Freetown with the name Syl Cheney Coker, and changed his name to its current spelling in 1970. He went to the United States in 1966, where he attended the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Oregon, and the University of Wisconsin. After his schooling he returned briefly to Sierra Leone, but accepted a position at the University of the Philippines in 1975; he later married a Filipino woman. He moved to Nigeria in 1977 to teach at the University of Maiduguri, and returned to the United States in 1988 to be Writer-in-Residence at the University of Iowa. Cheney-Coker's poetry is tinged with the anxiety of his perennially uncertain status, dealing both with exile (he has spent the majority of his adult life outside of his country) and with the precariousness of living as an intellectual in Sierra Leone. At the same time, he is concerned always with how he will be read; his poems are radical and ardent, but also erudite and allusive, which can distract a reader from Cheney-Coker's ideological project. He has been called one of the more western-influenced African poets. In the early 1990s, Cheney-Coker returned to Freetown to become editor of a progressive newspaper, the Vanguard. After the military coup of 1997, Cheney-Coker was targeted as a dissident, and barely escaped with his life. In part through the efforts of Wole Soyinka, an exiled Nigerian poet teaching at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Cheney-Coker was invited to be the first writer in the City of Asylum program in Las Vegas, Nevada. He decided to return to a somewhat more stable Sierra Leone in 2003, saying, ‘After a while, exile is neither justifiable nor tolerable.'
[ 0127 ] Henderson, Gwyneth and Pieterse, Cosmo (editors). Nine African Plays for Radio. London. 1973. Heinemann. 0435901273. African Writers Series. 185 pages. paperback. AWS127..

DESCRIPTION - Nine African plays for the radio: Sunil's Dilemma, The Soldiers, The Trial of Busumbala, The Prisoner, the judge and the jailer, Oh how dearly I detest thee, Lagos, yes Lagos, Beyond the Line, Full Cycle, and Company Pot.

Cosmo George Leipoldt Pieterse (born 1930 in Windhoek, Namibia) is a South African playwright, actor,[1] poet, literary critic and anthologist.
[ 0128 ] Zwelonke, D. M. Robben Island. Oxford. 1989. Heinemann. 0435901281. African Writers Series. 151 pages. paperback. AWS128. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - This novel is set in the stone-breaking harshness of South Africa's island prison. This is the scene of Brutus's Letters to Martha. Comparisons with Solzhenitsyn's Siberian jail are obvious. Danny tells the story of Bekimpi. This is the code name of an imprisoned leader of Poko, a branch of the resistance. A long spell of solitary leads him to brooding on the past and to obsessive sexual fantasies. He is stoic under torture but his body gives up and he dies.

D. M. ZWELONKE is a young South African who has been imprisoned on Robben Island. He has written for The New African. He lives in exile.
[ 0129 ] Egudu, Romanus and Nwoga, Donatus (translators). Igbo Traditional Verse. London. 1973. Heinemann. 043590129x. African Writers Series. Compiled and translated by Romanus Egudu and Donatus Nwoga. paperback. AWS129..

DESCRIPTION - A record of the communal poetry of the Igbo people illustrating the connection between Igbo poetry and Igbo cultural life, lgbo life seen through Igbo art. Romanus Egudu and Donatus Hwoga were both Igbo lecturers of English at the University of Nigeria.

Romanus N. Egudu is a Nigerian poet and scholar. He published poetry in Transition Magazine in the 1960s while undertaking graduate studies in English Literature at Michigan State University. He has held teaching positions at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and the University of Benin, where he headed the English department. Egudu is notable for his work in West African and Igbo poetry. Alongside Donatus Nwoga, he compiled and translated Igbo poetry, published as Poetic Heritage: Igbo Traditional Verse in 1971. Donatus Nwoga (30 July 1933 - 1991) was a poetry critic and professor of African literature at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Nwoga was from Mbaise in Imo State, Nigeria. He studied at St Brigid's School, Ahiara. In the 1950s, Nwoga studied at the University of London and then at Queen's University Belfast, where he attended classes with the poet Seamus Heaney. Nwoga was a founding editor of the student magazine Gorgon and likely the first person to publish Heaney's work. Nwoga and Romanus Egudu researched Igbo poetry and published a collection of translated into English. Nwoga taught with Chinua Achebe in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He was a member of organisations including the African Literature Association, the International African Institute, the Association for Commonwealth Language and Literature Studies, and The Folklore Society.
[ 0130 ] Aluko, T. M. His Worshipful Majesty. London. 1973. Heinemann. 0435901303. African Writers Series. 174 pages. paperback. AWS130. Cover design by Peter Edwards.

DESCRIPTION - Since time immemorial the Alaiye, Oba Olayiwola Adegoke, King of Aiye, had held unquestioned supremacy over his small kingdom. More recently, the British had also come to hold some of the reins of power, but the King had continued in the old ways with his authority largely unquestioned. Unquestioned, that is, until the formation of the Local Government Law - with the Aiye Divisional Council under the Chairmanship of Barrister Morrison - to modernize the land and to make sure that public funds are fairly spent for the public good : education, hospitals, new roads and town planning. Initially all goes well, the fine aims and objects are welcomed by the Oba until he realizes that the new schemes cost money and that he cannot continue to spend public money in the old time-honoured ways.

T. M. ALUKO was born in 1918 at Ilesha and educated at Government College, Ibadan. He studied civil engineering and town planning in Lagos and London, and in 1960 was appointed Director of Public Works for Western Nigeria. He has now joined the staff of the University of Lagos. He first attracted notice through short stories which won prizes in contests organized by the British Council in Nigeria. A number of his stories and articles were then published In West Africa Review and broadcast by the BBC African Service. One Man One Wife was first published in 1959 by the Nigerian Printing and Publishing Company in Lagos. Since then he has published two other novels, ONE MAN ONE MATCHET (1964) and KINSMAN AND FOREMAN (1966).
[ 0131 ] Lessing, Doris. The Grass is Singing. London. 1973. Heinemann. 0435901311. African Writers Series. 265 pages. paperback. AWS131. Cover illustration by Bill Hayes.

DESCRIPTION - Now recognized as one of the finest post-war novels, this book is set against the sombre background of Rhodesia with its highly explosive racial situation. It tells the tragic story of a white settler and his wife and their native servant.

Doris May Lessing (nee Tayler; 22 October 1919 - 17 November 2013) was a British-Zimbabwean (Rhodesian) novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where she remained until moving in 1949 to London, England. Her novels include The Grass Is Singing (1950), the sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence (1952–1969), The Golden Notebook (1962), The Good Terrorist (1985), and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives (1979–1983). Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described her as 'that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny'. Lessing was the oldest person ever to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 2001, Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British literature. In 2008, The Times ranked her fifth on a list of 'The 50 greatest British writers since 1945'.
[ 0132 ] Bown, Lalage (editor). Two Centuries of African English: A Survey and Anthology of Non-fictional English Prose by African Writers Since 1769. London. 1973. Heinemann. 043590132x. African Writers Series. 212 pages. paperback. AWS132. Cover photographs - Top left: William Blyden; Top right: Tom Mboya; Bottom left: Kwame Nkrumah; Bottom right: Olaudah Equiano.

DESCRIPTION - This anthology is designed to show some of the ways in which English has been used by Africans since the language was imported into Africa. It includes such varied items as a letter written by a West African shop-keeper in 1769, a 1963 essay by a Malawian on African character, a comment on Julius Nyerere by Tom Mboya, a description by the South African novelist Peter Abrahams of a West Indian revivalist church service and the preamble of the OAU Charter. There are special sections on the spoken word, political tracts and autobiography and travel and altogether twelve countries are represented. For most readers this will be a book of discovery of the length of time Africans have written in English and the variety of well-crafted non-fictional prose they have produced.

Lalage Jean Bown (born 1 April 1927) was the Professor of Adult Education at Ahmadu Bello University. She read History at Oxford and has worked in university adult education in Africa since 1949, at the Universities of Ghana, Makerere and Ibadan. She was Director of Extra-Mural Studies for the initial five years of the University of Zambia before returning to Nigeria, in 1971. She is Secretary of the African Adult Education Association and was the original organizing secretary of the International Congress of Africanists. She says "My first name being a classical Greek one for a woman who talks a lot, I was obviously destined for lecturing!
[ 0133 ] Mukasa, Ham. Sir Apolo Kagwa Discovers Britain. London. 1975. Heinemann. 0435901338. African Writers Series. Edited by Taban lo Liyong. paperback. AWS133..

DESCRIPTION - Sir Apollo Kagwa (1864–1927) was a major intellectual and political leader in Uganda when it was under British rule. He was a leader of the Protestant faction and was appointed prime minister (Katikkiro) of the Kingdom of Buganda by King Mwanga II in 1890. He served until 1926. Kagwa served as prince regent from 1897 until 1914 when the infant King Daudi Chwa came of age. He was Buganda's first and foremost ethnographer.

Ham Mukasa (c.?1870–1956) was a vizier in the court of Mutesa I of Buganda (in present-day Uganda) and later secretary to Apolo Kagwa. He was fluent in both English and Swahili. He wrote one of the first glossaries of the Ganda language.
[ 0134 ] Henderson, Gwyneth (editor). African Theatre: Eight Prize-winning Plays for Radio. London. 1973. Heinemann. 0435901346. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS134..

DESCRIPTION - Includes the plays - 'Make Like Slaves' by Richard Rive; 'Station Street' by A. K. Mustapha; 'Sweet Scum of Freedom' by J. Singh; 'Double Attack' by C. C. Umeh; 'Scholarship Woman' by D. Clems; 'The Transistor Radio' by K. Tsaro-Wiwa; 'Family Spear' by E. N. Zirimu; and 'Sign of the Rainbow' by W. Ogunyemi.

Gwyneth Henderson for two decades was the head of the BBC World Service’s training department. She was born in Whitby, North Yorkshire, to John Henderson, a civil engineer, and his wife, Catherine (nee Bodycombe). Because of her father’s work, Gwyneth grew up in various places, including Nigeria, where she developed a lifelong interest in Africa. After attending school in St Albans, Hertfordshire, she first trained to be a teacher, and then, in the early 1960s, joined the BBC in London as a studio technician. In the late 60s she moved on to become a radio producer in the African Service at Bush House, the home of the BBC’s overseas services. There she specialised in arts and educational programmes, and helped to pioneer African Theatre – a project whereby listeners were invited to submit radio plays and the best were aired. After a spell working on radio programmes, including a documentary series on recent history made with, and presented by, the journalist James Cameron, in 1977 she was chosen to run the World Service training operation, which embraced journalism, presenting and other radio broadcasting skills. The range of the training expanded greatly under Gwyneth’s guidance and increasingly attracted outside demand for its expertise. Early in her tenure she herself spent six months training broadcasters in Hong Kong under a Commonwealth aid scheme, and after the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia her department became the go to place for newly emerging democracies to send journalists to study broadcasting best practice. A key course for high-flying broadcasters from such countries was a six-week immersion in British journalism called Media in the UK. In 2000 Gwyneth retired early from the BBC, but her career in the service continued. She chaired the Open Society Foundation’s media programme, which allocated funds for media projects around the world, and ran training courses for the US overseas broadcasters Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty at its Prague studios. She also co-founded the charity Media Defence (originally called Media Legal Defence Initiative), which provides legal help globally to journalists facing attempts to muzzle them, and chaired its trustees for nine years. With a keen eye for spotting talent, Gwyneth went out of her way to improve opportunities for women and members of under-represented communities, and encouraged staff recruited to the BBC’s language services to widen their career ambitions. Gwyneth Henderson died in 2023 at the age of 80.
[ 0135 ] Maran, René. Batouala. London. 1973. Heinemann. 0435901354. African Writers Series. Translated by Barbara Beck and Alexandre Mboukou. Introduction by Donald E. Herdeck. paperback. AWS135..

DESCRIPTION - A scathing indictment against Colonial rule in the French Congo. Winner of the Prix Goncourt and considered by students of African literature as the first work by a black writer to signal the break from mission literature and a movement toward an oppositional voice to the colonial enterprise. Maran, born in Martinique of French Guiana parents, is regarded as the fountainhead of black French intellectual thought in the Caribbean and Africa and is credited with encouraging a generation of writers during his career. In writing of blacks under colonial rule in Africa's Congo region, Batouala triggered not only the harsh tone that black cultural expression was going to take from there on through the Negritude movement, but also set the pace for a universal idea of the black condition.

Rene Maran (Fort-de-France, Martinique, 8 November 1887 - 9 May 1960) was a French Guyanese poet and novelist, and the first black writer to win the French Prix Goncourt (in 1921). Born on the boat carrying his parents to Fort-de-France where he lived till the age of seven. After that he went to Gabon, where his father HEmEnEglide Maran was in the colonial service. After attending boarding school in Bordeaux, France, he joined the French Colonial service in French Equatorial Africa. It was his experience there that was the basis for many of his novels, including Batouala: A True Black Novel, which won the Prix Goncourt. Jean-Paul Sartre alluded to Maran in his preface to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, mocking the French establishment's complacent self-congratulation that they had ‘on one occasion given the Prix Goncourt to a Negro'.
[ 0136 ] Sekyi, Kobina. The Blinkards. London. 1974. Heinemann. 0435901362. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS136..

DESCRIPTION - The Blinkards was staged by the Cosmopolitan Club in Cape Coast in 1915. No contemporary reviews have survived, and published memoirs make no mention of it. The play written in English and Fanti has as its central theme the dangers of unblinking and unthinking Europeanism. In this it faithfully reflects some of the key ideas and beliefs of the gifted and cultivated Cape Coast Nationalists who at this time dominated the press and the literary clubs. It is a comedy in the Shavian manner (Sekyi had been much influenced by Shaw's writing during his stay in England), laughing at the posturing and antics of the semi-educated who rejecting the richness and variety of their own cultural heritage aped, and aped unsuccessfully, European behaviour, customs, and manners. The play, however, is not only interesting and amusing in its own right, but is also fascinating for two other reasons. Firstly as being probably the first play by a West African to be written and acted in English. A literary landmark that has been forgotten and neglected. Secondly as a contemporary reflection of the times, a social document of great value. This edition with Dr Langley's introduction is the first publication of the play.

William Esuman-Gwira Sekyi, better known as Kobina Sekyi (1 November 1892, Cape Coast - 1956) was a nationalist lawyer, politician and writer in the Gold Coast. Sekyi was the son of John Gladstone Sackey, headmaster of the Wesleyan School in Cape Coast, who was himself the son of Chief Kofi Sekyi, the Chief Regent of Cape Coast and Wilhelmina Pietersen, also known as Amba Paaba, daughter of Willem Essuman Pietersen (c.1844-1914), an Elmina-Cape Coast businessman and one-time President of the Aborigines' Rights Protection Society (ARPS), a later president of which was Sekyi's uncle, Henry van Hien, whose heir Sekyi was. Sekyi was educated at Mfantsipim School and studied philosophy at the University of London, accompanied to Britain by his maternal grandfather. He had originally wanted to become an engineer like his mother's younger brother, J.B. Essuman-Gwira, but because his family controlled the purse strings and they wished him to study law, that was the career he entered. He was called to the Bar from the Inner Temple in 1918. Sekyi became a lawyer in private practice in the Gold Coast. He was president of the Aborigines' Rights Protection Society, an executive member of the National Congress of British West Africa, and member of the Coussey Committee for constitutional change. He married Lilly Anna Cleanand, daughter of John Peter Cleanand and Elizabeth Vroom. Sekyi's comedy The Blinkards (1915) satirised the acceptance by a colonised society of the attitudes of the colonisers. His novel The Anglo-Fante was the first English-language novel written in the Cape Coast.
[ 0137 ] Maddy, Yulisa Amadu. No Past, No Present, No Future. London. 1973. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS137..

DESCRIPTION - In the fictional country of Bauya 3 adolescent boys of very different backgrounds form a firm friendship, convinced that nothing could break the ties that bind them. But their loyalties are put to the test by prejudice and emerging sexuality.

Yulisa Amadu Pat Maddy (27 December 1936 - 16 March 2014) was a Sierra Leonean writer, poet, actor, dancer, director and playwright. Known by his friends and colleagues as Pat Maddy or simply Prof, he had an 'immense impact' on theatre in Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Zambia. Maddy was born in Freetown, Sierra Leone, where he grew up and was educated (attending St. Edward's Secondary School) until the age of 22. In 1958 he travelled to France and then Britain. Maddy trained at the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama in the UK, and started broadcasting in Britain and Denmark, writing and producing radio plays. He was Director of Drama at the Keskidee Centre in London. His early plays, initially produced on the BBC African Service, were published as Obasai and Other Plays (1968). In the mid-1960s he lived in Denmark, where a book of his poetry, Ny afrikansk prosa, was published (1969). On his return to Sierra Leone in 1968 Maddy became Head of Drama on Radio Sierra Leone. He was a founder-director of the theatre company Gbakanda Afrikan Tiata, founded 1969 in Freetown. He subsequently worked in Zambia, where he directed the national dance troupe and trained them for the Montreal World's Fair in 1970. He also taught drama in Nigeria, at the University of Ibadan and the University of Ilorin, and in the United States. His first novel, No Past, No Present, No Future, explored the dynamics of a group of three friends (including, controversially, at the time, one gay man) growing up in colonial West Africa and their physical, psychological and emotional journeys to Europe. It was published in 1973, to great acclaim in the Heinemann African Writers Series, and his writing continued to develop. His work, which is often challenging and confrontational, has been broadcast by the BBC and published internationally. However, the uncompromising honesty of his writing, particularly in his views on the social and political inequalities in Africa, led to his political imprisonment in Sierra Leone. Upon his release, he was forced to leave the country and become a political exile. In 2007, Maddy returned to Sierra Leone to teach at Freetown's Milton Margai College of Education and continue his academic research of exploring and developing Sierra Leone's cultural heritage, providing inspiration and opportunities to a new generation of artists and performers, and continuing to give a 'voice to the voiceless' through the work of his Gbakanda Foundation. After a long period of illness, he died in March 2014, aged 78, at Choitram Hospital, Freetown. Maddy received a Sierra Leone National Arts Festival Award in 1973, a Gulbenkian Grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 1978, and in 1979 an Edinburgh Festival Award. He has also received the distinction of being commemorated in a special stained-glass window of the Pride Library in Canada, as one of 135 writers, including William Shakespeare, Federico García Lorca, W. H. Auden, James Baldwin and others who have been acknowledged for their outstanding contribution to literature.
[ 0138 ] Owusu, Martin. The Sudden Return and other plays. London. 1973. Heinemann. 0435901389. African Writers Series. 129 pages. paperback. AWS138..

DESCRIPTION - Although he is a significant figure on a national level as an actor, academic, teacher, and director, Owusu's reputation rests on his published stage plays. His most important play is a historical drama, The Mightier Sword, also published in The Sudden Return and Other Plays, based on events that occurred during the first Ashanti-Denkyira war.

Martin (Okyere) (1943-), Ghanaian dramatist. Born in Agona Kwaman, Ghana, the son of a catechist, Martin Owusu received his secondary schooling at Mfantsipim School, Cape Coast, where he was influenced by his teacher Joe de Graft; trained as a teacher at the Presbyterian Training College, Akropong-Akuapem; and completed the diploma in theatre studies at the School of Music and Drama in Legon. He has two postgraduate degrees: an M.Litt. from Bristol (1973) and a Ph.D. from Brandeis (1979), both concerned with the classical influences on West African playwrights. He has held appointments at universities in Ghana and the USA and is a senior lecturer the School of Performing Arts at Legon.
[ 0139 ] Ruheni, Mwangi. The Future Leaders. London. 1973. Heinemann. 0435901397. African Writers Series. 214 pages. paperback. AWS139..

DESCRIPTION - Reuben Ruoro leaves Makerere convinced that he is bound to be a leader. But somehow life is not so straightforward. He gets tangled up in awkward situations, fails in his first job - partly through colonial prejudice, and although he becomes a teacher, he somehow unwittingly ends up as a bank robber! But life teaches lessons the hard way, and Reuben comes through in the end.

Mwangi Ruheni is the pseudonym of Kenyan novelist Nicholas Muraguri (b. 1934) best known for his novels The Minister's Daughter (1975) and The Future Leaders (1973) which were published as part of the African Writers Series. Muraguri was trained as a chemist, and spent 22 years as the Chief Government Chemist of Kenya.
[ 0140 ] Amadi, Elechi. Sunset in Biafra: A Civil War Diary. London. 1973. Heinemann. 0435901400. African Writers Series. 184 pages. paperback. AWS140..

DESCRIPTION - During the Nigerian civil war Amadi opposed the Biafran cause. His unpleasant encounters with the Biafran authorities are recorded in the memoir Sunset in Biafra.

Elechi Amadi (born 12 May 1934) is a Nigerian author of plays and novels that are generally about African village life, customs, beliefs and religious practices, as they were before contact with the Western world. Amadi is best regarded for his 1966 first novel, The Concubine, which has been called ‘an outstanding work of pure fiction'. Born in 1934, in Aluu in the Ikwerre local government area of Rivers State, Nigeria, Elechi Amadi attended Government College, Umuahia (1948-1952), Survey School, Oyo (1953-1954), and the University of Ibadan (1955-1959), where he obtained a degree in Physics and Mathematics. He worked for a time as a land surveyor and later was a teacher at several schools, including the Nigerian Military School, Zaria (1963-1966). Amadi did military service in the Nigerian army and was on the Nigerian side during the Nigeria-Biafra War, retiring in the rank of Captain. After the war Amadi left the army to work for the Rivers State government. Positions he held include Permanent Secretary (1973-1983), Commissioner for Education (1987-1988) and Commissioner for Lands and Housing (1989-1990). He has been writer-in-residence and lecturer at Rivers State College of Education, where he has also been Dean of Arts, head of the Literature Department and Director of General Studies. On 13 May 1989 a symposium was held at the University of Port Harcourt to celebrate Amadi's 55th birthday. In May 2004, a conference was organized by the Association of Nigerian Authors, Rivers State Branch, to mark Elechi Amadi's 70th birthday. On 5 January 2009 Amadi was kidnapped at his home in Aluu town, Port Harcourt, by unknown gunmen. He was released 23 hours later, on the evening of 6 January. Elechi Amadi has said that his first publication was in 1957, a poem entitled ‘Penitence' in a University of Ibadan campus magazine called The Horn, edited by John Pepper Clark. Amadi's first novel, The Concubine, was published in London in 1966 and was hailed as a ‘most accomplished first performance'. Alastair Niven in his critical study of the novel wrote: ‘Rooted firmly among the hunting and fishing villages of the Niger delta, The Concubine nevertheless possesses the timelessness and universality of a major novel.' The Concubine was made into a film, written by Elechi Amadi and directed by accomplished Nollywood film director Andy Amenechi, which premiered in Abuja in March 2007. The setting of Amachi's second novel, The Great Ponds, published in 1969, is pre-colonial Eastern Nigeria, and is about the battle between two village communities over possession of a pond. In 1973 Amadi autobiographical non-fiction, Sunset in Biafra, was published. It records his personal experiences in the Nigeria-Biafra war, and according to Niven ‘is written in a compelling narrative form as though it were a novel'.
[ 0141 ] Nortje, Arthur. Dead Roots: Poems. London. 1973. Heinemann. 0435901419. African Writers Series. 146 pages. paperback. AWS141. Cov er design by Shyam Varma.

DESCRIPTION - ARTHUR NORTJE died in Oxford in 1970 of an overdose of drugs. His tragically early death removed a poet who had every promise of becoming one of the leading South African poets. He was born in Oudtshoorn in the Cape Province in 1942. He went to school in Port Elizabeth and to the segregated University College of the Western Cape. After short period teaching English he went to Jesus College, Oxford. He then taught in Hope, British Columbia and Toronto. He returned to Oxford to work for a doctorate. Arthur Ravenscroft has written: 'These poems make an intensely interesting and strangely cohesive human document of honest self-exploration, and of the tragedy of exile from home, and steady alienation from human relationships (especially in the apartheid society). The self-examination shows a romantic sensibility appalled at its own grossnesses yet defiantly asserting against immense inner pressures, its right to be and do as it wishes; in the regulation, or non-regulation, of his personal life he was an exile also from a puritanical sensibility which accounts both for the many poems of self-disgust and for the strong strand of social satire in the poems. The book will also prove popular, in human rather than strictly poetic terms, because the poems in chronological order show a two-fold, connected development: on the one hand, gradually towards greater skill and control over the resources of versification; on the other hand the steady, dangerous drifting, with his eyes open, through indulgences of the flesh towards the disintegration of his personality, with just the first hints of resolution in his poems of his return to Oxford in 1970.'

Arthur Kenneth Nortje (16 December 1942 - 11 December 1970) was a South African poet. Nortje was born in Oudtshoorn and went to school in Port Elizabeth, where he was taught by the acclaimed writer Dennis Brutus. After school he studied at the University College of the Western Cape and later received a scholarship to Jesus College, Oxford in the UK, where he obtained a BA degree. He emigrated to Canada in 1967, teaching in Hope, British Columbia and Toronto but returned to Oxford in 1970 to work on a doctorate. He died shortly afterward of a drug overdose. In 2017, South African poet, Athol Williams located Nortje's grave at section B3, Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford. The small headstone reads 'Arthur Nortje, 1942-1970, South African Poet.' His poems were published posthumously in the collections Dead Roots (1973) and Lonely Against the Light (1973). They deal extensively with his own personal alienation, being classified as coloured in apartheid South Africa, and his experiences of exile. In 2000, the University of South Africa Press in Pretoria published Anatomy of Dark: Collected Poems of Arthur Nortje. His works have been dealt with extensively in Ralph Pordzik's Die moderne englischsprachige Lyrik in Südafrika 1950-1980: Eine Darstellung aus funktions- und wirkungsgeschichtlicher Perspektive and in an article entitled: 'No Longer Need I Shout Freedom in the House: Arthur Nortje, the English Poetical Tradition and the Breakdown of Communication in South African English Poetry in the 1960s', published in English Studies in Africa 41.2 (1998) 35-53.
[ 0142 ] Ousmane, Sembene. Tribal Scars and Other Stories. Portsmouth. 1987. Heinemann. 0435901427. African Writers Series. Translated from the French by Len Ortzen. 117 pages. paperback. AWS142. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - This collection of finely crafted short stories focuses on a theme of universal significance: the struggle for the liberation of the human spirit against both physical and psychological oppression. In the title story, ‘Tribal Scars,' Ousmane poses the intriguing question of how and why Black Africans began the custom of scarring their faces and bodies. Through a creative leap into the past, Ousmane suggests that ritual scarring began as an act of defiance against Western slavers and over time became a symbol of African strength and pride. The story stands as one of the most powerful commentaries in literature on both the inhumanities of slavery and man's ingenuity for endurance and survival against overwhelming odds. ‘Tribal Scars' will haunt the conscience of every reader, Other stories in the collection show how even during the post-independence era in Africa, Africans remain culturally shackled by some of the same chains that bound their ancestors. In his charming ‘Love in Sandy Lane' he shows himself to be a relentless critic of his fellow Africans who sacrifice authentic love relationships for the sham glory of imitating the former European ruling class. ‘The Promised Land,' a story which Ousmane made into a prize-winning film entitled ‘Black Child,' paints a tragic picture of a young African girl's search for a better life in France only to find herself subjected to a form of modern slavery. Ousmane's message is clear and relevant: slavery in the past is not so different from slavery today; the first scarred the physical being, the second the soul. Many of the stories alto raise the question of the rights of women in African society. In ‘The Bital's Fourth Wife,' Ousmane satirizes Musttm attitudes toward divorce, and in ‘Her Three Days,' he harshly attacks polygamy by painting a portrait of a woman who is no longer favored by her husband. ‘Letters from France' depicts the tragedy of a young girl who is forced by her father to marry a very old man. Taken together, these stories represent a call for women to reject the oppression of tradition and assert their rights. ‘Ousmane merits wide readership as a writer of deep humanity.' - Library Journal 'The stories in this collection clearly illustrate Ousmane's versatility and ability to shape many of the raw experiences of his life into artistic realities. He has given us the chance to embrace a wide range of African realities.' - Charles Larson, from the Introduction. Sembene Ousmane is a popular West African novelist, playwright, and prizewinning film producer. He is the author of numerous books.

Ousmane Sembene, who was born into a Senegalese fishing family in 1923, worked at a diversity of jobs before writing his first book, THE BLACK DOCKER, in 1956. Since then he has written several novels and short story collections, through which he tells the saga of his land and its people. He has also gained a reputation for his films, particularly BLACK GIRL and THE MONEY ORDER, which were well received both in the U.S. and abroad.
[ 0143 ] Mwangi, Meja. Kill Me Quick. London. 1973. Heinemann. 0435901435. African Writers Series. 151 pages. paperback. AWS143. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - Maina is no murderer. But the law does not know this. Only his dustbin mate Meja could tell them. But they are not likely to pay any serious attention to an inmate of Cell Nine. Meja has been to a secondary school but has failed to find a decent job. He has eaten from and slept in rubbish bins and fought with others for the privilege. He has learned a good few lessons they did not teach in school. He has realized that everybody tries to cheat you. He hasn't found one policeman who speaks his language. Above all he has learned that not all gutter rats are born in the dustbin and not all gutter rats will die in the gutter.

MEJA MWANGI is an outstanding member of the younger generation of writers in East Africa. Kill Me Quick (AWS 143) has been most popular. His novel Carcase for Hounds (AWS 145) won the Jomo Kenyatta Prize and has been made into a film Cry Freedom. Going Down River Road (AWS 176) returns to the vivid realities of the present day Nairobi in Kill Me Quick. He was born in 1948 at Nanyaki, Kenya. He was educated at Nanyaki Secondary School and Kenyatta College. He has wide experience in working in films. He won the Lotus Award in 1978.
[ 0144 ] Fall, Malick. The Wound. London. 1973. Heinemann. 0435901443. African Writers Series. Translated by Clive Wake from the French La plaie. paperback. AWS144..

DESCRIPTION - The Wound (1967) by the Senegalese writer Malick Fall is a complex and symbolic novel of visual and clinical authenticity. Set in post-colonial Senegal, the story follows the life of a young boy named Nalla who grapples with the complexities of his cultural identity and the lingering effects of colonialism. As he navigates the challenges of growing up, Nalla witnesses the struggles of his community, including the generational conflicts and the clash between traditional values and modern influences. Through his eyes, the narrative explores themes of resilience, identity, and the enduring scars left by historical injustices.

Malick Fall (December 13, 1920 in Saint-Louis - July 14, 1968) was a Senegalese poet, novelist and diplomat. He studied in Senegal, France and Great Britain. He worked as a Senegalese ambassador in Marroco, Ethiopia and Tunisia and as a cultural advisor to the Senegalese president (and poet) Léopold Sédar Senghor.
[ 0145 ] Mwangi, Meja. Carcase for Hounds. London. 1973. Heinemann. 0435901451. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS145..

DESCRIPTION - Carcase for Hounds is a novel by Kenyan writer Meja Mwangi first published in 1974. The novel concerns the Mau Mau liberation struggle during the latter days of British colonial rule and attempts, by the actions of the main protagonists, to show how Mau Mau was organized and why it took so long for the colonial government to defeat them. Carcase for Hounds received mixed reviews. The novel was also adapted into a movie by Ola Balogun, Cry Freedom.

Meja Mwangi (born 27 December 1948) is one of Kenya's leading novelists. Mwangi has worked in the film industry, including screenwriting, assistant directing, casting and location management. He was born David Dominic Mwangi in Nanyuki, and was educated at Nanyuki Secondary School, Kenyatta College and the University of Leeds. He then worked on odd-jobs for foreign broadcasters before he turned to full-time writing. He was Fellow in Writing at the University of Iowa (1975-6).
[ 0146 ] Ekwensi, Cyprian. Jagua Nana. London. 1975. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS146..

DESCRIPTION - There can be few novels in Africa which are more popular than this story of a warm-hearted prostitute desperate to marry into the educated elite.

Cyprian Ekwensi (September 26, 1921–November 4, 2007) was a Nigerian short story writer and author of children's books. Ekwensi, a native of Nkwelle-Ezunaka in today's Oyi local government of Anambra State, was born in Minna, Niger State. His father was David Anadumaka, a story-teller and elephant hunter. Ekwensi attended Government College in Ibadan, Oyo State, Achimota College in Ghana, and the School of Forestry, Ibadan, after which he worked for two years as a forestry officer. He also studied pharmacy at Yaba Technical Institute, Lagos School of Pharmacy, and the Chelsea School of Pharmacy of the University of London. He taught at Igbobi College. Ekwensi has nine children. His oldest son George is a well known New Jersey accountant. Ekwensi was employed as Head of Features at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and by the Ministry of Information during the First Republic; he eventually became Director of the latter. He resigned his position in 1966, before the Civil War, and moved to Enugu with his family. He later served as chair of the Bureau for External Publicity of Biafra, prior to its reabsorption by Nigeria. Ekwensi wrote hundreds of short stories, radio and television scripts, and several dozen novels, including children's books. His 1954 PEOPLE OF THE CITY was the first book by a Nigerian to garner international attention. His novel DRUMMER BOY (1960), based on the life of Benjamin 'Kokoro' Aderounmu was a perceptive and powerful description of the wandering, homeless and poverty-stricken life of a street artist. His most successful novel was JAGUA NANA (1961), about a Pidgin-speaking Nigerian woman who leaves her husband to work as a prostitute in a city and falls in love with a teacher. He also wrote a sequel to this, JAGUA NANA'S DAUGHTER. In 1968, he received the Dag Hammarskjöld International Prize in Literature. In 2006, he became a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters. Ekwensi died on 4 November 2007 at the Niger Foundation in Enugu, where he underwent an operation for an undisclosed ailment. The Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), having intended to present him with an award on November 16, 2007, converted the honor to a posthumous award.
[ 0147 ] p'Bitek, Okot. The Horn of My Love. London. 1974. Heinemann. 0435901478. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS147..

DESCRIPTION - Both a literary study and poetry, the author provides his interpretation of the poetry of the Acoli of northern Uganda, a people of the African countryside.

Okot p'Bitek (7 June 1931 - 20 July 1982) was a Ugandan poet, who achieved wide international recognition for Song of Lawino, a long poem dealing with the tribulations of a rural African wife whose husband has taken up urban life and wishes everything to be westernised. Song of Lawino was originally written in Acholi language, and self-translated to English, and published in 1966. It was a breakthrough work, creating an audience amongst anglophone Africans for direct, topical poetry in English; and incorporating traditional attitudes and thinking in an accessible yet faithful literary vehicle. It was followed by the pendant Song of Ocol (1970), the husband's reply. The East African Song School or Okot School poetry is now an academic identification of the work following his direction, also popularly called 'comic singing': a forceful type of dramatic verse monologue rooted in traditional song and phraseology. Okot p'Bitek was born in Gulu, in the North Uganda grasslands. His father Jebedayo Opi was a schoolteacher, his mother Lacwaa Cerina was a traditional singer. His background was Acholi, and he wrote first in Lwo, one of the Western Nilotic languages. He was educated at Gulu High School, then King's College, Budo, and later at universities in the United Kingdom. At school he was noted as a singer, dancer, drummer and athlete; he composed and directed an opera while at college. He travelled abroad first as a player with the Ugandan national football team, in 1958. At this point he gave up on football as a possible career, staying on in Britain; he studied education at the University of Bristol, and then law at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He then took a B. Litt. degree in social anthropology at the University of Oxford, with a 1963 dissertation on Acholi and Lango traditional cultures. According to George Heron he lost his commitment to Christian belief during these years. This had major consequences for his attitude as a scholar of African tradition, which was by no means accepting of the general run of earlier work, or what he called 'dirty gossip' in relation to tribal life. His character Lawino also speaks for him, in some places, on these matters. He wrote an early novel, Lak Tar Miyo Kinyero Wi Lobo (1953), in Lwo, later translated into English as White Teeth. It concerns the experiences of a young Acholi man moving away from home, to find work and so a wife. He organised an arts festival at Gulu, and then at Kisumu. Subsequently he taught at Makerere University and then was Director of Uganda's National Theatre. He became unpopular with the Ugandan government, and took teaching posts outside the country. He took part in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 1969. He was at the Institute of African Studies of University College, Nairobi from 1971 as a senior research fellow and lecturer, with visiting positions at University of Texas at Austin and University of Ife in Nigeria in 1978/9. He remained in exile during the regime of Idi Amin, returning in 1982 to Makerere University, to teach creative writing. Apart from his poetry and novels, he also took part in an ongoing debate about the integrity of scholarship on traditional African religion, with the assertion in African Religions in Western Scholarship (1971) that scholars centred on European concerns were 'intellectual smugglers'. His point, aimed partly at Africans who had had a training in Christian traditions, was that it led to a concentration on matters distant from the actual concerns of Africans; this has been contested by others. He was an atheist. He died in Kampala of a stroke in 1982. He is survived by daughters Agnes Oyella, Jane Okot p'Bitek, who wrote a Song of Farewell (1994), Olga Okot Bitek Ojelel and Cecilia Okot Bitek who work as nurses, Juliane Okot Bitek who writes poetry, and a son George Okot p'Bitek, who is a Teacher in Kampala. Olga, Cecilia, and Juliane all live in Vancouver, Canada. In 2004 Juliane was the recipient of an award in the Commonwealth Short Story Contest for her story 'Going Home'. These are the daughters of his wife Caroline. The Song of Lawino has been described as one of the most important works of African literature of the 1960s. The Luo original was written in rhymed couplets, and was metrically regular. The English translation, published a decade later in 1966, is in a staccato form of free verse, running to 13 sections and some 5000 lines. It develops from many angles Lawino, the almost-discarded wife of an upwardly-mobile husband, as a persona or type, but also as an individual of great verbal resource who probably reflects the author's mother. Kwame Anthony Appiah remarks in In My Father's House that the specific cultural points made are carried off without the need for much exposition. Given that the form mixes harangue with self-reflection, it is always clear where the argument tends and the context is brought along with the main thrust, whether the issue is cooking, Lawino's relatives being told they cannot drop in unannounced, or the pretensions and fashions of the urban second wife. Scholars have identified numerous allusions in and sources of Song of Lawino, in Acholi traditional songs. These can be found at the level of particular phrases. They also come from across the range of genres, making the Song of Lawino a cross-section of an entire culture. The shorter sequel Song of Ocol was less well received. The self-justification of the ambitious husband had no doubt a satirical and political aim. It has also dated much more quickly, while the many-faceted Lawino, who starts with the comment 'My husband's tongue is bitter', is more likely to become a timeless creation. In Two Songs, he addressed other issues, in the same style. Song of a Prisoner drew on his reactions to Kenyan politics, and Song of Malaya deals with the life of a prostitute.
[ 0148 ] Aniebo, I. N. C. The Anonymity of Sacrifice. London. 1974. Heinemann. 0435901486. African Writers Series. 115 pages. paperback. AWS148. Cover design by Bill Heyes.

DESCRIPTION - This novel is the story of three days during the Nigerian civil war. It tells of a bitter confrontation between two Biafrans: Captain Benjamin Onwura is elitist, a career army officer, trained in cadet school in Britain; Sergeant Cyril Agumo, also a career soldier, is a non-commissioned officer who served under British non-commissioned officers. Whenever new order is being created through violent revolution the contemplative man and the man of action will clash. Even when men are fighting together for causes they believe in, their differences of temperament, class and upbringing frequently bring them into conflict with one another.

Ifeanyichukwu Ndubuisi Chikezie Aniebo, commonly known as I. N. C. Aniebo (born 31 March 1939), is a Nigerian novelist and short story writer, who has been called ‘the master craftsman of the Nigerian short story'. Aniebo trained as an artillery officer; his first stories were written under a pseudonym to avoid censorship. He fought for Biafra in the Nigerian Civil War, and The Anonymity of Sacrifice (1974) gives a sense of the horrors and personal conflicts of that war. Aniebo subsequently studied at the University of California, Los Angeles, before returning to Nigeria in 1979 to teach Creative Writing and Literature at the English Department of the University of Port Harcourt.
[ 0149 ] Head, Bessie. A Question of Power. Exeter. 1985. Heinemann. 0435901494. African Writers Series. 206 pages. paperback. AWS149. Cover photo by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - Bessie Head's vision of the separation of the mentally sick, and her ability to give mind-suffering a kind of picture language, convey a positively medieval horror. She brilliantly develops ascending degrees of personal isolation and is very moving when she describes abating pain. Her novels – this is the third - have a way of soaring up from rock bottom to the stars, and are very shaking. - Ronald Blythe in The Sunday Times. Your mother was insane. If you're not careful you'll get insane just like your mother. Your mother was a white woman. They had to lock her up, as she was having a child by the stable boy who was a native". It is never clear to Elizabeth whether the mission school principal's cruel revelation of her origins is at the bottom of her mental breakdown. She has left South Africa with her son and is living in the village of Motabeng, the place of sand, in Botswana where there are no street-lights at night. In the darkness of this country where people turn and look at her with vague curiosity as an outsider she establishes an entirely abnormal relationship with two men. mind-bending book which takes the reader in and out of sanity. BESSIE HEAD has set all three of her outstanding novels in Botswana, her country of exile from South Africa, where she was born in 1937. In addition to Maru (AWS 101), When Rain Clouds Gather (New Windmill Series 168), and The Collector of Treasures (AWS 182), she has written Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind (AWS 220), an account of the daily life and history of her adopted hometown.

Bessie Emery Head (6 July 1937 - 17 April 1986) is usually considered Botswana's most influential writer. Bessie Emery Head was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, the child of a wealthy white South African woman and a black servant when interracial relationships were illegal in South Africa. It was claimed that her mother was mentally ill so that she could be sent to a quiet location to then give birth to Bessie without the neighbors knowing. However, the exact circumstances are disputed, and some of Bessie Head's comments, though often quoted as straight autobiography, are in fact from fictionalized settings. In the 1950s and '60s she was a teacher, then a journalist for the South African magazine Drum. In 1964 she moved to Botswana (then still the Bechuanaland Protectorate) as a refugee, having been peripherally involved with Pan-African politics. It would take 15 years for Head to obtain Botswana citizenship. Head settled in Serowe, the largest of Botswana's ‘villages' (i.e. traditional settlements as opposed to settler towns). Serowe was famous both for its historical importance, as capital of the Bamangwato people, and for the experimental Swaneng school of Patrick van Rensburg. The deposed chief of the Bamangwato, Seretse Khama, was soon to become the first President of independent Botswana. Her early death in 1986 (aged 48) from hepatitis came just at the point where she was starting to achieve recognition as a writer and was no longer so desperately poor. Most of Bessie Head's important works are set in Serowe, in particular the three novels When Rain Clouds Gather, Maru, and A Question of Power. One of her best works is When Rain Clouds Gather, in which she writes about a troubled young man called Makhaya who runs away from his birthplace, South Africa, to become a refugee in a little village called Golema Mmidi, in the heart of Botswana. Here he is faced with many challenges, one of which is the fact that Chief Matenge does not allow his presence in the village. He meets a white man named Gilbert and starts a whole new journey into the unknown. Head also published a number of short stories, including the collection The Collector of Treasures. She published a book on the history of Serowe, the village she settled in, called Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind. Her last novel, A Bewitched Crossroad, is historical, set in nineteenth-century Botswana. She had also written a story of two prophets, one wealthy and one who lived poorly called ‘Jacob: The Faith-Healing Priest'. Head's work, which emphasised the value of ordinary life and humble people, was more in touch with an earlier trend in African writing than many recent writers, who have made overtly political comments. Her writing has endured nonetheless. Religious ideas feature prominently at times, as in the work A Question of Power. It is interesting to note that Head was initially brought up as a Christian; however, she was later influenced by Hinduism (to which she was exposed through South Africa's Indian community). Most of her writing took place while she was in exile in Botswana. An exception is the early novel The Cardinals (published posthumously), written before she left South Africa. In some ways Bessie Head remained an outsider in her adopted country, and some discern she had something of a love-hate relationship with it. At times she suffered mental health problems and on one occasion put up a public notice making bizarre and shocking allegations about then President Sir Seretse Khama, which led to a period in Lobatse Mental Hospital. A Question of Power is based partly on those experiences. In 2007 the Bessie Head Heritage Trust was established, along with the Bessie Head Literature Awards. In July 2007 the library in Pietermaritzburg was renamed the Bessie Head library in her honor. In 2003 she was awarded the South African ‘Order of Ikhamanga in Gold' for her ‘exceptional contribution to literature and the struggle for social change, freedom and peace.'
[ 0150 ] Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Secret Lives and other stories. London. 1981. Heinemann. 0435901508. African Writers Series. 144 pages. paperback. AWS150. Cover design by Bill Hayes.

DESCRIPTION - The thirteen stories in this book parallel Ngugi's development as a novelist. included are some of his earlier stories, which he wrote in his student days at Makerere University in the early Sixties, foreshadowing the themes more fully developed in his novels WEEP NOT CHILD and THE RIVER BETWEEN. Others draw on his childhood memories of the bitter anti- colonial struggles against the British, The last section of the book includes stories which reflect the impact of urban life in present-day Kenya after his return in 1971 from a year of teaching in the U.S. In the preface to this collection he writes, ‘.. in a sense the stories in this collection form my creative autobiography over the last twelve years and touch on ideas and moods affecting me over the same period. My writing is really an attempt to understand myself and my situation in society and in history.'. Ngugi Wa Thiong'o was born in Kenya in 1938. As a youth he worked for a pittance on a white settler's farm, attended a missionary school, was educated at the University of Leeds in England and subsequently returned to Africa to become an intellectual leader of the pan-African, anti-imperialist movement. He is an editor, playwright, novelist and teacher. His play THE BLACK HERMIT was produced at the Uganda National Theatre as part of the Independence celebrations. His novels include WEEP NOT CHILD, THE RIVER BETWEEN and A GRAIN OF WHEAT. He has been a university teacher at Makerere and Northwestern in Evanston, Illinois and is now head of the department of literature at Nairobi.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o (born January 5, 1938) is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gikuyu. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal, Mutiiri. In 1977, Ngugi embarked upon a novel form of theater in his native Kenya which sought to liberate the theatrical process from what he held to be ‘the general bourgeois education system', by encouraging spontaneity and audience participation in the performances. Ngugi's project sought to ‘demystify' the theatrical process, and to avoid the ‘process of alienation [which] produces a gallery of active stars and an undifferentiated mass of grateful admirers' which, according to Ngugi, encourages passivity in ‘ordinary people'. Although Ngaahika Ndeenda was a commercial success, it was shut down by the authoritarian Kenyan regime six weeks after its opening. Ngugi was subsequently imprisoned for over a year. Adopted as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, the artist was released from prison, and fled Kenya. In the United States, he taught at Yale University for some years, and has since also taught at New York University, with a dual professorship in Comparative Literature and Performance Studies, and the University of California, Irvine. Ngugi has frequently been regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His son is the author Mukoma wa Ngugi. Ngugi was born in Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kiambu district, Kenya, of Kikuyu descent, and baptised James Ngugi. His family was caught up in the Mau Mau War; his half brother Mwangi was actively involved in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, and his mother was tortured at Kamriithu homeguard post. He received a B.A. in English from Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, in 1963; during his education, a play of his, THE BLACK HERMIT, was produced in Kampala in 1962. He published his first novel, WEEP NOT, CHILD, in 1964, which he wrote while attending the University of Leeds in England. It was the first novel in English to be published by an East African. His second novel, THE RIVER BETWEEN (1965), has as its background the Mau Mau rebellion, and described an unhappy romance between Christians and non-Christians. THE RIVER BETWEEN is currently on Kenya's national secondary school syllabus. His novel A Grain of Wheat (1967) marked his embrace of Fanonist Marxism. He subsequently renounced English, Christianity, and the name James Ngugi as colonialist; he changed his name back to Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and began to write in his native Gikuyu and Swahili. The uncensored political message of his 1977 play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I WILL MARRY WHEN I WANT) provoked then Vice President Daniel arap Moi to order his arrest. While detained in the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, he wrote the first modern novel in Gikuyu, Caitaani mutharaba-Ini (DEVIL ON THE CROSS), on prison-issued toilet paper. After his release, he was not reinstated to his job as professor at Nairobi University, and his family was harassed. Due to his writing about the injustices of the dictatorial government at the time, Ngugi and his family were forced to live in exile. Only after Arap Moi was voted out of office, 22 years later, was it safe for them to return. His later works include Detained, his prison diary (1981), DECOLONISING THE MIND: THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE IN AFRICAN LITERATURE (1986), an essay arguing for African writers' expression in their native languages, rather than European languages, in order to renounce lingering colonial ties and to build an authentic African literature, and MATIGARI (1987), one of his most famous works, a satire based on a Gikuyu folktale. In 1992 he became a professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University, where he held the Erich Maria Remarque Chair. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature as well as the Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine. On August 8, 2004, Ngugi returned to Kenya as part of a month-long tour of East Africa. On August 11, robbers broke into his apartment: they assaulted both the Professor and his wife, and stole money and a computer. Since then, Ngugi has returned to America, and in the summer 2006 the American publishing firm Random House published his first new novel in nearly two decades, WIZARD OF THE CROW, translated to English from Gikuyu by the author. On November 10, 2006, while in San Francisco at Hotel Vitale at the Embarcadero, Ngugi was harassed and ordered to leave the hotel by an employee. The event led to a public outcry and angered the Kenyan community in the San Francisco Bay area and abroad, prompting an apology by the hotel.
[ 0151 ] Mahfouz, Naguib. Midaq Alley. London. 1977. Heinemann. 0435994026. African Writers Series. Translated from the Arabic by Trevor Le Gassick. 246 pages. paperback. AWS151. Cover photograph by Cameria Press.

DESCRIPTION - Widely acclaimed as Naguib Mahfouz's best novel, Midaq Alley brings to life one of the hustling, teeming back alleys of Cairo in the 1940s. From Zaita the cripple-maker to Kirsha the hedonistic cafe owner, from Abbas the barber who mistakes greed for love to Hamida who sells her soul to escape the alley, from waiters and widows to politicians, pimps, and poets, the inhabitants of Midaq Alley vividly evoke Egypt's largest city as it teeters on the brink of change. Never has Nobel Prize-winner Mahfouz's talent for rich and luxurious storytelling been more evident than here, in his portrait of one small street as a microcosm of the world on the threshold of modernity.

NAGUIB MAHFOUZ (1911-2006) was born in the crowded Cairo district of Gamaliya. He graduated in philosophy from King Fuad University in 1934, and went on to write nearly forty novel-length works, plus hundreds of short stories and numerous screenplays. He was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1988.
[ 0152 ] La Guma, Alex. The Stone Country. London. 1974. Heinemann. 0435901524. African Writers Series. 168 pages. paperback. AWS152. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - George is behind the great walls of the jail beneath the mountain in Cape Town. He is in for political reasons but the others are in for any crime that the social and economic deprivation of apartheid breeds. Solly acting the clown in tattered rags, a scarecrow come to life ; Josef the Turk, lean, sleek, dangerous as a knife blade ; his sworn enemy, Butcherboy Williams, a collector of tribute ; and the Casbah Kid who will hang for murder. They have brought the violence of Cape Town's District 6 with them and are willing to kill one another for power in the cells, and to die in the bid to escape.

Alex la Guma now lives with his family in exile in London, having left South Africa in 1966 where he had been under house arrest since 1962.„ He was imprisoned at various times most notably as a defendant in the marathon South African Treason Trial, Born in 1 925 in Cape Town, he was educated at Trafalgar High School and Cape Technical College. He worked as a clerk, book-keeper, factory hand and journalist. He has written A Walk in the Night (AWS 35), And a Threefold Cord and In the Fog of the Seasons' End (AWS 110) as well as many short stories. Alex la Guma was awarded the Afro-Asian Prize for Literature in 1969.
[ 0153 ] Munonye, John. A Dancer of Fortune. London. 1975. Heinemann. 0435901532. African Writers Series. 187 pages. paperback. AWS153..

DESCRIPTION - An overriding theme in the novels of John Munonye is the focus on the common man. Munonye sometimes view the common man as being born into a position whereby he is already at a disadvantage, both historically and presently, He sees little difference to the fate of the common man who could be manipulated at the whims of elites and chiefs in both pre- and post-colonial Nigeria and during colonialism. Aya Ijeroko, the protagonist in John Munonye’s novel, A Dancer of Fortune, is a vagabond, school dropout, and a challenge of shame to his wife Bessie. When Ayasko discovers his outstanding talent for dancing and builds a career out of it, he likens his skill to that of civil servants who write with their hands, while he writes with his feet. Along the way, Ayasko sets in motion a succession of events during which he outfoxes those seeking to exploit him, and positions himself for a hostile takeover of their businesses.

John Munonye (April 1929 - 10 May 1999) is an important Igbo writer and one of the most important Nigerian writers of the 20th century. He was born in Akokwa, Nigeria, and was educated at the University of Ibadan and the Institute of Education, London. He retired as the head of the Advanced Teacher Training College, Owerri. John Munonye, unlike some of his contemporaries professed a love for optimism in the face of colonial onslaught on traditional values. To him, the dialectical environment of African and western tradition can be seen in both a positive light and outcome for the common Igbo or Nigerian man or woman. An overriding theme in his novels is the focus on the common man. Munonye sometimes view the common man as being born into a position whereby he is already at a disadvantage, both historically and presently, He sees little difference to the fate of the common man who could be manipulated at the whims of elites and chiefs in both pre- and post-colonial Nigeria and during colonialism.
[ 0154 ] Armah, Ayi Kwei. Fragments. London. 1974. Heinemann. 0435901540. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS154..

DESCRIPTION - Agony and madness in "emerging " Africa Baako, a writer, returns to his native Ghana from five years of study and travel abroad. He, a "been-to," is invested by his family with the potency of the returned one, the savior. The been-to, intermediary with the world of departed ancestors, is the bringer of good things from beyond - the car, liquor, the prestige of position and ownership. Pressured by the weight of his own needs as a creative artist and the others' need of him as social lever, Baako is driven toward madness. Only two women understand his suffering - Juana, a Puerto Rican psychiatrist whose love for him is as sensual as it is spiritual; and Naana, his blind grandmother who dreams of a better, less materialistic African community. The vision these three share - of the purification of the poisoned environment in which they live - inevitably collides with the needs and demands of a people "emerging" into a "modern" culture and is shattered. And the books ends as it began, with a mystic, poetic invocation by Naana to her departed ancestors.

AYI KWEI ARMAH was educated at Achimota, Ghana, then at Groton and Harvard. After three years at home he left Ghana late in 1967 to work for the magazine Jeune Afrique in Paris. In addition to short fiction published in Harper's and The Atlantic, he is the author of The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, available in the Collier Books African/American Library series.
[ 0155 ] Armah, Ayi Kwei. Why Are We So Blest?: A Novel. London. 1974. Heinemann. 0435901559. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS155..

DESCRIPTION - Modin is an African, a scholarship student at an American university. In the candor of his youth he probes his world - Africa: the immense, senseless poverty of millions damned; America: the immense, senseless wealth of the blessed. Examining his own place in this world, Modin collides with a shattering recognition: Today's African elite is heir to Africa's tiny but deadly class of slave sellers to the white West. The trade continues; only the tricks of the market place are sharper. The scholarship student is merely the elite African in embryo; his scholarship is an advance payment for services he is destined to render. This destiny of betrayal disgusts Modin. He leaves America, pursuing a better destiny: a life of revolutionary dedication to Africa. But Modin is spiritually entrapped in the West. Several purposeless affairs have brought him to a weirdly American female: AimEe, jaded at a green age, a frigid hedonist who thinks a revolution is any experience fantastic enough to give her the ultimate orgasm. Modin, trailing AimEe, seeks initiation into revolution. He is rebuffed. An interminable wait follows. The pair's love, running its natural course, degenerates into a brutal struggle for personal survival. The disintegration is observed by Solo Nkonam, a Portuguese-educated elite African, sharply perceptive but himself lacking the strength of nerve to travel back home from the spiritual wilderness of the Western world.

Ayi Kwei Armah (born 1939) is a notable Ghanaian writer. Born to Fante-speaking parents, and descending on his father's side from a royal family in the Ga nation, Armah was born in the port city of Sekondi-Takoradi in Ghana. Having attended Achimota School, he left Ghana in 1959 to attend Groton School in Groton, MA. After graduating he entered Harvard University, receiving a degree in sociology. Armah then moved to Algeria and worked as a translator for the magazine REvolution Africaine. In 1964, Armah returned to Ghana, where he was a scriptwriter for Ghana Television and later taught English at the Navrongo School. Between 1967 and 1968, he was editor of Jeune Afrique magazine in Paris. From 1968-1970, Armah studied at Columbia University, obtaining his MFA in creative writing. In the 1970s, he worked as a teacher in East Africa, at the College of National Education, Chang'ombe, Tanzania, and at the National University of Lesotho. He lived in Dakar, Senegal, in the 1980s and taught at Amherst and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In Fragments (1971), the protagonist, Baako, is a ‘been-to' - a man who has been to the United States and received his education there. Back in Ghana he is regarded with superstitious awe as a link to the Western life style. Baako's grandmother Naana, a blind-seer, stands in living contact with the ancestors. Under the strain of the unfulfilled expectations Baako finally breaks. As in his first novel, Armah contrasts the two worlds of materialism and moral values, corruption and dreams, two worlds of integrity and social pressure. Why Are We So Blest? (1972) was set largely in an American University, and focused on a student, Modin Dofu, who has dropped out of Harvard. Disillusioned Modin is torn between independence and Western values. He meets a Portuguese black African named Solo, who has already suffered a mental breakdown, and a white American girl, AimEe Reitsch. Solo, the rejected writer, keeps a diary, which is the substance of the novel. AimEe's frigidity and devotion to the revolution leads finally to destruction, when Modin is killed in the desert by O.A.S. revolutionaries. Trans Atlantic and African slave trades are the subject of Armah's Two Thousand Seasons (1973) in which a pluralized communal voice speaks through the history of Africa, its wet and dry seasons, from a period of one thousand years. Arab and European oppressors are portrayed as ‘predators,' ‘destroyers,' and ‘zombies'. The novel is written in allegorical tone, and shifts from autobiographical and realistic details to philosophical pondering, prophesying a new age. The Healers (1979) mixed fact and fiction about the fall of the celebrated Ashanti Empire. The healers in question are traditional medicine practitioners who see fragmentation as the lethal disease of Africa. Armah remained silent as a novelist for a long period until 1995 when he published Osiris Rising, depicting a radical educational reform group which reinstates ancient Egypt at the center of its curriculum. As an essayist Armah has dealt with the identity and predicament of Africa. His main concern is for the creation of a pan-African agency that will embrace all the diverse cultures and languages of the continent. Armah has called for the adoption of Kiswahili as the continental language.
[ 0156 ] Ruheni, Mwangi. The Minister's Daughter. Oxford. 1975. Heinemann. 0435901567. African Writers Series. 186 pages. paperback. AWS156..

DESCRIPTION - When the parents/father is busy shepherding the congregation, feared, even revered by the flock, their children are rotting outside there; living a life (of crime, immorality, carelessness) to shame their parents.

Mwangi Ruheni is the pseudonym of Kenyan novelist Nicholas Muraguri (born 1934) best known for his novels The Minister's Daughter (1975) and The Future Leaders (1973), which were published as part of the African Writers Series. Muraguri was trained as a chemist, and spent 22 years as the Chief Government Chemist of Kenya. Muragari attended Mang'u High School. He then went on to Makerere University in Uganda, where he studied Botany Zoology and Chemistry and became editor of the schools' creative writing journal, the St. Augustine's Newsletter. He then received a master's degree in Chemistry between 1957 and 1959, a MSc in forensic Science at the University of Strathclyde. Before becoming a novelist, Ruheni trained as a scientist and had no literary background. Despite this his novels did very well with both academics and non-academics alike. Ruheni is not very forthcoming about his literary career. He worked as a scientist in the civil service eventually becoming Chief Government Chemist, staying largely out of the public eye through most of his career, only publicly connecting himself to his pseudonym in a 1995 interview. His book Random Thoughts is largely a commentary on the literary and publishing industries.
[ 0157 ] Kayper-Mensah, A. W. The Drummer in Our Time: Poems. London. 1975. Heinemann. 0435901575. African Writers Series. 103 pages. paperback. AWS157. Cover design by Shyam Varma. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - A. W. KAYPER-MENSAH was born at Sekondi in Ghana in 1923. He went to Mfantsipim School, to the University of Cambridge to study Science and then to London to study Education. He taught for some years before working in Bonn and London for the Ghanaian Foreign Service. He won the Margaret Wrong Literary Prize in 1970 for his collection of poetry which was published in 1970 by Horst Erdmann in Tubingen. A. W. Kayper-Mensah is widely represented in anthologies including Messages: Poems from Ghana (AWS 42), the collection edited by Kofi Awoonor and G. Adali-Mortty. ‘This collection shows him in various moods. At times his poetry moves with lyrical smoothness from reality to unreality and back again. At other times he writes of Africa and of national feeling, but he is concerned with both Europe and Africa. Above all he has what O. R. Dathorne has described as 'his excellent ability to evoke the visual'.

Albert William Kayper-Mensah (1923–1980) was a Ghanian poet. Kayper-Mensah was born at Sekondi in Ghana in 1923. He went to Mfantsipim School, to the University of Cambridge to study Science and then to London to study Education. He taught for some years before working in Bonn and London for the Ghanaian Foreign Service. He won the Margaret Wrong Literary Prize in 1970 for his collection of poetry which was published in 1970 by Horst Erdmann in Tubingen.
[ 0158 ] Kahiga, Samuel. The Girl From Abroad. London. 1974. Heinemann. 0435901583. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS158. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - A melodramatic novel about urban life in Nairobi casting a critical spotlight on among the African middle class life.

Samuel Kahiga is a Kenyan writer and journalist, was born on 19 August 1946 to James Kibera, a civil servant, and Elizabeth Nduta in Uthiru, Kabete, near Nairobi. He attended Uthiru Primary School, Thika High School, and the University of Nairobi, where he studied fine art and design. He grew up under the Emergency, declared by the British to combat the Mau Mau uprising in the 1950s. Despite his humorous and accessible writing style and the popular format of a number of his novels, the conflicts and the emergence of nationalist resistance in Kenya's late colonial period have been a continuous preoccupation in Kahiga's work. With his older brother, Leonard Kibera, he wrote a collection of short stories, Potent Ash (1968), which became one of the most influential books of fiction in East Africa at the time.
[ 0159 ] Mvungi, Martha. Three Solid Stones. London. 1975. Heinemann. 0435901591. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS159..

DESCRIPTION - Three Solid Stones (1975) is a collection of Hehe and Bena folk tales in English translation.

Martha Mvungi, nee Martha V. Mlangala is a Tanzanian writer in both Swahili and English. Martha V. Mlangala was born in Kidugala, Njombe, Southern Tanzania. She was educated at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Dar es Salaam. After a career teaching at various levels, she joined the Department of Education at the University of Dar es Salaam. Three Solid Stones (1975) was a collection of Hehe and Bena folk tales in English translation. Since 1995 Mvungi has been the Director of a school, Ecacs Schools, which she founded on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam.
[ 0160 ] Mwasi, George Simeon. Strike a Blow and Die: The Classic Story of the Chilembwe Rising. London. 1975. Heinemann. 0435901605. African Writers Series. Edited and introduced by Robert I. Rotberg. paperback. AWS160..

DESCRIPTION - Strike A Blow and Die is an account of the Chilembwe Rising of 1915 in colonial Nyasaland (now Malawi). The book was written in 1932, but published in 1967 in the United States by Harvard University Press, and tells the story of John Chilembwe’s realization that he needed to strike a blow for freedom against the injustices of the plantation owners and European rulers in Nyasaland. The book was banned by the Malawi government during its one-party state under Gazette Notice No: 152 of 3 October 1975.

George Simeon Mwase (c. 1880–1962) was a government clerk and later businessman and politician in colonial Nyasaland. He became politically active in the 1920s under the influence of the ideas of Marcus Garvey and his 'Africa for the Africans' movement, and was instrumental in founding the Central Province Native Association in 1927. Mwase joined the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) in 1944, soon after its formation, and later participated in its executive. By the late 1950s, the gradualism of Mwase and many of his contemporaries was rejected by a younger generation of more radical NAC members. He was marginalised and left the NAC and became a supporter of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Today, Mwase is probably best remembered as the author of a document later edited and published by Robert I. Rotberg in 1967 as 'Strike a Blow and Die'. This was an English translation of his 1932 essay comparing race relations in Nyasaland at the time of the Chilembwe uprising and the early 1930s, but it is most noteworthy for its second-hand account of that uprising and the motivation of John Chilembwe. Its authenticity and conclusions have been questioned by other scholars.
[ 0161 ] Djoleto, Amu. Money Galore. London. 1975. Heinemann. 0435901613. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS161..

DESCRIPTION - An irreverent satire set in Ghana, told with serious intent, in which Amu Djoleto creates a world where people crave insatiably for money, fame, power, and sex.

Solomon Alexander Amu Djoleto (born 22 July 1929) is a Ghanaian writer and educator. Amu Djoleto was born at Manyakpogunor, Manya Krobo, Ghana, the son of Frederick Badu, a Presbyterian minister, and Victoria Shome Tetteh, ‘a modest trader'. He was educated at Accra Academy and St. Augustine's College, Cape Coast before reading English at the University of Ghana. He joined Ghana's Ministry of Education in the 1960s as a teacher and education officer. After studying textbook production at the Institute of Education, University of London, he returned to Ghana to edit the Ghana Teachers' Journal. At one point heading the Ministry of Education's publishing programme, he has continued to work for the Ministry of Education. Djoleto contributed to the poetry anthologies Voices of Ghana (1958) and Messages (1970), and his poems were collected in Amid the Swelling Act. However, he is best known for his novels, the first of which was The Strange Man (1967).
[ 0162 ] Kayira, Legson. The Detainee. London. 1974. Heinemann. 0435901621. African Writers Series. 172 pages. paperback. AWS162. Cover photograph by George Hallett. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - 'The only remarkable thing about Napolo was his simplicity - the naive and trusting simplicity of a villager. ' The old man Napolo sets off from his village to go to see a white doctor in a distant town. On the way he falls among young thugs of the Youth Brigade who terrorize the land under the dictatorship of Sir Zaddock. He is taken away to a detention camp. It takes him a little time to realize that this is not just a rest camp. This remarkable and stylish novel shows an ordinary man mystified by the ways of people who have power over other men. It happens to be set in Africa and it happens to be in a dictatorship, but the bafflement of the old man in the face of changing circumstances could be anywhere in the world.

LEGSON KAYIRA, who was born in Malawi, is the author of four books: I Will Try (1965), The Looming Shadow (1967), Jingala (1969) and The Civil Servant (1971). He studied political science at the University of Washington and then read history for two years at Cambridge. He worked in London as a Probation Officer for two years. He is working on a historical novel on the renowned 1915 Chilembwe Rising.
[ 0163 ] Sellassie, Sahle. Warrior King. London. 1974. Heinemann. 043590163x. African Writers Series. 150 pages. paperback. AWS163. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - Warrior King is that rarity in the African Writers Series, a historical novel. It is the exciting and fast-moving story of the rise of Kassa Hailu to become Emperor Teowodros II, or Theodore as he has been called. Sahle Sellassie has drawn on the full richness of 19th century Ethiopian history to show a strong man reuniting the provinces of the Empire. The epic story is given human proportions by being introduced through the eyes of a peasant boy, Gebreye. He joins Kassa Hailu's outlaw band which sets out to destroy a corrupt regime of usurpers.

Berhane Mariam Sahle Sellassie (born 1936) is an Ethiopian author who has written in three languages: Gurage, English, and Amharic. He wrote the first novel in Chaha, a Gurage dialect, which was translated into English by Wolf Leslau for publication with the title Shinega's Village. This was followed by several books in English; The Afersata (1969) is perhaps the best known of these. He has written a major work in Amharic about the war with Italy, 1935 to 1941, and has translated other works.
[ 0164 ] Royston, Robert (editor). Black Poets in South Africa. London. 1974. Heinemann. 0435901648. African Writers Series. 96 pages. paperback. AWS164..

DESCRIPTION - A collection of poems from 11 African writers in South Africa. Writers include Casey Motisi, Stanley Mogoba, Mafika Mbuli and Basil Somhlahlo among others.

Robert Royston was a South African journalist and editor married to prominent poet in the 1960s and 1970s Eva Bezwoda.
[ 0165 ] Etherton, Michael (editor). African Plays for Playing. London. 1975. Heinemann. 0435901656. African Writers Series. Selected and edited by Michael Etherton. paperback. AWS165..

DESCRIPTION - Plays by Nuwa Sentongo, Jacob Hevi & Segun Ajibade.

Michael Etherton is a specialist in popular theatre in the developing world and in the development of Nigerian drama. He was reader in Drama at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria.
[ 0166 ] De Graft, Joe. Beneath the Jazz and Brass: Poems. London. 1975. Heinemann. 0435901664. African Writers Series. 134 pages. paperback. AWS166..

DESCRIPTION - In this extraordinary collection of poems, Joe de Graft delves into the history of Ghana and the everyday experiences of love, nature, corruption, and the fight for justice. One of Ghana's most accomplished poets, Joe de Graft offers a journey through life's precious moments, ranging from the humourous to the heartbreaking. Spanning a wide breadth of topics, the search for truth and honesty is at the heart of Beneath the Jazz and Brass. 'Powerful and impactful poems, truly the voice of the poet who is fearless enough to say it like it is.' Madhulika Liddle.

Joseph Coleman de Graft, known as Joe de Graft (2 April 1924 - 1 November 1978), was a prominent Ghanaian writer, playwright and dramatist, who was appointed the first director of the Ghana Drama Studio in 1962. He produced and directed plays for radio, stage and television, as well as acting, and was also a poet and educator.
[ 0167 ] Rabearivelo, Jean-Joseph. Translations from the Night: selected poems of Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo. London. 1975. Heinemann. 0435901672. African Writers Series. Edited with English translations by Clive Wake and John Reed. paperback. AWS167..

DESCRIPTION - A selection of poetry from a Malagasy writer and one of the most important of African poets writing in French. Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo is considered to be the father of modern literature in his native land.

Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo (4 March 1901 or 1903 - 22 June 1937), born Joseph-Casimir Rabearivelo, is widely considered to be Africa's first modern poet and the greatest literary artist of Madagascar. Part of the first generation raised under French colonization, Rabearivelo grew up impoverished and failed to complete secondary education. His passion for French literature and traditional Malagasy poetry (ohabolana) prompted him to read extensively and educate himself on a variety of subjects, including the French language and its poetic and prose traditions. He published his first poems as an adolescent in local literary reviews, soon obtaining employment at a publishing house where he worked as a proofreader and editor of its literary journals. He published numerous poetry anthologies in French and Malagasy as well as literary critiques, an opera, and two novels. Rabearivelo's early period of modernist-inspired poetry showed skill and attracted critical attention but adhered strictly to traditional genre conventions. The surrealist poetry he composed beginning in 1931 displayed greater originality, garnering him strong praise and acclaim. Despite increasing critical attention in international poetry reviews, Rabearivelo was never afforded access to the elite social circles of colonial Madagascar. He suffered a series of personal and professional disappointments, including the death of his daughter, the French authorities' decision to exclude him from the list of exhibitors at the Universal Exposition in Paris, and growing debt worsened by his philandering and opium addiction. Following Rabearivelo's suicide by cyanide poisoning in 1937, he became viewed as a colonial martyr. The death of Rabearivelo occurred just prior to the emergence of the NEgritude movement, by which time the Malagasy poet had established an international reputation among literary figures such as LEopold SEdar Senghor as Africa's first modern poet. The Government of Madagascar declared Rabearivelo its national poet upon independence in 1960. The legacy and influence of his works continue to be felt and his works are a focus of ongoing academic study. Modern Malagasy poets and literary figures including Elie Rajaonarison have cited him as a major inspiration. A street and a high school in Antananarivo have been named after him, as has a dedicated room in the National Library of Madagascar.
[ 0168 ] Echewa, T. Obinkaram. The Land's Lord. London. 1976. Heinemann. 0435901680. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS168..

DESCRIPTION - A missionary's ambiguous role in tribal Africa, Obinkaram Echewa's novel, The Land's Lord is one of the Nigerian novels that reflected the realities of the lives of the African people during the time of the colonial contact and conflict that was an inevitable historical realities of the people. The novel also captured the scenes from the colonial time as well as the vagaries of lives and situations that existed between the Africans and the Europeans.

T OBINKARAM ECHEWA (born December 16, 1940) is a Nigerian native, who currently resides in the United States and teaches English at West Chester University, in Pennsylvania. His books include The Land's Lord, winner of the 1976 English-Speaking Union Prize, and The Crippled Dancer, regional finalist for the 1986 Commonwealth Book Prize. Echewa is also the author of two children's books, The Ancestor Tree andThe Magic Tree, as well as the political satire How Tables Came to Umu Madu.
[ 0169 ] Samkange, Stanlake. The Mourned One. London. 1975. Heinemann. 0435901699. African Writers Series. 150 pages. paperback. AWS169. Cover design by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - Did Ndatshana really rape his friend and co-teacher at the Mission School in Rhodesia? He sits in the condemned cell looking back on how his life has developed in a society full of racial prejudice. The Mourned One concerns the rape of a white woman by a black man and the ensuing trial.

Stanlake John William Thompson Samkange (1922–1988) was a Zimbabwean historiographer, educationist, journalist, author, and African nationalist. He was a member of an elite Zimbabwean nationalist political dynasty and the most prolific of the first generation of black Zimbabwean creative writers in English. Samkange was born in 1922 in Zvimba, Mashonaland West Province, in the British southern African colony of Rhodesia. He was the son of the Reverend Thompson Samkange, a Methodist minister and nationalist politician, and his wife, Grace Mano, a Methodist evangelist. The family lived in Bulawayo, Matabeleland and in Mashonaland during Samkange's childhood. He took his higher education at Adams College in Natal, South Africa and the University of Fort Hare in Alice, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa (the first institution of higher learning in Africa that was open to Africans). He graduated with honors from Fort Hare in 1948 and returned to Rhodesia to become a teacher. While pursuing his teaching career he began to make plans for Nyatsime College, a secondary school to be controlled by blacks rather than government or missionaries. The school, which opened in 1962, provided academic, technical and commercial education for Africans. He was deeply involved in the liberal politics of Southern Rhodesia during the 1950s and 1960s, but became disillusioned when he realized that the white minority in Rhodesia would reject any multiracial options for government in the colony. Samkange moved to the United States where he took further education at the Indiana University at Bloomington. After earning his Ph.D. from that institution, he worked as a journalist and then opened a public relations firm. He also taught African history at various universities in the U.S. and in 1978 he was professor of African American studies at Northeastern University,
[ 0170 ] Mungoshi, Charles L. Waiting For the Rain. London. 1975. Heinemann. 0435901702. African Writers Series. 180 pages. paperback. AWS170. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - Lucifer is about to go overseas. His last visit home to his Family throws them into a crisis of survival. The old man, Sekuru, still bound up in the old ways, nevertheless has thought that Lucifer's education would mean that he should become head of the family. Garabha, his eldest brother, is he wild one who will not settle down to marriage or anything else; the family have disinherited him. But Lucifer, their chosen one, is determined to go overseas and learn the ways of the modern world; he stamps on the sacred medicine painstakingly prepared for him before he leaves.

CHARLES L. MUNGOSHI was born near Enkeldoorn, Rhodesia in 1947. He was educated at All Saints School, Daramombe School and St. Augustine's Secondary School. He worked for a year as a research assistant with the Forestry Commission and then for three years for Textbook Sales in Salisbury. He has published a collection of stories, COMING OF THE DRY SEASON (OUP Nairobi) and a novel in Shona.
[ 0171 ] Soyinka, Wole (editor). Poems of Black Africa. London. 1975. Heinemann. 0435901710. African Writers Series. Edited and introduced by Wole Soyinka. paperback. AWS171..

DESCRIPTION - This major collection, spanning the history of African verse from early traditional songs and stories to the present day, not only contains substantial contributions from poets already recognized beyond Africa - such as L. S. Senghor, J. P. Clark, Dennis Brutus, Mazisi Kunene, Christopher Okigbo, Richard Ntiru, Jared Angira, and Wole Soyinka himself - but also introduces the work of poets known only in their own countries. More than seventy poets are represented. ‘This anthology's claim to difference,' writes Wole Soyinka in his frank and incisive introduction, ‘is essentially one of approach.' Poems of Black Africa is organized not by the traditional geographic divisions but into nineteen sections, including ‘Ancestors and Gods,' ‘Exile,' ‘Indictment and Summons,' ‘Mortality,' and ‘Animistic Phases' (a special category including ‘intense, quasi-mystical' poems which, according to Soyinka, represent ‘a poetic sensibility which, a little like the English Metaphysicals, creates a 'spontaneous landscape of disparities' ‘). ‘In selecting the poems by theme,' Soyinka says, ‘my motive is to wean them away from their customary settings of regions, period, style, authorship. History, the contemporary reality, and the vision are the purpose of this anthology: the experience of black Africa in the idiom of the poem.'

Akinwande Oluwole 'Wole' Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian playwright and poet. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. After study in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years. Soyinka has strongly criticised many Nigerian military dictators, especially late General Sanni Abacha, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with 'the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it'. During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the 'Nadeco Route' on a motorcycle. Living abroad, mainly in the United States, he was a professor first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Abacha proclaimed a death sentence against him 'in absentia'. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. He has also taught at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Yale. From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife. With civilian rule restored in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.
[ 0172 ] Ekwensi, Cyprian. Restless City and Christmas Gold with Other Stories. London. 1975. Heinemann. 0435901729. Paperback Original. African Writers Series. 100 pages. paperback. AWS172. Cover design by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - Cyprian Ekwensi brings together in this collection of fifteen stories glimpses of city life, love and death; and in addition he captures the tragic, commercial and spiritual aspects of Christmas in two West African cities. This collection ranges in time from the pre-independence Africa of the fifties to today's Independent Africa (see 'Height of Freedom') in which human resources of the highest level are practically indispensable to development (see 'The Indispensable'). Collectors of Ekwensiana will be able to trace in some of these stories the genesis of later novels and novellas already published in the African Writers Series. Traces of People of the City (AWS 5) will be found in 'The Great Beyond', 'One and Eleven', 'Death of a Pathologist' and 'Bus Stop Mystery'. For Beautiful Feathers (AWS 84) read 'Night of Freedom'. For Lokotown (AWS 19) see 'Make-Believe Night'. The lead story 'Restless City' comes from the manuscript of an unpublished novel.

Cyprian Ekwensi (September 26, 1921–November 4, 2007) was a Nigerian short story writer and author of children's books. Ekwensi, a native of Nkwelle-Ezunaka in today's Oyi local government of Anambra State, was born in Minna, Niger State. His father was David Anadumaka, a story-teller and elephant hunter. Ekwensi attended Government College in Ibadan, Oyo State, Achimota College in Ghana, and the School of Forestry, Ibadan, after which he worked for two years as a forestry officer. He also studied pharmacy at Yaba Technical Institute, Lagos School of Pharmacy, and the Chelsea School of Pharmacy of the University of London. He taught at Igbobi College. Ekwensi has nine children. His oldest son George is a well known New Jersey accountant. Ekwensi was employed as Head of Features at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and by the Ministry of Information during the First Republic; he eventually became Director of the latter. He resigned his position in 1966, before the Civil War, and moved to Enugu with his family. He later served as chair of the Bureau for External Publicity of Biafra, prior to its reabsorption by Nigeria. Ekwensi wrote hundreds of short stories, radio and television scripts, and several dozen novels, including children's books. His 1954 PEOPLE OF THE CITY was the first book by a Nigerian to garner international attention. His novel DRUMMER BOY (1960), based on the life of Benjamin 'Kokoro' Aderounmu was a perceptive and powerful description of the wandering, homeless and poverty-stricken life of a street artist. His most successful novel was JAGUA NANA (1961), about a Pidgin-speaking Nigerian woman who leaves her husband to work as a prostitute in a city and falls in love with a teacher. He also wrote a sequel to this, JAGUA NANA'S DAUGHTER. In 1968, he received the Dag Hammarskjöld International Prize in Literature. In 2006, he became a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters. Ekwensi died on 4 November 2007 at the Niger Foundation in Enugu, where he underwent an operation for an undisclosed ailment. The Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), having intended to present him with an award on November 16, 2007, converted the honor to a posthumous award.
[ 0173 ] Nwankwo, Nkem. My Mercedes is Bigger Than Yours. London. 1975. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS173..

DESCRIPTION - Onuma, who thought of himself as a Renaissance man, was at present a public relations promoter in Lagos. His life had been a pleasant one; his family was wealthy; an uncle had sent him to an exclusive school which he had enjoyed enormously. He'd found the work easy and he'd been very popular with his fellow students. He had, at an early age, discovered all the vices, and his power over women. They couldn't, they said, resist his large, warm, mischievous eyes. As he matured and improved his methods, women threw themselves at him. He went on to the university (one of a handful of students in a country of millions to receive such an education) where he found, not entirely to his pleasure, that he was expected to study and to cultivate his teachers. It was in his second year at the university that his code of life was set - a code of complete, unashamed individualism. And now. a student no longer, he was coming home after years away, driving a Jaguar! NKEM NWANKWO has written a delightful, bittersweet novel that should make those of his readers who are not familiar with Nigeria feel very much at home there, and Onuma, as he dances through its pages, will become a deliciously interesting new friend for anyone who is not too frightfully proper.

Nkem Nwankwo (June 12, 1936 - June 12, 2001) was a Nigerian novelist and poet. Born in Nawfia, Nigeria, he attended University College in Ibadan. He wrote for magazines soon after graduating, and gained attention with his 1964 novel DANDA. He wrote several other works after that including satires such as My MERCEDES IS BIGGER THAN YOURS. During the 1970s, Nwankwo earned a Master's and Ph.D. at Indiana University. He also wrote about corruption in Nigeria and taught at Michigan State University and Tennessee State University.
[ 0174 ] Diop, David Mandessi. Hammer Blows: Poems. London. 1975. Heinemann. 0435901745. African Writers Series. Translated from the French and edited by Simon Mpondo and Frank Jones. paperback. AWS174..

DESCRIPTION - Coups de pilon (1956, published in Engllsh as Hammerblows in 1973) is the only surviving collection from poet David Mandessi Diop. These are angry poems of protest against European cultural values, enumerating the sufferings of his people first under the slave trade and then under the domination of colonial rule and calling for revolution to lead to a glorious future for Africa. That he was the most extreme of the Negritude writers (who were reacting against the assumption underlying the French policy of assimilation that Africa was a deprived land possessing neither culture nor history) can be seen in his rejection of the idea that any good could have come to Africa through the colonial experience and in his belief that political freedom must precede a cultural and economic revival. He wrote during the period when the struggle for independence in many African countries was at its height.

Negritude poet David Mandessi Diop (July 9, 1927 - August 29, 1960) was born in Bordeaux to a Senegalese father and a Cameroonian mother. He lived much of his life in France but also spent significant time in West Africa, where he was a strong supporter of the movement for independence from French colonial rule. He died at the age of 33 in an airplane crash on his way home to France from Dakar. Diop was educated at the LycEe Marcelin Berthelot in Paris. Influenced by the work of Martinique poet AimE Cesaire, Diop composed poems of political resistance, recalling the power of a free Africa and vividly portraying the oppression of French colonialist rule. Rejecting assimilation into European culture and rhythms, Diop frequently used colloquial and spoken phrasings patterned with rhythmic repetition. At age 15, Diop began publishing his poems regularly in the literary journal PrEsence Africaine, and five of his poems were featured in LEopold Senghor's Anthologie de la nouvelle poEsie nEgre et malgache (1948). He published only one short book of poems during his lifetime, Coups de pilon (Pounding) (1956). Hammer Blows and Other Writings (1973, translated and edited by Simon Mpondo and Frank Jones), a posthumous translation, was expanded to include a selection of the poet's previously uncollected prose.
[ 0175 ] Ousmane, Sembène. Xala. London. 1976. Heinemann. 0435901753. African Writers Series. Translated from the French by Clive Wake. 114 pages. paperback. AWS175..

DESCRIPTION - A biting satire about the downfall of a businessman-polygamist who assumes the role of the colonializer in French-speaking Africa. XALA is the story of a El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye, a rich businessman struck by what he believes to be a curse of impotence (‘xala' in Wolof) on the night of his wedding to his beautiful, young third wife. El Hadji grows obsessed with removing the curse through visits to marabouts, but only after losing most of his money and reputation does he discover the source to be the beggar who lives outside his offices, whom he wronged in acquiring his fortune.

Ousmane Sembene, who was born into a Senegalese fishing family in 1923, worked at a diversity of jobs before writing his first book, THE BLACK DOCKER, in 1956. Since then he has written several novels and short story collections, through which he tells the saga of his land and its people. He has also gained a reputation for his films, particularly BLACK GIRL and THE MONEY ORDER, which were well received both in the U.S. and abroad.
[ 0176 ] Mwangi, Meja. Going Down River Road. London. 1976. Heinemann. 0435901761. African Writers Series. 215 pages. paperback. AWS176. Cover design by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - Ben is a man on the move in bars, night clubs, in the streets, in brothels down River Road in Nairobi. It is on one of these occasions that he meets Wini and her son Baby. But Wini runs off with her white boss leaving her little son with Ben, and destroying his trust in women. When Ben joins up with Ocholla at a construction site, action, humour and more people come into the picture. Mwangi's light-hearted treatment of serious situations makes an unforgettable impact. ‘.. rarely has anybody put so much understanding and empathy into character portrayal in a contemporary novel about our time and place. And our time and place is what this novel is all about.' - Joe Magazine.

MEJA MWANGl's contribution to the new wave of East African writing was recognized by the award of the Kenyatta Prize for Kill Me Quick (AWS 143), a novel which features the hardships of young down-and-outs in present day Nairobi. It was followed by a novel about the Emergency called Carcase for Hounds (AWS 145), which has been made into the film 'Cry Freedom'. He has also published The Cockroach Dance and The Bushtrackers.
[ 0177 ] Gordimer, Nadine. Some Monday For Sure. London. 1976. Heinemann. 043590177x. African Writers Series. 162 pages. paperback. AWS177. Cover design by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - It is above all in her short stories that Nadine Gordimer has shown the reality of everyday life in South Africa. She has the ability to enlighten and inform by means of vivid details; she polishes her words with the skill of a diamond cutter revealing facet upon multi-facet in the harsh brightness of the high veld sun. She has selected thirteen stories from her short story collections published over a period of twenty-five years. She finds that subconsciously the changing subject-matter and vocabulary have reflected the changes in relationships between black and white during this time. The title story reflects her feeling that 'some perfectly ordinary day, for sure, black South Africans will free themselves and rule themselves'.

NADINE GORDIMER, born in 1923 in South Africa, is one of the most exceptional novelists and short-story writers being published in English today. Friday's Footprint won the W. H. Smith Award in 1961, A Guest of Honour won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1972 and in 1974 she shared the Booker Prize for The Conservationist. She has published five collections of short stories and six novels. Two of the novels have been banned in South Africa.
[ 0178 ] Peteni, R. L. Hill of Fools. London. 1976. Heinemann. 0435901788. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS178..

DESCRIPTION - Set in rural South Africa, Hill of Fools tells the classic tale of forbidden love and tragedy as two rival families fight over ancient feuds.Although arranged to marry one of the most powerful men in her village, Zuziwe finds herself falling deeply in love with a young warrior across the river, Bhuqa. A leading fighter in his own village, Bhuqa is caught between his love for Zuziwe and the long-standing grudge that their families have inherited a rivalry so old that no one remembers how it began.As peace negotiations between the two tribes crumble, Zuziwe and Bhuqa's hopes for a future together fall further and further away while violence threatens to ruin everything they hold dear.Hill of Fools is a heartfelt portrayal of tribalism in South Africa, rich with Xhosa idioms and age-old traditions. R.L. Peteni weaves together an unforgettable tale of two lovers doomed by past prejudice.

Randell Langa Peteni (6 December 1915 - 8 September 2000) was a Xhosa South African novelist and academic, and author of the novel Hill of Fools (Aba Kwazidenge), which was adapted for television by the SABC. The novel was Peteni's only novel.
[ 0179 ] Etherton, Michael (editor). African Plays for Playing 2. London. 1976. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS179..

DESCRIPTION - Includes Monkey on the tree by Uwa Udensi, Black mamba two by Godfrey Kabwe Kasoma and The tradedy of Mr. No-balance by Victor Eleame Musinga.

Michael Etherton is a specialist in popular theatre in the developing world and in the development of Nigerian drama. He was reader in Drama at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria.
[ 0180 ] Senghor, Léopold Sédar. Senghor: Prose and Poetry. London. 1979. Heinemann. 043590180x. African Writers Series. Selected and translated from French by John Reed and Clive Wake. 182 pages. paperback. AWS180. Cover design by Jeff Carter.

DESCRIPTION - LEOPOLD SEDAR SENGHOR, Poet-President of Senegal, was born in 1906. He studied at the Sorbonne, became a French citizen and the first African to receive his agrEgation, the prerequisite for teaching in France. During the Second World War he joined the French Army. He became Senegal's deputy to France's Constituent Assembly in 1945. In 1955 he became Secretary of State, in 1959 head of the Union Progressiste SEnEgalaise and in 1960 President. His has been a key role in the development of negritude and his Anthologie de la nouvelle poesie nEgre et malgache (1948) introduced many of the people who are now part of the canon of French African literature. This is the first appearance of this well-known anthology in the African Writers Series. Clive Wake's and John Reed's translations of Senghor's verse have been acknowledged for some time as being of singular distinction and have already appeared in the African Writers Series in Nocturnes (AWS 71), A Book of African Verse (AWS 8) and French African Verse (AWS 106). Among many critical studies is S. O. Mezu's The Poetry of LEopold SEdar Senghor (Heinemann). ‘The English-speaking reader is here presented with a wide range of Senghor's writings. A detailed introduction by the translators discusses Senghor's achievements and his career as a politician. There are translations from Senghor's scattered prose writings and speeches and from his book Nation et Voie Africaine du Socialisme. These are arranged in such a fashion as to show in outline his thinking on cultural, political and artistic matters. The second part of the book consists of a selection of his poetry. A glossary of African names often used by Senghor and a bibliography complete the volume.' A Reader's Guide to African Literature.

Leopold Sedar Senghor was born in 1906 in Joal, a small village of the Sine-Saloum region on the Atlantic coast, and was educated in France. From 1960 to 1981 he was president of the Republic of Senegal, and in 1983 he became the first African and the only black intellectual elected to the French Academy. MELVIN DIXON is Professor of English at the Graduate Center and Queens College, City University of New York. He is the author of VANISHING ROOMS, TROUBLE THE WATER, CHANGE OF TERRITORY, and RIDE OUT THE WILDERNESS: GEOGRAPHY AND IDENTITY IN AFRO-AMERICAN LITERATURE. In 1985-86 Dixon served as Fulbright Professor of American Civilization at the University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar, Senegal.
[ 0181 ] Beti, Mongo. Perpetua and the Habit of Unhappiness. London. 1978. Heinemann. 0435901818. African Writers Series. Translated from the French by Clive Wake and John Reed from the French Perpétue et l'habitude du malheur. 219 pages. paperback. AWS181. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - How did Perpetua come to die in childbirth? Her brother Essola comes out from ten years' detention determined to find out why his sister had died. He comes to suspect that his family do not want to face the consequences of having sold Perpetua as a wife to a supposedly well-off and influential town police official. As it turned out he lived in a slum and was a tyrant. He had forced her to become the lover of a senior police official to secure his advancement. She did find a true love and died partly from giving birth to his child but really from the sheer habit of unhappiness.

Alexandre Biyidi Awala (30 June 1932 - 8 October 2001), known as Mongo Beti, was a Cameroonian writer. Though he lived in exile for many decades, Beti's life reveals an unflagging commitment to improvement of his home country. As one critic wrote after his death, ‘The militant path of this essayist, chronicler and novelist has been governed by one obsession: the quest for the dignity of African people.'The son of Oscar Awala and REgine Alomo, Alexandre was born in 1932 at AkomEtan, a small village 10 km from Mbalmayo, itself 45 km away from YaoundE, capital of Cameroon. (The village's name comes from Akom ‘rock' and Etam ‘source': in old maps of the region, the name is written in two parts). From an early age, Beti was influenced by the currents of rebellion sweeping Africa in the wake of World War II. His father drowned when Beti was seven, and he was raised by his mother and extended family. Beti recalls arguing with his mother about religion and colonialism; he also recalls early exposure to the opinions and analysis of independence leader Ruben Um Nyobe, both in the villages and at Nyobe's private residence. He carried these views into the classroom, and was eventually expelled from the missionary school in Mbalmayo for his outspokenness. In 1945 he entered the lycEe Leclerc in YaoundE. Graduating in 1951, he came to France to continue his higher education in literature, first at Aix-en-Provence, then at the Sorbonne in Paris. By the early 1950s, Beti had turned to writing as a vehicle of protest. He wrote regularly for the journal PrEsence Africaine; among his pieces was a review of Camara Laye's Black Child that criticized Laye for what Beti saw as pandering to European tastes. He began his career in fiction with the short story Sans haine et sans amour (‘Without hatred or love'), published in the periodical PrEsence Africaine, edited by Alioune Diop, in 1953. Beti's first novel Ville cruelle (‘Cruel City'), under the pseudonym Eza Boto, followed in 1954, published in several editions of PrEsence Africaine. It was, however, in 1956 that he gained a widespread reputation; the publication of the novel Le pauvre Christ de Bomba (‘The poor Christ of Bomba') created a scandal because of its satirical and biting description of the missionary and colonial world. Under pressure from the religious hierarchy, the colonial administrator in Cameroon banned the novel in the colony. This was followed by Mission terminEe, 1957 (winner of the Prix Sainte Beuve 1958), and Le Roi miraculE, 1958. He also worked during this time for the review Preuves, for which he reported from Africa. He worked also as a substitute teacher at the lycEe of Rambouillet. In 1959, he was named certified professor at the lycEe Henri Avril in Lamballe. He took the AgrEgation de Lettres classiques in 1966 and taught at the LycEe Pierre Corneille in Rouen. from this date until 1994. Following Nyobe's assassination by French forces in 1958, however, Beti fell silent as a writer for more than a decade, remaining in exile from his homeland. After his death,Odile Tobner noted that exile was not easy on Beti; he remained tortured by his concern for his embattled country.In 1972 he re-entered the world of literature with a bang. His book Main basse sur le Cameroun, autopsie d'une dEcolonisation ('Cruel hand on Cameroon, autopsy of a decolonization') was censored upon its publication by the French Ministry of the Interior Raymond Marcellin on the request, brought forward by Jacques Foccart, of the Cameroon government, represented in Paris by the ambassador Ferdinand Oyono. The essay, a critical history of recent Cameroon, asserted that Cameroon and other colonies remained under French control in all but name, and that the post-independence political elites had actively fostered this continued dependence. Beti was inspired to write in part by the execution of Ernest Ouandie by the government of Cameroon. In 1974 he published PerpEtue and Remember Ruben; the latter was the first in a trilogy exploring the life and impact of Nyobe. After a long judicial action, Mongo Beti and his editor Francois MaspEro finally obtained, in 1976, the cancellation of the ban on the publication of Main basse. Beti returned to critical and political writing at the same time that he returned to fiction. In 1978 he and his wife Odile Tobner launched the bimonthly review Peuples Noirs. Peuples africains ('Black People. African People'), which was published until 1991. This review chronicled and denounced tirelessly the evils brought to Africa by neo-colonial regimes. During this period were published the novels La ruine presque cocasse d'un polichinelle (1979), Les deux mères de Guillaume Ismaël Dzewatama futur camionneur (1983), La revanche de Guillaume Ismaël Dzewatama (1984), also Lettre ouverte aux Camerounais ou la deuxième mort de Ruben Um NyobE (1984) and Dictionnaire de la negritude (1989, with Odile Tobner). Frustrated by what he saw as the failure of post-independence governments to bring genuine freedom to Africa, Beti adopted a more radical perspective in these works. In exile, Beti remained vitally connected to the struggle in Cameroon. Throughout the seventies and eighties, acquaintance with Beti or his work could spell trouble for a citizen of Cameroon; on numerous occasions, Beti used his connections in France to rescue one of his young readers, many of whom knew him from his periodical and his polemical essays. Ambroise Kom, arrested merely for subscribing to Peuples noirs, was saved from incarceration by Beti's actions in France on his behalf. In 1991 Mongo Beti returned to Cameroon, after 32 years of self-imposed exile. In 1993 he published La France contre l'Afrique, retour au Cameroun; this book chronicles his visits to his homeland. After retiring from teaching in 1994, he returned to Cameroon permanently. Various business endeavors in Betiland failed; eventually, he opened in YaoundE the Librairie des Peuples noirs (Bookstore of the Black Peoples) and organized agricultural activities in his village of Akometam. The goal of the bookshop was to encourage engaged literacy in the capital, and also to provide an outlet for critical texts and authors. During this period, Beti also supported John Fru Ndi, an anglophone opposition leader. He created associations for the defence of citizens and gave to the press numerous articles of protest. The government attempted to hinder his activities. On his first return to Cameroon, police prevented him from speaking at a scheduled conference; Beti instead addressed a crowd outside the locked conference room. He was subjected in January 1996, in the streets of YaoundE, to police aggression. He was challenged at a demonstration in October 1997. In response he published several novels: L'histoire du fou in 1994 then the two initial volumes Trop de soleil tue l'amour (1999) et Branle-bas en noir et blanc (2000), of a trilogy which would remain unfinished. He was hospitalized in YaoundE on October 1, 2001 for acute hepatic and kidney failure which remained untreated for lack of dialysis. Transported to the hospital at Douala on October 6, he died there on October 8, 2001. Some critics noted the similarity of his death to that of his heroine Perpetua, who also died while awaiting treatment in one of the country's overburdened hospitals. From beginning to end, Beti's work was informed by two principles. In terms of style, he was a realist. In a critical statement published in 1955, he asserted that ‘Given the modern conceptions of the beautiful in literature, given at the very least these essential conceptions, if a work is realistic it has many chances of being good; if not, supposing even that it has formal qualities, it risks lacking resonance, profundity, that of which all literature has the greatest need -- the human; from which it follows that it has much less chance of being good -- if only it had some -- than a realistic work.' Beti's fiction remains true to this credo. Thematically, Beti's work is unified by an unwavering commitment to combatting colonialism, both overt and covert. Beti's aim always, even in his harsh criticism of Cameroon's independence government, was to strengthen African autonomy and prosperity. ‘Sans haine et sans amour', 1953, is a short story and Beti's first significant work.
[ 0182 ] Head, Bessie. The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales. London. 1977. Heinemann. 0435901826. African Writers Series. 109 pages. paperback. AWS182. Cover photograph by George Hallett..

DESCRIPTION - The title story of THE COLLECTOR OF TREASURES tells of a woman who has murdered the husband who deserted her years before, In its study of a woman's unhappiness it brings together several of the major strands in this collection of tales of people in a Botswana village. The whole collection has been given a carefully developed sequence. Bessie Head says: ‘There are some of the old African myths to head the sequence.. with themes such as the ancient pattern of tribal migration, and heathendom versus Christianity and witchcraft. ‘And the last four stories, ‘Snapshots of a Wedding', ‘The Special One', ‘The Collector of Treasures' and ‘Hunting' can be grouped together as they all deal, in their different ways, with a complete breakdown of family life, especially in Bamangwato country where I live, All the background was given to me by women who rear illegitimate children on their own. Heinemann have accepted this book for their famous African Writers Series, and will publish their paperback edition in Southern Africa fifteen months after this boards edition. BESSIE HEAD has set all three of her outstanding novels in Botswana, her country of exile from South Africa, where she was born in 1937. WHEN RAIN CLOUDS GATHER and MARU, were followed by A QUESTION OF POWER of which Ronald Blythe said in The Sunday Times: ‘Her novels, this is the third, have a way of soaring up from rock bottom to the stars, and are very shaking.'

Bessie Emery Head (6 July 1937 - 17 April 1986) is usually considered Botswana's most influential writer. Bessie Emery Head was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, the child of a wealthy white South African woman and a black servant when interracial relationships were illegal in South Africa. It was claimed that her mother was mentally ill so that she could be sent to a quiet location to then give birth to Bessie without the neighbors knowing. However, the exact circumstances are disputed, and some of Bessie Head's comments, though often quoted as straight autobiography, are in fact from fictionalized settings. In the 1950s and '60s she was a teacher, then a journalist for the South African magazine Drum. In 1964 she moved to Botswana (then still the Bechuanaland Protectorate) as a refugee, having been peripherally involved with Pan-African politics. It would take 15 years for Head to obtain Botswana citizenship. Head settled in Serowe, the largest of Botswana's ‘villages' (i.e. traditional settlements as opposed to settler towns). Serowe was famous both for its historical importance, as capital of the Bamangwato people, and for the experimental Swaneng school of Patrick van Rensburg. The deposed chief of the Bamangwato, Seretse Khama, was soon to become the first President of independent Botswana. Her early death in 1986 (aged 48) from hepatitis came just at the point where she was starting to achieve recognition as a writer and was no longer so desperately poor. Most of Bessie Head's important works are set in Serowe, in particular the three novels When Rain Clouds Gather, Maru, and A Question of Power. One of her best works is When Rain Clouds Gather, in which she writes about a troubled young man called Makhaya who runs away from his birthplace, South Africa, to become a refugee in a little village called Golema Mmidi, in the heart of Botswana. Here he is faced with many challenges, one of which is the fact that Chief Matenge does not allow his presence in the village. He meets a white man named Gilbert and starts a whole new journey into the unknown. Head also published a number of short stories, including the collection The Collector of Treasures. She published a book on the history of Serowe, the village she settled in, called Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind. Her last novel, A Bewitched Crossroad, is historical, set in nineteenth-century Botswana. She had also written a story of two prophets, one wealthy and one who lived poorly called ‘Jacob: The Faith-Healing Priest'. Head's work, which emphasised the value of ordinary life and humble people, was more in touch with an earlier trend in African writing than many recent writers, who have made overtly political comments. Her writing has endured nonetheless. Religious ideas feature prominently at times, as in the work A Question of Power. It is interesting to note that Head was initially brought up as a Christian; however, she was later influenced by Hinduism (to which she was exposed through South Africa's Indian community). Most of her writing took place while she was in exile in Botswana. An exception is the early novel The Cardinals (published posthumously), written before she left South Africa. In some ways Bessie Head remained an outsider in her adopted country, and some discern she had something of a love-hate relationship with it. At times she suffered mental health problems and on one occasion put up a public notice making bizarre and shocking allegations about then President Sir Seretse Khama, which led to a period in Lobatse Mental Hospital. A Question of Power is based partly on those experiences. In 2007 the Bessie Head Heritage Trust was established, along with the Bessie Head Literature Awards. In July 2007 the library in Pietermaritzburg was renamed the Bessie Head library in her honor. In 2003 she was awarded the South African ‘Order of Ikhamanga in Gold' for her ‘exceptional contribution to literature and the struggle for social change, freedom and peace.'
[ 0183 ] Okara, Gabriel. The Fisherman's Invocation. London. 1978. Heinemann. 0435901834. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS183..

DESCRIPTION - Gabriel Okara’s ‘The Fisherman’s Invocation’ looks at how the past feeds into the future, using the end of a celebration to show the mix of holding onto traditions while moving forward in a postcolonial world. Okara mixes storytelling from his Nigerian roots with modern ideas about life and identity. The poem reflects on Nigeria’s struggles, both as a nation and for its people. Okara’s background as a painter shows in how he creates strong emotions and paints clear pictures with words, making the poem feel meaningful and relatable.

Gabriel Okara was born at Bumoundi, Bayelsa State, in the Niger Delta in 1921 and educated at Government College Umuahia in Nigeria and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He worked as a bookbinder and printer for Federal Government Press at Lagos, served as the director of cultural and information services for the shortlived Republic of Biafra, and was the general manager of the Rivers State newspaper and broadcasting corporations. He is an honorary member of the Pan-African Writers' Association, a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, and is currently writer in residence at the University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. Brenda Marie Osbey is a poet and essayist. Her most recent volumes are History and Other Poems and All Souls: Essential Poems. A native of New Orleans, she is poet laureate emerita of Louisiana and distinguished visiting professor of Africana Studies at Brown University.
[ 0184 ] Farah, Nuruddin. A Naked Needle. London. 1980. Heinemann. 0435901842. African Writers Series. 181 pages. paperback. AWS184. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - Koschin has idly, far away and two long years ago, agreed with Nancy, that they should get married if they have not found anybody else in the meantime. It had been easy to give such a promise to her in London before he returned to teach in Mogadiscio. Now he receives a telegram to say that Nancy is coming to share his life in Somalia in a society she does not know. He views the prospect apprehensively. It means almost certain rupture with his family. He meets one friend whose marriage to a European girl is in a mess and another whose marriage is a success. This sensitive novel shows the unwilling growth in Koschin of a more genuine feeling. The book uses a subtle counterpoint to show the regrowth of a relationship against the background of a city full of excitement over 'the revolution'. 'And here, though the deft construction is brilliantly original, Joyce's influence is indeed clear. Like Ulysses, it is confined to a single day and to one city, Mogadishu, and its central consciousness, that of a man named Koschin, must remind us at times of Joyce's Stephen Dedalus. Like Stephen, Koschin is learned; like Stephen, he broods. Though he is very much committed to his own country, his thoughts and his conversation reflect his wide reading, the impact of foreign cultures upon him.' The Scotsman. NURUDDIN FARAH'S first novel From a Crooked Rib (AWS 80) was described by Books Abroad as 'one of the most complete pictures of a woman we have seen in African fiction'. His powerful political thriller Sweet and Sour Milk (AWS 226) has recently been published. Nuruddin Farah was born in 1945 in Baidoa, in what is now the Somali Republic. He worked in the Ministry of Education before leaving for India to study philosophy and literature at the University of Chandigarh. He taught at the University of Mogadiscio and has recently been at the Universities of London and Essex.

Nuruddin Farah is the author of a number of previous novels. His books have brought him numerous awards, including the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. His plays and essays, has been featured in The New Yorker and other publications. Born in Baidoa, Somalia, Farah divides his time between Cape Town and Minneapolis, where he holds the Winton Chair in the Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota.
[ 0185 ] Ekwensi, Cyprian. Survive the Peace. Portsmouth. 1983. Heinemann. 0435901850. African Writers Series. 181 pages. paperback. AWS185. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - James Odugo, Radio-Journalist, quickly finds out that to survive the peace after the Biafran war takes more guts and resilience than to survive the civil war itself. Confusion reigns as he and Vic, a woman announcer, flee the radio station to try and reach his wife and children. But the war has smashed his marriage and peace provides no lasting relationship with Vic. In this moving and mature novel, Cyprian Ekwensi takes us back to those tragic days with the skill of the fine storyteller that he is.

Cyprian Ekwensi (September 26, 1921–November 4, 2007) was a Nigerian short story writer and author of children's books. Ekwensi, a native of Nkwelle-Ezunaka in today's Oyi local government of Anambra State, was born in Minna, Niger State. His father was David Anadumaka, a story-teller and elephant hunter. Ekwensi attended Government College in Ibadan, Oyo State, Achimota College in Ghana, and the School of Forestry, Ibadan, after which he worked for two years as a forestry officer. He also studied pharmacy at Yaba Technical Institute, Lagos School of Pharmacy, and the Chelsea School of Pharmacy of the University of London. He taught at Igbobi College. Ekwensi has nine children. His oldest son George is a well known New Jersey accountant. Ekwensi was employed as Head of Features at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and by the Ministry of Information during the First Republic; he eventually became Director of the latter. He resigned his position in 1966, before the Civil War, and moved to Enugu with his family. He later served as chair of the Bureau for External Publicity of Biafra, prior to its reabsorption by Nigeria. Ekwensi wrote hundreds of short stories, radio and television scripts, and several dozen novels, including children's books. His 1954 PEOPLE OF THE CITY was the first book by a Nigerian to garner international attention. His novel DRUMMER BOY (1960), based on the life of Benjamin 'Kokoro' Aderounmu was a perceptive and powerful description of the wandering, homeless and poverty-stricken life of a street artist. His most successful novel was JAGUA NANA (1961), about a Pidgin-speaking Nigerian woman who leaves her husband to work as a prostitute in a city and falls in love with a teacher. He also wrote a sequel to this, JAGUA NANA'S DAUGHTER. In 1968, he received the Dag Hammarskjöld International Prize in Literature. In 2006, he became a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters. Ekwensi died on 4 November 2007 at the Niger Foundation in Enugu, where he underwent an operation for an undisclosed ailment. The Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), having intended to present him with an award on November 16, 2007, converted the honor to a posthumous award.
[ 0186 ] Boateng, Yaw M. The Return. London. 1977. Heinemann. 0435901869. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS186..

DESCRIPTION - A riveting historical novel by a young Ghanaian, The Return focuses on a continent shattered by the Western slave trade - a continent where Africans enslave other Africans, and smaller kingdoms are gobbled up by larger kingdoms supplied with guns and ammunition from the coffers of European and American slave traders. Against a backdrop of pillage, blood, hatred, revenge, and above all of African disunity, Boateng tells a gripping tale of conflict between two men, Seku and Jakpa. Because of his love for a woman, Seku inadvertently causes Jakpa to be sold into slavery. Seku in turn flees to the growing Asante kingdom (present-day Ghana). There he rises to be a great warrior, but once again comes face to face with Jakpa - previously a slave, now a scholar of the Asantes - who has sworn a blood oath to kill him. Over this panorama of precolonial Africa, a world seemingly without whites, hovers one powerful, unifying image - the ominous shadow of the Western slave ship just off the coast.

Yaw M. Boateng (1950-) is a Ghanaian novelist and playwright, born in Kumasi, Ghana and educated in Cape Coast and at Kumasi University of Science and Technology and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich. His first play was the historical Katier (1972), which was produced on Ghana Television. The Return (1977), a novel set in the nineteenth century, follows the story of Seku Wattara, a warrior who rises from obscurity to a position of influence as a general in the Asante army. His brother Jakpa, whom he once left for dead, comes to Asante as a Muslim scholar, discovering that Seku Wattara is still alive, Jakpa plots revenge. The novel is an exploration of the tragedy of Africans who sold each other into slavery for the benefit of Europeans
[ 0187 ] Rugyendo, Mukotani. The Barbed Wire and Other Plays. London. 1976. Heinemann. African Writers Series. 112 pages. paperback. AWS187. Cover design by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - These three plays are challenging experiments in an ongoing search for a popular and truly African theatre. They marry traditional forms and modern context in an attempt to dramatize social and political realities. 'The Barbed Wire' shows a peasant community resisting a rich farmer's efforts to evict them from communally-owned land. 'The Contest' uses heroic recitation to show the exploits of two communities whose heroes both covet the love of the beautiful Maendeleo. 'And The Storm Gathers' is set in a country which has recently had a military coup; the harvests of those who think this is their time to 'eat' are no better than the plight of those who wallowed in the illusory bliss of the fallen regime. These three plays introduce a new playwright of particular promise.

Mukotani Rugyendo (born Kigezi, 1949) is a Ugandan poet, writer and journalist probably best known for his poem 'My Husband Has Gone'. He graduated from the University of Dar es Salaam in 1973 where he edited a literary journal Umma. In 1977, he published The Barbed Wire and Other Plays (The Contest and And the Storm Gathers) in the Heinemann's African Writers Series. In the seminal article 'Waiting for Amin: Two Decades of Ugandan Literature, Ugandan scholar Peter Nazareth, now based at the University of Iowa, says of Rugyendo, He has a radical approach to postcolonial problems, attempting to create revolutionary drama in content and form.
[ 0188 ] Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Petals of Blood. Nairobi. 1988. Heinemann. 0435901885. African Writers Series. 345 pages. paperback. AWS188. Cover design by Michael Harvey.

DESCRIPTION - Petals of blood appear on flowers sent up from land that has been paved over in the false name of progress and governed by greedy politicians and inept bureaucrats. Such a land is the Kenya of Ngugi's striking novel. In a small boom town in a rural district of this newly independent nation, three African directors of a foreign-owned brewery are killed and four suspects are taken into custody: Munira, who has come to llmorog as a schoolteacher and become the headmaster; Wanja, the lovely and wise barmaid, who has left the city, where she was forced to be a prostitute; Karega, who has turned from rebellion to organizing workers; Abdulla, the former Mau Mau guerrilla crippled in the struggle for Kenya's freedom from colonial power, who now makes a miserable living as a shopkeeper. As the investigation into the startling triple murder proceeds, the intertwined stories of the four suspects unfold and a devastating picture of modern-day Kenya emerges. it is a picture of exploitation and frustration in a land where the people feel their leaders have failed them time after time. NGUGI WA THIONG'O - Who originally came to international fame as James Ngugi and is still known simply as Ngugi - was born in Kenya in 1938. He studied at Leeds (England), taught at Makerere (Uganda) and Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, and has been chairman of the literature department at the University of Nairobi. Ngugi is married and has six children.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o (born January 5, 1938) is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gikuyu. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal, Mutiiri. In 1977, Ngugi embarked upon a novel form of theater in his native Kenya which sought to liberate the theatrical process from what he held to be ‘the general bourgeois education system', by encouraging spontaneity and audience participation in the performances. Ngugi's project sought to ‘demystify' the theatrical process, and to avoid the ‘process of alienation [which] produces a gallery of active stars and an undifferentiated mass of grateful admirers' which, according to Ngugi, encourages passivity in ‘ordinary people'. Although Ngaahika Ndeenda was a commercial success, it was shut down by the authoritarian Kenyan regime six weeks after its opening. Ngugi was subsequently imprisoned for over a year. Adopted as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, the artist was released from prison, and fled Kenya. In the United States, he taught at Yale University for some years, and has since also taught at New York University, with a dual professorship in Comparative Literature and Performance Studies, and the University of California, Irvine. Ngugi has frequently been regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His son is the author Mukoma wa Ngugi. Ngugi was born in Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kiambu district, Kenya, of Kikuyu descent, and baptised James Ngugi. His family was caught up in the Mau Mau War; his half brother Mwangi was actively involved in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, and his mother was tortured at Kamriithu homeguard post. He received a B.A. in English from Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, in 1963; during his education, a play of his, THE BLACK HERMIT, was produced in Kampala in 1962. He published his first novel, WEEP NOT, CHILD, in 1964, which he wrote while attending the University of Leeds in England. It was the first novel in English to be published by an East African. His second novel, THE RIVER BETWEEN (1965), has as its background the Mau Mau rebellion, and described an unhappy romance between Christians and non-Christians. THE RIVER BETWEEN is currently on Kenya's national secondary school syllabus. His novel A Grain of Wheat (1967) marked his embrace of Fanonist Marxism. He subsequently renounced English, Christianity, and the name James Ngugi as colonialist; he changed his name back to Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and began to write in his native Gikuyu and Swahili. The uncensored political message of his 1977 play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I WILL MARRY WHEN I WANT) provoked then Vice President Daniel arap Moi to order his arrest. While detained in the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, he wrote the first modern novel in Gikuyu, Caitaani mutharaba-Ini (DEVIL ON THE CROSS), on prison-issued toilet paper. After his release, he was not reinstated to his job as professor at Nairobi University, and his family was harassed. Due to his writing about the injustices of the dictatorial government at the time, Ngugi and his family were forced to live in exile. Only after Arap Moi was voted out of office, 22 years later, was it safe for them to return. His later works include Detained, his prison diary (1981), DECOLONISING THE MIND: THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE IN AFRICAN LITERATURE (1986), an essay arguing for African writers' expression in their native languages, rather than European languages, in order to renounce lingering colonial ties and to build an authentic African literature, and MATIGARI (1987), one of his most famous works, a satire based on a Gikuyu folktale. In 1992 he became a professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University, where he held the Erich Maria Remarque Chair. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature as well as the Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine. On August 8, 2004, Ngugi returned to Kenya as part of a month-long tour of East Africa. On August 11, robbers broke into his apartment: they assaulted both the Professor and his wife, and stole money and a computer. Since then, Ngugi has returned to America, and in the summer 2006 the American publishing firm Random House published his first new novel in nearly two decades, WIZARD OF THE CROW, translated to English from Gikuyu by the author. On November 10, 2006, while in San Francisco at Hotel Vitale at the Embarcadero, Ngugi was harassed and ordered to leave the hotel by an employee. The event led to a public outcry and angered the Kenyan community in the San Francisco Bay area and abroad, prompting an apology by the hotel.
[ 0189 ] Iroh, Eddie. Forty-eight Guns for the General. Oxford. 1976. Heinemann. 0435901893. African Writers Series. 218 pages. paperback. AWS189..

DESCRIPTION - This superb action-packed thriller centres round ‘forty-eight guns', the forty-eight mercenaries who are flown in to help the Biafrans. As usual the mercenaries are a law unto themselves and their leader, Colonel Rudolf, is ruthless in exploiting the situation to his own advantage. However, when Colonel Chumah is appointed as his second-in-command. the Frenchman finds he has met his match. This intensely captivating tale Of war also shows how the mercenary involvement in Angola a repetition of much that happened in Biafra.

Eddie Albert Okechukwu Iroh (born 21 April 1945) is a Nigerian novelist, journalist and former director of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria. He is best known internationally for his trilogy of war novels: Forty-eight Guns for the General (1976), Toads of War (1979) and The Siren in the Night (1982). All were published in Heinemann's African Writers Series.
[ 0190 ] Samkange, Stanlake. Year of the Uprising. London. 1978. Heinemann. 0435901907. African Writers Series. 150 pages. paperback. AWS190..

DESCRIPTION - A messenger brings the news that Lobengula had, before his death, instructed him to bring back his sacred headring to Matabeleland so that a new king can be appointed and the Matabele can be reunited after their defeat. Their despair at the loss of their lands gives way to a sense of purpose as the individuals gather to see their chief and word goes round that the time for rebellion is near - The great uprising of the Matabele and Mashona in 1896.

Stanlake John William Thompson Samkange (1922–1988) was a Zimbabwean historiographer, educationist, journalist, author, and African nationalist. He was a member of an elite Zimbabwean nationalist political dynasty and the most prolific of the first generation of black Zimbabwean creative writers in English. Samkange was born in 1922 in Zvimba, Mashonaland West Province, in the British southern African colony of Rhodesia. He was the son of the Reverend Thompson Samkange, a Methodist minister and nationalist politician, and his wife, Grace Mano, a Methodist evangelist. The family lived in Bulawayo, Matabeleland and in Mashonaland during Samkange's childhood. He took his higher education at Adams College in Natal, South Africa and the University of Fort Hare in Alice, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa (the first institution of higher learning in Africa that was open to Africans). He graduated with honors from Fort Hare in 1948 and returned to Rhodesia to become a teacher. While pursuing his teaching career he began to make plans for Nyatsime College, a secondary school to be controlled by blacks rather than government or missionaries. The school, which opened in 1962, provided academic, technical and commercial education for Africans. He was deeply involved in the liberal politics of Southern Rhodesia during the 1950s and 1960s, but became disillusioned when he realized that the white minority in Rhodesia would reject any multiracial options for government in the colony. Samkange moved to the United States where he took further education at the Indiana University at Bloomington. After earning his Ph.D. from that institution, he worked as a journalist and then opened a public relations firm. He also taught African history at various universities in the U.S. and in 1978 he was professor of African American studies at Northeastern University,
[ 0191 ] Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Mugo, Micere Githae. The Trial of Dedan Kimathi. Oxford. 1984. Heinemann. 0435901915. African Writers Series. 85 pages. paperback. AWS191. Cover photograph by permission of Camerea Press Ltd.

DESCRIPTION - Ngugi and Micere Mugo have built a powerful and challenging play out of the circumstances surrounding the trial of one of the celebrated leaders of the Mau Mau revolution. They sing the praises of the deeds of this hero of the resistance, who refused to surrender to British imperialism. The play had an outstanding success in Nairobi before being taken to FESTAC in Lagos as an official Kenyan entry.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o (born January 5, 1938) is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gikuyu. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal, Mutiiri. In 1977, Ngugi embarked upon a novel form of theater in his native Kenya which sought to liberate the theatrical process from what he held to be ‘the general bourgeois education system', by encouraging spontaneity and audience participation in the performances. Ngugi's project sought to ‘demystify' the theatrical process, and to avoid the ‘process of alienation [which] produces a gallery of active stars and an undifferentiated mass of grateful admirers' which, according to Ngugi, encourages passivity in ‘ordinary people'. Although Ngaahika Ndeenda was a commercial success, it was shut down by the authoritarian Kenyan regime six weeks after its opening. Ngugi was subsequently imprisoned for over a year. Adopted as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, the artist was released from prison, and fled Kenya. In the United States, he taught at Yale University for some years, and has since also taught at New York University, with a dual professorship in Comparative Literature and Performance Studies, and the University of California, Irvine. Ngugi has frequently been regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His son is the author Mukoma wa Ngugi. Ngugi was born in Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kiambu district, Kenya, of Kikuyu descent, and baptised James Ngugi. His family was caught up in the Mau Mau War; his half brother Mwangi was actively involved in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, and his mother was tortured at Kamriithu homeguard post. He received a B.A. in English from Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, in 1963; during his education, a play of his, THE BLACK HERMIT, was produced in Kampala in 1962. He published his first novel, WEEP NOT, CHILD, in 1964, which he wrote while attending the University of Leeds in England. It was the first novel in English to be published by an East African. His second novel, THE RIVER BETWEEN (1965), has as its background the Mau Mau rebellion, and described an unhappy romance between Christians and non-Christians. THE RIVER BETWEEN is currently on Kenya's national secondary school syllabus. His novel A Grain of Wheat (1967) marked his embrace of Fanonist Marxism. He subsequently renounced English, Christianity, and the name James Ngugi as colonialist; he changed his name back to Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and began to write in his native Gikuyu and Swahili. The uncensored political message of his 1977 play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I WILL MARRY WHEN I WANT) provoked then Vice President Daniel arap Moi to order his arrest. While detained in the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, he wrote the first modern novel in Gikuyu, Caitaani mutharaba-Ini (DEVIL ON THE CROSS), on prison-issued toilet paper. After his release, he was not reinstated to his job as professor at Nairobi University, and his family was harassed. Due to his writing about the injustices of the dictatorial government at the time, Ngugi and his family were forced to live in exile. Only after Arap Moi was voted out of office, 22 years later, was it safe for them to return. His later works include Detained, his prison diary (1981), DECOLONISING THE MIND: THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE IN AFRICAN LITERATURE (1986), an essay arguing for African writers' expression in their native languages, rather than European languages, in order to renounce lingering colonial ties and to build an authentic African literature, and MATIGARI (1987), one of his most famous works, a satire based on a Gikuyu folktale. In 1992 he became a professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University, where he held the Erich Maria Remarque Chair. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature as well as the Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine. On August 8, 2004, Ngugi returned to Kenya as part of a month-long tour of East Africa. On August 11, robbers broke into his apartment: they assaulted both the Professor and his wife, and stole money and a computer. Since then, Ngugi has returned to America, and in the summer 2006 the American publishing firm Random House published his first new novel in nearly two decades, WIZARD OF THE CROW, translated to English from Gikuyu by the author. On November 10, 2006, while in San Francisco at Hotel Vitale at the Embarcadero, Ngugi was harassed and ordered to leave the hotel by an employee. The event led to a public outcry and angered the Kenyan community in the San Francisco Bay area and abroad, prompting an apology by the hotel. Micere Githae Mugo (born Madeleine Micere Githae in 1942) is a playwright, author, activist, instructor and poet from Kenya. She is a literary critic and professor of literature in the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University. She was forced into exile in 1982 from Kenya during the Daniel Arap Moi dictatorship for activism and moved to teach in Zimbabwe, and later the United States. Mwalimu Mugo teaches Orature, Literature, and Creative Writing. Her publications include six books, a play co-authored with Ng?g? wa Thiong'o and three monographs. She has also edited journals and the Zimbabwean school curriculum. The East African Standard listed her among the 100 most influential people in Kenya in 2002. Mugo was born in 1942, in Baricho, Kirinyaga District, Kenya. The daughter of two progressive (liberal) teachers who were politically active in Kenya's fight for independence, she received a solid primary and secondary education in Kenya, attending Alliance Girls High School. She became one of the first black students to be allowed to enroll in what had previously been a segregated academy. She later attended Makerere University (where she gained her B.A. in 1966), the University of New Brunswick (gaining her M.A. in 1973) and University of Toronto (where she gained her PhD in 1978). She took up a teaching position at the University of Nairobi in 1973, and in 1978 or 1980 became Dean of the Faculty of Arts, making her the first female faculty dean in Kenya. She taught at the University of Nairobi until 1982, and has also taught at the University of Zimbabwe. Mugo was a political activist who fought against human rights abuses in Kenya. Her political activism led to her being harassed by the police and arrested. Mugo and her family (including two young daughters) were forced to depart Kenya in 1982 after the attempted coup of the Daniel Arap Moi government after which she became a target of official government harassment. She was stripped of her Kenyan citizenship but was given Zimbabwean citizenship. She has worked, written, and taught from abroad since she left Kenya. Since 1984 she has been a citizen of Zimbabwe. Mugo is the founder and President of the Pan African Community of Central New York where she initiated volunteer programs in two prisons. She has been an official speaker for Amnesty International and a consultant for the "Africa on the Horizon" series by Blackside. Currently she is a consultant for many foundations, and on the board of many journals. She also served as chairperson of the board of directors of SARIPS, the Southern Africa Regional Institute for Policy Studies in Harare. She is currently a lecturer in Pan-African Studies at Syracuse University, where she continues her activism and writing. Mugo is a distinguished poet, and the author or editor of 15 books. Her work is generally from a traditional African, Pan-African and feminist perspective, and draws heavily upon indigenous African cultural traditions. She has also collaborated with the Zimbabwean writer Shimmer Chinodya in editing plays and stories for adolescents in Shona.
[ 0192 ] Jahadmy, Ali A. (editor). Anthology of Swahili Poetry. London. 1977. Heinemann. 0435901923. African Writers Series. Parallel Swahili text and English translation. Selected and translated by Ali A. Jahadmy. 92 pages. paperback. AWS192. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - Contents - Swahili; A Testament to my Daughter; Laugh with Happiness; Mwana Kuponas Poem; The Epic of Liyongo; The Wine song; Ask; The Apple.

[ 0193 ] p'Bitek, Okot. Hare and Hornbill. London. 1978. Heinemann. 0435901931. African Writers Series. Compiled and translated from the Acholi by Okot p'Bitek. 80 pages. paperback. AWS193. Cover design by Shyam Varma.

DESCRIPTION - Many of the tales in this collection will strike readers as familiar. Here they will find new and refreshing versions told by the witty master of the great African oral- traditions who has been so successful in conveying its richness and originality.

OKOT P'BITEK revolutionised the attitude of so many people, both within and outside Africa, to traditional oral literature with his entertaining and provocative Song of Lawino (EAPH) and the subsequent Songs of Malaya and Okol (EAPH). In The Horn of My Love (AW3 147) he has given virile renderings of the oral verse of the Acoli. His work has been the subject of a comprehensive study by G. A. Heron called The Poetry of Okot p'Bitek (Heinemann 1976).
[ 0194 ] Armah, Ayi Kwei. The Healers. London. 1979. Heinemann. 043590194x. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS194..

DESCRIPTION - A century ago, one of Africa's great empires, Ashanti, fell. The root cause of that fall, symbolic of Africa's conquest, was not merely Europe's destructive strength. It was Africa's disunity: divisions among kindred societies; divisions within each society between aristocrats, commoners, slaves. Even then some saw this disunity as our people's deadliest disease. And they sought the only possible cure: unity. These were THE HEALERS. This is their story, a novel centered on the curative, creative vision of African unity. A story of the past, it speaks calmly to the present, and looks clearly to the future. Ayi Kwei Armah was born in Tekoradi in 1939 and educated at Achimota before taking his first degree in Political Sociology at Harvard and his Masters in Fine Arts at Columbia. Between 1970 and 1976, Ayi Kwei Armah lived and worked in Dar es Saelam as a professional writer. He later taught Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Lesotho.

Ayi Kwei Armah (born 1939) is a notable Ghanaian writer. Born to Fante-speaking parents, and descending on his father's side from a royal family in the Ga nation, Armah was born in the port city of Sekondi-Takoradi in Ghana. Having attended Achimota School, he left Ghana in 1959 to attend Groton School in Groton, MA. After graduating he entered Harvard University, receiving a degree in sociology. Armah then moved to Algeria and worked as a translator for the magazine REvolution Africaine. In 1964, Armah returned to Ghana, where he was a scriptwriter for Ghana Television and later taught English at the Navrongo School. Between 1967 and 1968, he was editor of Jeune Afrique magazine in Paris. From 1968-1970, Armah studied at Columbia University, obtaining his MFA in creative writing. In the 1970s, he worked as a teacher in East Africa, at the College of National Education, Chang'ombe, Tanzania, and at the National University of Lesotho. He lived in Dakar, Senegal, in the 1980s and taught at Amherst and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In Fragments (1971), the protagonist, Baako, is a ‘been-to' - a man who has been to the United States and received his education there. Back in Ghana he is regarded with superstitious awe as a link to the Western life style. Baako's grandmother Naana, a blind-seer, stands in living contact with the ancestors. Under the strain of the unfulfilled expectations Baako finally breaks. As in his first novel, Armah contrasts the two worlds of materialism and moral values, corruption and dreams, two worlds of integrity and social pressure. Why Are We So Blest? (1972) was set largely in an American University, and focused on a student, Modin Dofu, who has dropped out of Harvard. Disillusioned Modin is torn between independence and Western values. He meets a Portuguese black African named Solo, who has already suffered a mental breakdown, and a white American girl, AimEe Reitsch. Solo, the rejected writer, keeps a diary, which is the substance of the novel. AimEe's frigidity and devotion to the revolution leads finally to destruction, when Modin is killed in the desert by O.A.S. revolutionaries. Trans Atlantic and African slave trades are the subject of Armah's Two Thousand Seasons (1973) in which a pluralized communal voice speaks through the history of Africa, its wet and dry seasons, from a period of one thousand years. Arab and European oppressors are portrayed as ‘predators,' ‘destroyers,' and ‘zombies'. The novel is written in allegorical tone, and shifts from autobiographical and realistic details to philosophical pondering, prophesying a new age. The Healers (1979) mixed fact and fiction about the fall of the celebrated Ashanti Empire. The healers in question are traditional medicine practitioners who see fragmentation as the lethal disease of Africa. Armah remained silent as a novelist for a long period until 1995 when he published Osiris Rising, depicting a radical educational reform group which reinstates ancient Egypt at the center of its curriculum. As an essayist Armah has dealt with the identity and predicament of Africa. His main concern is for the creation of a pan-African agency that will embrace all the diverse cultures and languages of the continent. Armah has called for the adoption of Kiswahili as the continental language.
[ 0195 ] Munonye, John. Bridge To a Wedding. London. 1978. Heinemann. 0435901958. African Writers Series. 228 pages. paperback. AWS195. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - The theme of the broken bridge that has to be re-made shapes this powerful novel about a feud and reconciliation set in town and country in post-independence Nigeria. Kafo had offended his cousin, Obieke, and therefore had to leave the home village for another town where he brought up his six children. His eldest daughter, Rosen is the Juliet of the story. Her school friendship with Maria brings the family in touch once more with the village, from which Kafo is excluded. Junior, who is Maria's brother, wants to marry Rose but the ancient feud must be settled before they can be united.

John Munonye (April 1929 - 10 May 1999) is an important Igbo writer and one of the most important Nigerian writers of the 20th century. He was born in Akokwa, Nigeria, and was educated at the University of Ibadan and the Institute of Education, London. He retired as the head of the Advanced Teacher Training College, Owerri. John Munonye, unlike some of his contemporaries professed a love for optimism in the face of colonial onslaught on traditional values. To him, the dialectical environment of African and western tradition can be seen in both a positive light and outcome for the common Igbo or Nigerian man or woman. An overriding theme in his novels is the focus on the common man. Munonye sometimes view the common man as being born into a position whereby he is already at a disadvantage, both historically and presently, He sees little difference to the fate of the common man who could be manipulated at the whims of elites and chiefs in both pre- and post-colonial Nigeria and during colonialism.
[ 0196 ] Johnson-Davies, Denys (editor). Egyptian Short Stories. London. 1978. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS196. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - Includes 'House of flesh' by Yusuf Idris, 'Grandad Hasan' by Yahya Taher Abdullah, 'Within the walls' by Edward El-Kharrat, 'The performer' by Ibrahim Aslan, 'The whistle' by Abdul Hakim Kassem, 'Suddenly it rained' by Baha Taher, 'The man who saw the sole of his left foot in a cracked mirror' by Lutfi Al-Khouli, 'A conversation from the third floor' by Mohamed El-Bisatie, 'Yusuf Murad Morcos' by Nabil Gorgy, 'The conjurer made off with the dish' by Naguib Mahfouz, 'The accusation' by Suleiman Fayyad, 'A place under the dome' by Abdul Rahman Fahmy, 'The country boy' by Yusuf Sibai, 'The snake' by Sonallah Ibrahim, 'The crush of life' by Yusuf Sharouni, 'A story from prison' by Yahya Hakki & 'The child and the king' by Gamil Atia Ibrahim.

Denys Johnson-Davies (also known as Abdul Wadud) was an eminent Arabic-to-English literary translator who translated, inter alia, several works by Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, Sudanese author Tayeb Salih, Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish and Syrian author Zakaria Tamer. Johnson-Davies, referred to as 'the leading Arabic-English translator of our time' by Edward Said, translated more than twenty-five volumes of short stories, novels, plays, and poetry, and was the first to translate the work of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. He was also interested in Islamic studies and was co-translator of three volumes of Prophetic Hadith. He wrote a number of children's books adapted from traditional Arabic sources, including a collection of his own short stories, Fate of a Prisoner, which was published in 1999. Born in 1922 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada of English parentage, Johnson-Davies spent his childhood in Sudan, Egypt, Uganda, and Kenya, and then was sent to England at age 12. Johnson-Davies studied Oriental languages at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and lectured on translation and English literature at several universities across the Arab World. In 2006, he published his memoirs In 2007, he was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award 'Culture Personality of the Year', valued at about $300,000. In his latter years he lived between Marrakesh and Cairo. Denys Johnson-Davies died in Egypt on 22 May 2017.
[ 0197 ] Mahfouz, Naguib. Miramar. London. 1978. Heinemann. 0435901974. African Writers Series. Edited and revised by Maged el Kommos and John Rodenbeck; introduced by John Fowles. 141 pages. paperback. AWS197. Cover design by Elizabeth Rodenbeck.

DESCRIPTION - NAGUIB MAHFOUZ, the most successful and best-known Arabic novelist, was born in the Jamaliyyah quarter of Cairo in 1911, the son of a merchant. He graduated from Cairo University in 1934 with a degree in philosophy. He has worked as a civil servant and in the administration of Cairo University and then for governmental film broadcasting organisations. He has published some twenty volumes of novels and short stories many of which have been made into films. The Trilogy written between 1945 and 1952 stands out. For seven years after Nasser's revolution he wrote nothing, but since that time has published a dozen other books including Midaq Alley. John Fowles says in his introduction to this classic story of the interlocking lives of people in a hotel in Alexandria: 'Open cities are the mothers of open societies, and their existence is especially essential to literature - which is why, I suppose, we cherish our illusions about them, and forgive them so many of their sins. In the case of Alexandria, that prototype cosmopolis and melter of antitheses, we can hardly be blamed. Antony and Cleopatra, Cavafy, E. M. Forster, Lawrence Durrell.. there is a formidably distinguished list of foreign celebrants and from them we have taken an indelible image of the place. It is languorous, subtle, perverse, eternally fin de siEcle; failure haunts it, yet a failure of such richness that it is a kind of victory. What we have conspicuously lacked, in this comfortable pigeon-holing, is a view from the inside, from modern Egypt herself. The one we are now granted may come as something of a shock to those who still see Alexandria through European eyes.'

NAGUIB MAHFOUZ (1911-2006) was born in the crowded Cairo district of Gamaliya. He graduated in philosophy from King Fuad University in 1934, and went on to write nearly forty novel-length works, plus hundreds of short stories and numerous screenplays. He was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1988.
[ 0198 ] Cabral, Amilcar. Unity and Struggle: speeches and writings. London. 1979. Heinemann. 0435901982. African Writers Series. Texts selected by the PAIGC; translated from Portuguese by Michael Wolfers. paperback. AWS198..

DESCRIPTION - Amlcar Cabral, born in 1921 in Guinea-Bissau, had his early education in Guinea and did his university studies in Portugal. Cabral found himself active in the nationalist struggle, a political context that enabled him to reflect on several aspects of the armed struggle. He developed his understanding and theories of the national liberation struggle in the political context of militant nationalism; he fought as he wrote incisively about that struggle, and passionately struggled as he wrote. This dialectical experience enriched his theoretical understanding of the aims, goals, strategies and ideologies that informed the nature of political involvement in the movement for national liberation.

Amílcar Lopes da Costa Cabral (12 September 1924 - 20 January 1973) was a Guinea-Bissauan and Cape Verdean agricultural engineer, writer, and a nationalist thinker and political leader. He was also one of Africa's foremost anti-colonial leaders. Also known by his nom de guerre Abel Djassi, Cabral led the nationalist movement of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde Islands and the ensuing war of independence in Guinea-Bissau. He was assassinated on 20 January 1973, about eight months before Guinea-Bissau's unilateral declaration of independence. He was deeply influenced by Marxism, and became an inspiration to revolutionary socialists and national liberatonalists world-wide.
[ 0199 ] Sassine, Williams. Wirriyamu. London. 1980. Heinemann. 0435901990. African Writers Series. Translated from the French by John Reed and Clive Wake. paperback. AWS199..

DESCRIPTION - In Williams Sassine’s Wirriyamu (1976), a violent and violated rural landscape becomes emblematic of a specific traumatic event occurring within the time frame of the novel and of contemporary political reality.

Williams Sassine (1944, Kankan, Guinea - February 9, 1997, Conakry, Guinea) was a Guinean novelist who wrote in French. His father was Lebanese Christian and his mother was a Guinean of Muslim heritage. Sassine was an expatriate African writer in France after leaving Guinea when it received independence under SEkou TourE. As a novelist he wrote of marginalized characters, but he became more optimistic on TourE's death. His 1979 novel Le jeune homme de sable has been regarded as among the best 20th-century African novels. Few of his works have been translated into English, but Wirriyamu was published in an English translation in 1980. As an editor he remained critical of TourE as chief editor for the satirical paper Le Lynx. Some of Sassine's works have been translated into English, Spanish and Russian.
[ 0200 ] Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Devil On the Cross. London. 1982. Heinemann. 0435902008. African Writers Series. 254 pages. paperback. AWS200. Cover photograph by Chris Yates.

DESCRIPTION - Despair drives Wariinga to leave Nairobi and to seek refuge in her home town of Ilmorog. She travels by matatu taxi with an invitation in her hand - an invitation to a feast of thieves organized by the Devil. These thieves, who used to be local businessmen and capitalists, vie with one another to boast about how they became rich. This celebration of corruption in all its forms forces Wariinga to acknowledge that her life has been nothing more than passive acceptance of corruption itself. In DEVIL ON THE CROSS, the ancient rhythms of traditional story-telling are used in counterpoint to written styles. Ngugi provokes with the force of Brecht, Bunyan, Swift, and Beckett. It went into three printings on its original Gikuyu publication.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o (born January 5, 1938) is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gikuyu. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal, Mutiiri. In 1977, Ngugi embarked upon a novel form of theater in his native Kenya which sought to liberate the theatrical process from what he held to be ‘the general bourgeois education system', by encouraging spontaneity and audience participation in the performances. Ngugi's project sought to ‘demystify' the theatrical process, and to avoid the ‘process of alienation [which] produces a gallery of active stars and an undifferentiated mass of grateful admirers' which, according to Ngugi, encourages passivity in ‘ordinary people'. Although Ngaahika Ndeenda was a commercial success, it was shut down by the authoritarian Kenyan regime six weeks after its opening. Ngugi was subsequently imprisoned for over a year. Adopted as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, the artist was released from prison, and fled Kenya. In the United States, he taught at Yale University for some years, and has since also taught at New York University, with a dual professorship in Comparative Literature and Performance Studies, and the University of California, Irvine. Ngugi has frequently been regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His son is the author Mukoma wa Ngugi. Ngugi was born in Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kiambu district, Kenya, of Kikuyu descent, and baptised James Ngugi. His family was caught up in the Mau Mau War; his half brother Mwangi was actively involved in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, and his mother was tortured at Kamriithu homeguard post. He received a B.A. in English from Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, in 1963; during his education, a play of his, THE BLACK HERMIT, was produced in Kampala in 1962. He published his first novel, WEEP NOT, CHILD, in 1964, which he wrote while attending the University of Leeds in England. It was the first novel in English to be published by an East African. His second novel, THE RIVER BETWEEN (1965), has as its background the Mau Mau rebellion, and described an unhappy romance between Christians and non-Christians. THE RIVER BETWEEN is currently on Kenya's national secondary school syllabus. His novel A Grain of Wheat (1967) marked his embrace of Fanonist Marxism. He subsequently renounced English, Christianity, and the name James Ngugi as colonialist; he changed his name back to Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and began to write in his native Gikuyu and Swahili. The uncensored political message of his 1977 play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I WILL MARRY WHEN I WANT) provoked then Vice President Daniel arap Moi to order his arrest. While detained in the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, he wrote the first modern novel in Gikuyu, Caitaani mutharaba-Ini (DEVIL ON THE CROSS), on prison-issued toilet paper. After his release, he was not reinstated to his job as professor at Nairobi University, and his family was harassed. Due to his writing about the injustices of the dictatorial government at the time, Ngugi and his family were forced to live in exile. Only after Arap Moi was voted out of office, 22 years later, was it safe for them to return. His later works include Detained, his prison diary (1981), DECOLONISING THE MIND: THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE IN AFRICAN LITERATURE (1986), an essay arguing for African writers' expression in their native languages, rather than European languages, in order to renounce lingering colonial ties and to build an authentic African literature, and MATIGARI (1987), one of his most famous works, a satire based on a Gikuyu folktale. In 1992 he became a professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University, where he held the Erich Maria Remarque Chair. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature as well as the Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine. On August 8, 2004, Ngugi returned to Kenya as part of a month-long tour of East Africa. On August 11, robbers broke into his apartment: they assaulted both the Professor and his wife, and stole money and a computer. Since then, Ngugi has returned to America, and in the summer 2006 the American publishing firm Random House published his first new novel in nearly two decades, WIZARD OF THE CROW, translated to English from Gikuyu by the author. On November 10, 2006, while in San Francisco at Hotel Vitale at the Embarcadero, Ngugi was harassed and ordered to leave the hotel by an employee. The event led to a public outcry and angered the Kenyan community in the San Francisco Bay area and abroad, prompting an apology by the hotel.
[ 0201 ] Plaatje, Sol T. Mhudi. London/Washington D.C. 1978. Heinemann/Three Continents Press. 0894100319. Edited by Stephen Gray. Introduction by Tim Couzens. Woodcuts by Cecil Skotnes. African Writers Series. 188 pages. paperback. AWS201. Cover Photograph by Lilli Daschner.

DESCRIPTION - Mhudi, a woman of endurance and courage, saves her future husband Ra-Thaga at a time when Mzilikazi's Matabele soldiers are raiding the Barolong in Botswana. This is the first publication of the complete original text of this classic which is the first novel in English by a black South African. A fascinating introduction by Tim Couzens puts this book in the context of writing throughout Africa.‘When I first read this beautiful book, I was absolutely in despair. I needed to copy the whole book out by hand so as to keep it with me. It is more than a classic; there is just no book on earth like it. All the stature and grandeur of the writer are in it.'- Bessie Head. ‘Though set a century and a half ago, and first written some sixty years ago, MHUDI is all about the South Africa of today.' Peter Lehola, B.B.C. ‘A first-class adventure story and a fascinating social document. .'- Daily Telegraph, London. ‘I read it again with wonder, and enjoyed the insightful introductory essay.' - Nadine Gordimer. ‘Sol Plaatje, by any standard, was a giant in his time. .'- Mothobi Mutloase, The World, Johannesburg.

SOL T. PLAATJE, (October 9, 1876, Boshof, Free State, South Africa - June 19, 1932, Soweto, South Africa) born in 1876, was both writer and politician. He was a founder of the South African Native National Congress and wrote much including NATIVE LIFE IN SOUTH AFRICA, a slashing attack on the Natives Land Act. His Boer War Diary about the siege of Mafeking has been recently published. He spent some time in the United States, Canada and Britain making contact with black leaders. He died in 1932.
[ 0202 ] Vieira, Jose Luandino. The Real Life of Domingos Xavier. London. 1978. Heinemann. 0435902024. African Writers Series. 1st English Translation Of This Angolan Novel. Translated from the Portuguese by Michael Wolfers. 84 pages. paperback. AWS202. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - JOSE LUAN DINO VIEIRA was born in 1935 and began working at the age of fifteen. He was arrested for the first time in 1959 by the colonial authorities and in 1960 published his first novel in Portuguese. Vieira was imprisoned for his political activities from 1961 to 1972. He was then conditionally released and was in Lisbon for the revolution in April 1974. On his return to Angola he became director of programmes for the People's Television of Angola and helped found the Union of Angolan Authors. He is a militant member of the MPLA. This leading Angolan writer has written several other short stories and novels. One of his collections of short stories, Luuanda, won him a major fiction prize awarded by the Portuguese Society of Authors and caused a literary storm which culminated in the Society headquarters being closed after being attacked by supporters of the reactionary regime. 'He never harmed anyone, only wanted the good of his people and of his land.. our brother carried himself like a man, he did not tell the secrets of his people, he did not sell himself. We are not going to weep any more for his death because, Domingos Antonio Xavier, you begin today your real life in the hearts of the Angolan people. This epitaph in The Real Life of Domingos Xavier stands today for many who died in the struggle for Angolan independence which came only in 1975. The story is a simple narrative of a worker and his family caught up in the meshes of twentieth-century politics. The hero is a young tractor driver with politically progressive sympathies, who is arrested, tortured and murdered by the police of the Portuguese colonial repression. This is the first English translation of a complete work by Vieira. It is in fact his second book, written in 1961 in Portuguese, but not available until it was published in a French translation in 1971. It was finally legally published in Portuguese in 1974.

Jose Luandino Vieira (born Jose Vieira Mateus da Graça on May 4, 1935) is an Angolan writer of short fiction and novels. Vieira was born in Lagoa de Furadouro, OurEm, Portugal and was Portuguese by birth and ethnicity, but his parents immigrated to Angola in 1938 and he grew up immersed in the African quarters (musseques) of Luanda. He wrote in the language unique to the musseque, a fusion of Kimbundu and Portuguese. He left school at the age of fifteen and worked as a mechanic. He was devoted to Angolan independence, resulting in his arrest in 1961 after an interview with the BBC in which he disclosed secret lists of deserters from the Portuguese army fighting in Africa. He would remain in jail for eleven years. Vieira's works often followed the structure of the African oral narrative and dealt with the harsh realities of Portuguese rule in Angola. His best-known work was his early short story collection, Luuanda (1963), which received a Portuguese writers' literary award in 1965, though it was banned by the Portuguese government until 1974 due to its examination of the oppressiveness of the colonial administration in Angola. His novella A vida verdadeira de Domingos Xavier (The Real Life of Domingos Xavier; 1974) portrayed both the cruelty of the Portuguese administration and the courage of ordinary Angolans during the colonial period. Other works include Velhas estorias (‘Old Stories'; 1974), Nos os do Makulusu (‘Our Gang from Makulusu'; 1974), Vidas novas (‘New Lives'; 1975), and João Vêncio: os seus amores (‘João Vêncio: Regarding His Loves'; 1979). Vieira turned down the 100,000 Euros Camões Literary Prize awarded to him in May 2006, citing personal reasons. Vieira also served as secretary-general of the Union of Angolan writers, and in that capacity helped get the works of other Angolan authors and poets published.
[ 0203 ] Njau, Rebeka. Ripples in the Pool. London. 1978. Heinemann. 0435902032. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS203..

DESCRIPTION - RIPPLES IN THE POOL is the first novel of an exceptionally gifted and articulate writer. Selina, the heroine, whose early upbringing is ominously clouded in mystery, becomes disillusioned with the artificial glitter and superficiality of the sick urban society in which she has-spent the prime of her life. She plans to resolve her alienation by reassimilating into the rural background of her childhood. But her attempt to find peace of mind in a new identity is foredoomed. She is fatally flawed and her machinations end in tragedy for herself and many of those with whom her life has become inextricably involved. But the unusual, exciting and readable plot is only part of the literary contribution of this book. The characters, who span the whole tapestry of rural life in Africa. are portrayed with a depth and spicy richness that illuminates with shocking clarity aspects of rural society heretofore largely unexplored by African writers. Brooding over the whole story is the pervasive symbolism of the pool and the strange old man who guards not only, one feels, its sombre secrets but also the integrity of the land and its people. Defiled by Selina and the amoral modernity that she had embraced, ultimately the pool apparently triumphs in her personal annihilation and the total rejection of all she stands for. Or does it?

Rebeka Njau (born 15 December 1932) is a Kenyan educator, writer and textile artist. She also writes under the name Marina Gashe. Alex Wanjala has said: 'Like Grace Ogot, Rebeka Njau is a very important writer in Kenya. She addresses issues that affect women directly and then demonstrates how women's issues are symptomatic of a malaise in the larger Kenyan society.' According to John Mugubi of Kenyatta University, 'The uniqueness and power of Rebeka's style cannot be understated. She has a penchant for subversion of literary conventions in order to drive points home.'
[ 0204 ] Mulaisho, Dominic. The Smoke That Thunders. London. 1979. Heinemann. 0435902040. African Writers Series. 277 pages. paperback. AWS204. Cover photographs by George Hallett and Andrew Barrett.

DESCRIPTION - The extremists led by Sir Ray Norris are fighting to hang on to power. The Governor, Sir Elwyn Baker, a Labour Party appointee, is concentrating on how to keep order in the period before the African Nationalists Kawala and Katenga take over Kandaha, a British colony in central Africa which is between Rhodesia and Zambia and near Musi-O-Tunya, the Victoria Falls. Dominic Mulaisho has had a long career in the public service and his experience gives reality to the fictional struggle in this novel.

DOMINIC MULAISHO published his first novel The Tongue of the Dumb (AWS 98) in 1971. In both his novels he has succeeded in portraying the realities of power in the lives of individual characters. He was born in 1933 in Feira, Zambia. He was educated at Katondwe Mission, Canisius College, Chalimbana and the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. From 1965 he was the Permanent Secretary in the Office of the President, Ministry of Education and other Ministries. He then moved to be Chairman of the Mining Industry, then General Manager of the National Agricultural Marketing Board and then Managing Director of Indeco. He is now Economics Adviser to President Kaunda in State House.
[ 0205 ] Bebey, Francis. The Ashanti Doll. London. 1978. Heinemann. 0435902059. African Writers Series. Translated from the French by Joyce A. Hutchinson. paperback. AWS205..

DESCRIPTION - It is in Accra's sprawling marketplace that the action of Francis Bebey's novel unfolds. It vividly portrays the clash between the new educated elite and the traditional life of the marketplace, typified by Edna (the beautiful Ashanti Doll) and her iron-willed grandmother (a leader of the fearsome marketwomen of Accra). The stormy love affair between Edna and Spio, a handsome government worker, develops in amusing scenes and flashbacks to Edna's girlhood. For those who think African fiction tends to be angry or concerned largely with village life and the social problems of emerging nations, Bebey's novel will be a revelation. Edna's first experience with sex, a dance-hall scuffle, the marketwomen's demonstration, even Grandmother's attempts to discourage Spio, add a touch of Gallic wit and sophistication to this authentic portrait of contemporary Ghanaian life.

Francis Bebey (15 July 1929 in Douala, Cameroon - 28 May 2001 in Paris, France) was a Cameroonian artist, musician, and writer. Bebey attended the Sorbonne, and was further educated in the United States. In 1957, Bebey moved to Ghana at the invitation of Kwame Nkrumah, and took a job as a broadcaster. In the early 1960s, Bebey moved to France and started work in the arts, establishing himself as a musician, sculptor, and writer. His most popular novel was Agatha Moudio's Son. He also worked as a consultant for UNESCO. Bebey released his first album in 1969. His music was primarily guitar-based, although he integrated traditional African instruments as well. His style was groundbreaking, merging Cameroonian makossa with classical guitar, jazz, and pop in a mix that could be intellectual, humorous, or serious. He sang in Duala, English, and French. Bebey helped launch the career of Manu Dibango. Bebey released more than 20 albums over his career. John Williams' piece 'Hello Francis' is written as a tribute to Bebey.
[ 0206 ] Aniebo, I. N. C. The Journey Within. London. 1978. Heinemann. 0435902067. African Writers Series. 242 pages. paperback. AWS206. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - In this novel of singular thoughtfulness l. N. C. Aniebo chronicles the progress of two Igbo marriages, one traditional and the other Christian. We are taken back to Port Harcourt in 1939 where Nelson is a fitter in an engine-shed. His marriage to Ejiaka was originally close and warm but, following the birth of their son Okechukwu, it turns sour as he takes up with a local barkeeper. On the other hand, the marriage of Janet and Christian, the shopkeeper, was hardly ever a marriage at all. The author's vivid portrayal of their parallel year's journey through life shows an almost inevitable progress from misfortune to disaster and beyond. First Christian is beaten up by thugs hired by a rich man with whose wife he has started having an affair, and then there is the almost casual accident of Janet's rape by soldiers as she travels back on a train after visiting her parents in Zaria, where she consulted a dibia about her inability to conceive again And finally, there is her welcome legacy from that rape.

Ifeanyichukwu Ndubuisi Chikezie Aniebo, commonly known as I. N. C. Aniebo (born 31 March 1939), is a Nigerian novelist and short story writer, who has been called ‘the master craftsman of the Nigerian short story'. Aniebo trained as an artillery officer; his first stories were written under a pseudonym to avoid censorship. He fought for Biafra in the Nigerian Civil War, and The Anonymity of Sacrifice (1974) gives a sense of the horrors and personal conflicts of that war. Aniebo subsequently studied at the University of California, Los Angeles, before returning to Nigeria in 1979 to teach Creative Writing and Literature at the English Department of the University of Port Harcourt.
[ 0207 ] Marechera, Dambudzo. The House of Hunger. London. 1978. Heinemann. 0435902075. African Writers Series. 154 pages. paperback. AWS207..

DESCRIPTION - DAMBUDZO MARECHERA grew up in Zimbabwe, was thrown out of the University of Rhodesia and was given a scholarship to New College, Oxford. Home and country are both the 'house of hunger', the place of madness and violence and despair. The boy is formed in a home where tenderness has long given way to the tactics of survival. His father is drunken, his mother constantly assaulted but enduring, his brother brutalised so that he behaves with his tender young woman in a precise repetition of the model he knows. School is brutalising too; he remembers the beating of the weakest yet most obstinate of small boys when he sees his picture in the press, as a guerrilla and a corpse. Sex is an instrument of domination, and a function of white domination. Township life is a prison, except to the whore, the policy spy and the traitor. The hero goes to university, engages in political conflict, has an affair with a crippled white girl - each of them caught in the prison of race and skin colour. Both are beaten badly by white thugs, and the girl never recovers. His vulnerability is kept alive only by a nervous breakdown.

Dambudzo Marechera (born Charles William Dambudzo Marechera, June 4, 1952, Rusape, Southern Rhodesia - August 18, 1987, Harare) was a Zimbabwean novelist and poet.
[ 0208 ] Brutus, Dennis. Stubborn Hope: Selected Poems of South Africa & a Wider World. London. 1978. Heinemann. 0435902083. Including CHINA POEMS. African Writers Series. 97 pages. paperback. AWS208. Cover design by Michael Harvey.

DESCRIPTION - The poems of Dennis Brutus have appeared in many journals, and miscellaneous publications. His volumes of collected verse have been Sirens Knuckles Boots (1963), Letters to Martha and other poems from a South Africa Prison (1968), Poems from Algiers (1970), A Simple Lust (1972), China Poems (1975), and Strains (1975). The present collection is his first major one since 1972. Since leaving the smaller and larger prisons of stone and apartheid in the late 1960's, Brutus has become a widely travelled and feted poet. Though Africa and particularly his homeland are always in his thoughts, his work, often composed on airplanes or in guest rooms and hotels, speak of Peking, London, Cairo, Algiers, New York, and Austin, Texas, among others. He is still resolute, still bearded and passionate, renewing his vision, holding onto physical beauty, insisting on the role of artist as revolutionary-and conservative-breaking away from any possible snare of tyranny and proclaiming the old values of love and patriotism and friendship, especially to one's fellow exiles and the ever lengthening list of martyrs of APARTHEID and racism anywhere.

Dennis Vincent Brutus (28 November 1924 - 26 December 2009) was a South African activist, educator, journalist and poet best known for his campaign to have apartheid South Africa banned from the Olympic Games.
[ 0209 ] Idris, Yusuf. The Cheapest Nights: Short Stories. London. 1978. Heinemann. 0435902091. African Writers Series. Translated from the Arabic by Wadida Wassef. 196 pages. paperback. AWS209. Cover photograph by Ahmed Mustapha. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - 'Yusuf Idris, in my opinion, is the renovator and genius of the short story.' Tewfik al Hakim. Yusuf Idris' stories are powerful and immediate reflections of the experiences of his own rebellious life. His continuing contact with the struggling poor enables him to portray characters such as the peasant Abdul Kerim who lusts after wedding feasts and dancing girls but returns to 'The Cheapest Nights', fathering more children on his already overburdened wife. The hero's restless pursuit of women in 'The Dregs of the City' probably reflects his own precocious sexual exploits. The book is full of characters such as the red-haired, half-English, half-Egyptian temptress who gives herself only to foreigners in 'Did You Have to Turn On the Light, Li-Li ?'

YUSUF IDRIS (May 19, 1927, Sharqia Governorate, Egypt - August 1, 1991, London, United Kingdom) was born in 1927 in Egypt. While a medical student his work against Farouk's regime and the British led to his imprisonment and suspension from college. After graduation he worked at Kasr el Eini, the largest government hospital. He supported Nasser's rise to power but became disillusioned in 1954 at the time when his first collection of stories The Cheapest Nights was published. He became a Health Inspector in 1956 but in 1960 gave up medicine and became editor of the Cairo newspaper Al Gornhoureya. Between 1956 and 1960 he travelled extensively in the Arab world and in 1961 went to join the freedom fighters in the Algerian mountains; he was decorated by the new government after the departure of the French. In 1963 he was awarded the Egyptian Order of the Republic. Although famous for his writing, success and recognition did not divert him from political issues, and in 1969 his play The Schemers was censored because of his criticism of Nasser's policies. Eventually, his opposition led him to retire from public view. Only after the October war of 1973 was he appointed one of the literary editors of Al Ahram, the great Cairo newspaper.
[ 0210 ] Amadi, Elechi. The Slave. London. 1978. Heinemann. 0435902105. African Writers Series. 151 pages. paperback. AWS210..

DESCRIPTION - One of the author's trilogy of Nigerian novels dealing with the conflicts of modernity and ancestral Africa.

Elechi Amadi (born 12 May 1934) is a Nigerian author of plays and novels that are generally about African village life, customs, beliefs and religious practices, as they were before contact with the Western world. Amadi is best regarded for his 1966 first novel, The Concubine, which has been called ‘an outstanding work of pure fiction'. Born in 1934, in Aluu in the Ikwerre local government area of Rivers State, Nigeria, Elechi Amadi attended Government College, Umuahia (1948-1952), Survey School, Oyo (1953-1954), and the University of Ibadan (1955-1959), where he obtained a degree in Physics and Mathematics. He worked for a time as a land surveyor and later was a teacher at several schools, including the Nigerian Military School, Zaria (1963-1966). Amadi did military service in the Nigerian army and was on the Nigerian side during the Nigeria-Biafra War, retiring in the rank of Captain. After the war Amadi left the army to work for the Rivers State government. Positions he held include Permanent Secretary (1973-1983), Commissioner for Education (1987-1988) and Commissioner for Lands and Housing (1989-1990). He has been writer-in-residence and lecturer at Rivers State College of Education, where he has also been Dean of Arts, head of the Literature Department and Director of General Studies. On 13 May 1989 a symposium was held at the University of Port Harcourt to celebrate Amadi's 55th birthday. In May 2004, a conference was organized by the Association of Nigerian Authors, Rivers State Branch, to mark Elechi Amadi's 70th birthday. On 5 January 2009 Amadi was kidnapped at his home in Aluu town, Port Harcourt, by unknown gunmen. He was released 23 hours later, on the evening of 6 January. Elechi Amadi has said that his first publication was in 1957, a poem entitled ‘Penitence' in a University of Ibadan campus magazine called The Horn, edited by John Pepper Clark. Amadi's first novel, The Concubine, was published in London in 1966 and was hailed as a ‘most accomplished first performance'. Alastair Niven in his critical study of the novel wrote: ‘Rooted firmly among the hunting and fishing villages of the Niger delta, The Concubine nevertheless possesses the timelessness and universality of a major novel.' The Concubine was made into a film, written by Elechi Amadi and directed by accomplished Nollywood film director Andy Amenechi, which premiered in Abuja in March 2007. The setting of Amachi's second novel, The Great Ponds, published in 1969, is pre-colonial Eastern Nigeria, and is about the battle between two village communities over possession of a pond. In 1973 Amadi autobiographical non-fiction, Sunset in Biafra, was published. It records his personal experiences in the Nigeria-Biafra war, and according to Niven ‘is written in a compelling narrative form as though it were a novel'.
[ 0211 ] Kunene, Mazisi. Emperor Shaka the Great: A Zulu Epic. Oxford. 1979. Heinemann. 0435902113. African Writers Series. Translated from the Zulu by the author. 438 pages. paperback. AWS211. Cover design by Ingrid Crewdson. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - The great leader Shaka has occupied in the minds of Africans the place that Caesar occupies in the minds of Europeans. The Zulus have found their singer in the poet Mazisi Kunene who has written, in Zulu, this epic praise-song, a massive rendering of the traditional oral history of his people. It has yet to be published in its original language because their land is still occupied. In the meantime Mazisi Kunene has rendered this magnificent story in English so that people across the world can hear what the Zulus themselves have to say about their empire an its conquests. A film based on Mazisi Kunene's work is being made. Cover design by Ingrid Crewdson. Print from Nathaniel Isaac's Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa, 1836.

MAZISI KUNENE is the author of Zulu Poems (Andre Deutsch) arid his dissertation on Zulu literature is quoted. In 1958 he went as Head of the Department of African Studies to the University College at Roma, in what is now Lesotho. He was a founder member of the Anti: Apartheid Movement in Britain and became Director of Education for the South African United Front. In 1962 he became chief Representative for the African National Congress in Europe and USA, changing to Director of Finance in 1972. He has lectured wide!} and has been Visiting Professor in African Literature at Stanford. He is Associate Professor in African Literature and Languages at the University of California, Los Angeles. His work on the Zulu epic goes on and he has also published Anthem of the Decades (AWS 234).
[ 0212 ] La Guma, Alex. Time of the Butcherbird. London. 1979. Heinemann. 0435902121. African Writers Series. 119 pages. paperback. AWS212. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - Hlangeni's people must be moved to a Bantustan from their land near an arid town in the South African Karoo for the benefit of mining interests. The grim Shilling Murile has returned from jail and is determined to take his vengeance on Hannes Meulen, a prosperous Boer farmer and prospective parliamentary candidate. Hlangeni's people are led in their resistance by the lioness Mma-Tau. As the heat-wave goes on the good folk gather to pray for deliverance from the drought. People such as the salesman Edgar Stopes and his self-seeking wife are cut off in their own small worlds of hopes and memories. They are hardly aware of the heat building up among the black people and how the time of the butcherbird is approaching. Alex la Guma's latest novel will live up to the highest expectations of his many readers. No other South African writer has given such a rounded picture of all the people in a small community inexorably moving towards tragedy.

ALEX LA GUMA was born in Cape Town in 1925 and completed his formal education at the Trafalgar High School and Cape Technical College. Thereafter he worked as a clerk, factory hand, book-keeper and journalist. Interested in South African politics since an early age, he was arrested for treason with 155 others in 1956 and acquitted in 1960. During the state of emergency following the Sharpeville massacre he was detained for five months. In 1962 he was placed under house arrest for 24 hours a day for five years and was also detained, together with his wife, under the 90-day regulations, and again under the 180-day regulations. He left South Africa as a refugee in September 1966 and now lives with his family in exile in London. He has written many short stories which have appeared in Africa, Europe and the USA.
[ 0213 ] Iroh, Eddie. Toads of War. London. 1979. Heinemann. 043590213x. African Writers Series. 144 pages. paperback. AWS213. Cover photograph by Bill Heyes. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - The focus of this second book in a trilogy on the Biafran war, switches from the battlefront, where ill-clad and half-fed conscripts are being shot and maimed, to Owerri town where a bizarre elite ranging from bureaucrats to clergymen are growing fat on blood money and the black market in the final days of Biafra. At work Kalu Udim, who lost a hand at the front, comes up against his civil servant boss, Chima Duke, who makes sure that in-coming relief includes perfumes and dresses for Kechi Ugboma, a former air hostess. Kechi falls in love with Kalu, but she cannot afford to leave Chima. This dramatic novel is brought to a climax when, because it is a time of war, Kalu tries to resolve affairs with an automatic pistol. EDDIE IROH has recently made a mark with his action-packed thriller of the war in Biafra called Forty-eight Guns for The Genera/ (AWS 189). During the war he was desk editor for the Biafran War Information Bureau. Afterwards he worked for Reuters, the News agency, and for Evans, the publishers. He now heads the Features and Documentary Department of Nigerian Television, Enugu. This is part of a third book completing a trilogy on the war.

EDDIE IROH, author of Forty-eight Guns for the General (AWS 189) and Toads of War (AWS 213), now completes his action-packed trilogy of the war in Biafra. During the war he was desk editor for the Biafran War Information Bureau. Afterwards he worked for Reuters, the news agency, for Evans, the publishers, and then for the Features and Documentary Department of Nigerian Television, Enugu. Since 1979 he has been the Head and Controller of the Documentary Department, Nigerian Television Authority, Lagos, where he is currently writing and directing a documentary series on the origin and development of the Nigerian peoples called ‘Portrait of a Culture'.
[ 0214 ] Beti, Mongo. Remember Ruben. London. 1980. Heinemann. 0435902149. Paperback Original. African Writers Series. Translated from the French by Gerald Moore. 252 pages. paperback. AWS214. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - Mor-Zamba is taken off to forced labour for the war effort of France in one of its colonies. His friend Abena tries to find him but he too vanishes. After the war Mor-Zamba becomes involved in political activity, is arrested, tortured and goes into hiding. This personal story is set against a documentary portrayal of the political evolution of the colony. The shadowy figure of the trade union leader, Ruben, hovers in the background. His party is banned and he changes to guerrilla war. On his death a new leader, Ouragan-Viet, takes over and his followers always greet one another in pidgin with the words 'Remember Ruben'.

Alexandre Biyidi Awala (30 June 1932 - 8 October 2001), known as Mongo Beti, was a Cameroonian writer. Though he lived in exile for many decades, Beti's life reveals an unflagging commitment to improvement of his home country. As one critic wrote after his death, ‘The militant path of this essayist, chronicler and novelist has been governed by one obsession: the quest for the dignity of African people.'The son of Oscar Awala and REgine Alomo, Alexandre was born in 1932 at AkomEtan, a small village 10 km from Mbalmayo, itself 45 km away from YaoundE, capital of Cameroon. (The village's name comes from Akom ‘rock' and Etam ‘source': in old maps of the region, the name is written in two parts). From an early age, Beti was influenced by the currents of rebellion sweeping Africa in the wake of World War II. His father drowned when Beti was seven, and he was raised by his mother and extended family. Beti recalls arguing with his mother about religion and colonialism; he also recalls early exposure to the opinions and analysis of independence leader Ruben Um Nyobe, both in the villages and at Nyobe's private residence. He carried these views into the classroom, and was eventually expelled from the missionary school in Mbalmayo for his outspokenness. In 1945 he entered the lycEe Leclerc in YaoundE. Graduating in 1951, he came to France to continue his higher education in literature, first at Aix-en-Provence, then at the Sorbonne in Paris. By the early 1950s, Beti had turned to writing as a vehicle of protest. He wrote regularly for the journal PrEsence Africaine; among his pieces was a review of Camara Laye's Black Child that criticized Laye for what Beti saw as pandering to European tastes. He began his career in fiction with the short story Sans haine et sans amour (‘Without hatred or love'), published in the periodical PrEsence Africaine, edited by Alioune Diop, in 1953. Beti's first novel Ville cruelle (‘Cruel City'), under the pseudonym Eza Boto, followed in 1954, published in several editions of PrEsence Africaine. It was, however, in 1956 that he gained a widespread reputation; the publication of the novel Le pauvre Christ de Bomba (‘The poor Christ of Bomba') created a scandal because of its satirical and biting description of the missionary and colonial world. Under pressure from the religious hierarchy, the colonial administrator in Cameroon banned the novel in the colony. This was followed by Mission terminEe, 1957 (winner of the Prix Sainte Beuve 1958), and Le Roi miraculE, 1958. He also worked during this time for the review Preuves, for which he reported from Africa. He worked also as a substitute teacher at the lycEe of Rambouillet. In 1959, he was named certified professor at the lycEe Henri Avril in Lamballe. He took the AgrEgation de Lettres classiques in 1966 and taught at the LycEe Pierre Corneille in Rouen. from this date until 1994. Following Nyobe's assassination by French forces in 1958, however, Beti fell silent as a writer for more than a decade, remaining in exile from his homeland. After his death,Odile Tobner noted that exile was not easy on Beti; he remained tortured by his concern for his embattled country.In 1972 he re-entered the world of literature with a bang. His book Main basse sur le Cameroun, autopsie d'une dEcolonisation ('Cruel hand on Cameroon, autopsy of a decolonization') was censored upon its publication by the French Ministry of the Interior Raymond Marcellin on the request, brought forward by Jacques Foccart, of the Cameroon government, represented in Paris by the ambassador Ferdinand Oyono. The essay, a critical history of recent Cameroon, asserted that Cameroon and other colonies remained under French control in all but name, and that the post-independence political elites had actively fostered this continued dependence. Beti was inspired to write in part by the execution of Ernest Ouandie by the government of Cameroon. In 1974 he published PerpEtue and Remember Ruben; the latter was the first in a trilogy exploring the life and impact of Nyobe. After a long judicial action, Mongo Beti and his editor Francois MaspEro finally obtained, in 1976, the cancellation of the ban on the publication of Main basse. Beti returned to critical and political writing at the same time that he returned to fiction. In 1978 he and his wife Odile Tobner launched the bimonthly review Peuples Noirs. Peuples africains ('Black People. African People'), which was published until 1991. This review chronicled and denounced tirelessly the evils brought to Africa by neo-colonial regimes. During this period were published the novels La ruine presque cocasse d'un polichinelle (1979), Les deux mères de Guillaume Ismaël Dzewatama futur camionneur (1983), La revanche de Guillaume Ismaël Dzewatama (1984), also Lettre ouverte aux Camerounais ou la deuxième mort de Ruben Um NyobE (1984) and Dictionnaire de la negritude (1989, with Odile Tobner). Frustrated by what he saw as the failure of post-independence governments to bring genuine freedom to Africa, Beti adopted a more radical perspective in these works. In exile, Beti remained vitally connected to the struggle in Cameroon. Throughout the seventies and eighties, acquaintance with Beti or his work could spell trouble for a citizen of Cameroon; on numerous occasions, Beti used his connections in France to rescue one of his young readers, many of whom knew him from his periodical and his polemical essays. Ambroise Kom, arrested merely for subscribing to Peuples noirs, was saved from incarceration by Beti's actions in France on his behalf. In 1991 Mongo Beti returned to Cameroon, after 32 years of self-imposed exile. In 1993 he published La France contre l'Afrique, retour au Cameroun; this book chronicles his visits to his homeland. After retiring from teaching in 1994, he returned to Cameroon permanently. Various business endeavors in Betiland failed; eventually, he opened in YaoundE the Librairie des Peuples noirs (Bookstore of the Black Peoples) and organized agricultural activities in his village of Akometam. The goal of the bookshop was to encourage engaged literacy in the capital, and also to provide an outlet for critical texts and authors. During this period, Beti also supported John Fru Ndi, an anglophone opposition leader. He created associations for the defence of citizens and gave to the press numerous articles of protest. The government attempted to hinder his activities. On his first return to Cameroon, police prevented him from speaking at a scheduled conference; Beti instead addressed a crowd outside the locked conference room. He was subjected in January 1996, in the streets of YaoundE, to police aggression. He was challenged at a demonstration in October 1997. In response he published several novels: L'histoire du fou in 1994 then the two initial volumes Trop de soleil tue l'amour (1999) et Branle-bas en noir et blanc (2000), of a trilogy which would remain unfinished. He was hospitalized in YaoundE on October 1, 2001 for acute hepatic and kidney failure which remained untreated for lack of dialysis. Transported to the hospital at Douala on October 6, he died there on October 8, 2001. Some critics noted the similarity of his death to that of his heroine Perpetua, who also died while awaiting treatment in one of the country's overburdened hospitals. From beginning to end, Beti's work was informed by two principles. In terms of style, he was a realist. In a critical statement published in 1955, he asserted that ‘Given the modern conceptions of the beautiful in literature, given at the very least these essential conceptions, if a work is realistic it has many chances of being good; if not, supposing even that it has formal qualities, it risks lacking resonance, profundity, that of which all literature has the greatest need -- the human; from which it follows that it has much less chance of being good -- if only it had some -- than a realistic work.' Beti's fiction remains true to this credo. Thematically, Beti's work is unified by an unwavering commitment to combatting colonialism, both overt and covert. Beti's aim always, even in his harsh criticism of Cameroon's independence government, was to strengthen African autonomy and prosperity. ‘Sans haine et sans amour', 1953, is a short story and Beti's first significant work.
[ 0215 ] Wolfers, Michael (translator and editor). Poems from Angola. London. 1979. Heinemann. 0435902156. African Writers Series. Selected, translated and introduced by Michael Wolfers. paperback. AWS215..

DESCRIPTION - A collection of poems from Angola, mostly from the 1950s and 1960s.

Michael Wolfers (born 28 September 1938; died London 15 October 2014) was a writer and political activist mainly in two former Portuguese colonies, Angola and Mozambique, after they became independent in 1975. He was born into a Jewish family that originated in Westphalia. After graduating in the early 1960s from Wadham College, Oxford, where he was an outstanding scholar, he worked for provincial newspapers and was later appointed an Africa correspondent for The Times. He formed friendships with many African politicians, particularly in Angola and Mozambique. He was a close friend of Janet Mondlane, widow of the founder of Mozambique’s ruling party Frelimo, Eduardo Mondlane, who was assassinated in Dar es Salaam in 1969. In 1973 he left The Times to work as a consultant to the new Marxist government in the Angolan capital, Luanda. Fluent in Portuguese and several other European languages, he co-wrote Angola in the Frontline (1983) with the late Jane Bergerol. Both were Marxists who went on to do specialist work in London for the Foreign Office. Wolfers was well respected in British socialist/Leftist academic circles although his critics claimed that he was a propagandist for the Marxist MPLA in Angola run by Augustino Neto (whose poetry he translated). In 1966 he formed a close friendship with the Marxist academic Thomas Hodgkin, and wrote his 2007 biography Thomas Hodgkin –-Wandering Scholar. Like Hodgkin, who he idolised, Wolfers was a public schoolboy who claimed to have embraced the cause of the poor and downtrodden in Africa. He was often extremely critical about writers on Africa who had, according to him, no understanding of the continent. He had a sharp sense of humour. One of the last times I saw him, at Chatham House in London, I asked him if he’d read any of the recent fat tomes on Africa. He smiled and said, Read them? I can’t even lift them. On his coverage of the Nigerian civil war, Frederick Forsyth of The Day of the Jackal fame, wrote in The Making of an African Legend – The Biafra Story (1977) that The Times was the only newspaper that managed to keep up consistently high reporting standards. One of The Times reporters, he wrote, showed up by contrast the inability of some of his colleagues to file dispatches out of Lagos without becoming the mouthpiece of any Nigerian or British High Commission spokesman with something crass to say. Confining his reports to factual information about what was happening under his eyes in the Nigerian capital and eschewing speculative guesses as to what might be happening 400 miles way. Mr Wolfers turned in a file of copy during his sojourns in Lagos in 1969 that was in toto an object lesson on how foreign reporting should be done. He translated books about Africa and specialised in translating Angolan poetry. He was a busy election monitor and worked in African and East European countries for the EU, UN and the Carter Centre. He had a home in Waterloo but lived most of the year in West Africa – sometimes in Ghana, more recently in Togo. He came to London with a new translation of African poems and to attend the 75th birthday party of his friend Lord Bragg, who he had met when they were at Oxford together. He was one of 16 guests savouring the first course at the Garrick Club when he collapsed and died.
[ 0216 ] Yirenki, Asiedu. Kivuli and other plays. London. 1980. Heinemann. 0435902164. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS216..

DESCRIPTION - Asiedu Yirenki’s work is primarily concerned with experimental adaptations of Ghanian folklore.

Asiedu Yirenkyi (8 December 1942 – 10 May 2018) was a Ghanaian playwright, actor, director, theatre company manager and author of screen plays. He was born Emmanuel Asiedu Yirenchi at Amanase in the Eastern Region of Ghana to Charles Okata Yirenkyi, a farmer and Comfort Yaa Nyarkoa, a homemaker and belonged to the Akyepere Kotoku clan (quarter) of Mampong Akuapem. He was the younger brother of the late Ghanaian actor and film maker Rev. Kofi Yirenkyi and the nephew of Ghanaian medical doctor and sculptor Dr. Oku Ampofo. Yirenkyi's name has been associated with pioneering roles in Drama and the National Theatre movement from the early days of Ghana's independence. He was a member of Ghana's first experimental theatre group in the late 1950s. In the early 1960s he joined Efua Sutherland's Drama Studio players as a boy actor and was among the group of studio players who performed on the night Dr. Kwame Nkrumah formally opened the Drama Studio in 1960. His formal education in Theatre began with a Diploma in Drama from the University of Ghana, Legon. In 1968, when Yirenkyi gained admission into the Yale School of Drama he made history by becoming the first Ghanaian to receive a grant to study drama in the USA. He graduated in 1971 with the prestigious John Golden Scholar Award in Playwriting. At Yale his mates included African American Theatre icon Walter Dallas and Henry Winkler. During his studentship at Yale he taught African history and African Literature at the James Hillhouse High School in New Haven, Connecticut. He returned to Ghana after his studies and lectured at the University of Ghana, Legon and at the Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria. Like writer Ama Ata Aidoo, also involved in the Ghana Drama Studio, Yirenkyi later served as a minister in the Provisional National Defence Council of Jerry Rawlings: he was Secretary for Culture and Tourism from 1982 to 1984, when he resigned. It was under his political leadership in 1983 that the first elaborate work on Ghana's Cultural Policy was carried out. Yirenkyi later served twice as the chairman of Ghana's National Folklore Board and as a World Bank consultant on the National Theatre of Ghana. He died on 10 May 2018 and in line with his wishes was interred at Mampong Akuapem
[ 0217 ] Biko, Steve. I Write What I Like: a selection of his writings. London. 1984. Heinemann. 0435902172. African Writers Series. Edited by Aelred Stubbs. 153 pages. paperback. AWS217..

DESCRIPTION - A selection of the writings of Steven Biko. Stephen Bantu Biko was born in Kingwilliamstown, Cape Province, on 18 December 1946, the third child and second son of Mr and Mrs Mzimgayi Biko. His father died when Stephen was four. He received primary and secondary education locally before proceeding to Lovedale Institution, Alice. He did not stay long at that Bantu Education Department-run school however, and his formative higher schooling was received at the Roman Catholic Mariannhill, in Natal. Matriculating at the end of 1965 he entered the medical school of the (white) University of Natal, Non-European section, Durban, at the beginning of 1966. Active at first in NUSAS (National Union of South African Students), he broke with them in 1968 to form SASO (South African Students' Organisation), of which he was elected first President in July 1969, and in July 1970 he was appointed Publicity Secretary. In December 1970 he married Miss Nontsikelelo (Ntsiki) Mashalaba from Umtata. From 1971 his heart was increasingly in political activity, and in the middle of 1972 his course at Wentworth was terminated. Immediately he began to work for BCP (Black Community Proggrammes) in Durban, but at the beginning of March 1973, together with seven other SASO leaders, was banned. Restricted to his hometown of Kingwilliamstown, he founded the Eastern Cape Branch of BCP and worked as Branch Executive until an extra clause was inserted in his banning order at the end of 1975 prohibiting him from working for BCP. In 1975 he was instrumental in founding the Zimele Trust Fund. He was detained for 101 days under section 6 of the Terrorism Act from August to December 1976, and was then released without being charged. He was many times charged under security legislation, but never convicted. In January 1977 he was appointed Honorary President of BPC (Black People's Convention) for five years - an organisation he had helped to found in 1972. On 18 August 1977, he was again detained under section 6 of the Terrorism Act. He was taken to Port Elizabeth, where he was kept naked and manacled, as was revealed at the inquest after his death. He died in detention on 12 September. The cause of death was established as brain damage. His death and the inquest have been so extensively reported that it is unnecessary to add further details here. He leaves a widow and two small boys aged seven and three. The writings which follow belong or refer to the period 1969-72, where Steve was active in the Black Consciousness Movement, of which he is now regarded as the ‘father'. After his banning in March 1973 he could no longer travel, speak in public, or write for publication. The evidence at the BPC-SASO Trial in Pretoria was given in the first week of May 1976, but refers to events which took place during the earlier period. Thus the book follows a chronological sequence as far as can be ascertained. .

Stephen Bantu Biko (18 December 1946 - 12 September 1977) was an anti-apartheid activist in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. A student leader, he later founded the Black Consciousness Movement which would empower and mobilize much of the urban black population. Since his death in police custody, he has been called a martyr of the anti-apartheid movement. While living, his writings and activism attempted to empower black people, and he was famous for his slogan ‘black is beautiful', which he described as meaning: ‘man, you are okay as you are, begin to look upon yourself as a human being.'
[ 0218 ] Armah, Ayi Kwei. Two Thousand Seasons. Portsmouth. 1979. Heinemann. 0435902180. African Writers Series. 206 pages. paperback. AWS218. Cover photograph - Maelezo, Dar es Salaam.

DESCRIPTION - Two Thousand Seasons is a novel by Ghanaian novelist Ayi Kwei Armah. The novel was first published in 1973 and subsequently published a number of times, including in the influential Heinemann African Writers Series. It is an epic historical novel, attempting to depict the last 'two thousand seasons' of African history in one narrative arc following a Pan-African approach. The novel focuses on the complicitness of African peoples to the enslavement of their people to intruders, first represented as Arabs than as European whites. In doing so, the novel emphasizes the continued complicitness of African leaders in furthering the oppression of other African peoples. For Armah, the intervention of outside cultures violates a past 'African ideal [. ] egalitarian philosophy' which can help guide the recovery of, what critic Chinyere Nwahunanya calls a 'lost African Eden'. Criticism of the novel is mixed. Chinua Achebe, in a 1987 interview, described Two Thousand Seasons as 'unacceptable on the basis of fact, and on the basis of art. The work is ponderous and heavy and wooden, almost embarrassing in its heaviness.' The reviewing site 'Complete Review' gave the novel a B+ rating, noting that it is an 'often strong but ultimately too simplistic picture of Africa -- past and future'. The review focuses on Armah's oversimplification of the African content's 'actual sad history'. When gods die.. the carver is summoned and a new god comes to life. The old is discarded, left to rot in the bush and be eaten by termites, In literature the wruter aids the process of desuetude by acting as the termite or by ignoring the old deity and creating new ones.. ‘ TWO THOUSAND SEASONS is predicated on the fulfillment of one of the social functions of literature: the visionary reconstruction of the past for the purposes of a social direction. In Armah's work there is no ambivalence of intent, nor of historical reconstruction. ‘Ayi Kwei Armah asserts a past whose social philosophy was a natural egalitarianism.. The actions of his protagonists are aimed at the retrieval of that past, but again Armah insists that the past is not a nostalgic or sentimental one. It is presented as a state embodying a rational ideal.' - WOLE SOYINKA in MYTH, LITERATURE AND THE AFRICAN WORLD. Cover photograph - Maelezo, Dar es Salaam.

Ayi Kwei Armah (born 1939) is a notable Ghanaian writer. Born to Fante-speaking parents, and descending on his father's side from a royal family in the Ga nation, Armah was born in the port city of Sekondi-Takoradi in Ghana. Having attended Achimota School, he left Ghana in 1959 to attend Groton School in Groton, MA. After graduating he entered Harvard University, receiving a degree in sociology. Armah then moved to Algeria and worked as a translator for the magazine REvolution Africaine. In 1964, Armah returned to Ghana, where he was a scriptwriter for Ghana Television and later taught English at the Navrongo School. Between 1967 and 1968, he was editor of Jeune Afrique magazine in Paris. From 1968-1970, Armah studied at Columbia University, obtaining his MFA in creative writing. In the 1970s, he worked as a teacher in East Africa, at the College of National Education, Chang'ombe, Tanzania, and at the National University of Lesotho. He lived in Dakar, Senegal, in the 1980s and taught at Amherst and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In Fragments (1971), the protagonist, Baako, is a ‘been-to' - a man who has been to the United States and received his education there. Back in Ghana he is regarded with superstitious awe as a link to the Western life style. Baako's grandmother Naana, a blind-seer, stands in living contact with the ancestors. Under the strain of the unfulfilled expectations Baako finally breaks. As in his first novel, Armah contrasts the two worlds of materialism and moral values, corruption and dreams, two worlds of integrity and social pressure. Why Are We So Blest? (1972) was set largely in an American University, and focused on a student, Modin Dofu, who has dropped out of Harvard. Disillusioned Modin is torn between independence and Western values. He meets a Portuguese black African named Solo, who has already suffered a mental breakdown, and a white American girl, AimEe Reitsch. Solo, the rejected writer, keeps a diary, which is the substance of the novel. AimEe's frigidity and devotion to the revolution leads finally to destruction, when Modin is killed in the desert by O.A.S. revolutionaries. Trans Atlantic and African slave trades are the subject of Armah's Two Thousand Seasons (1973) in which a pluralized communal voice speaks through the history of Africa, its wet and dry seasons, from a period of one thousand years. Arab and European oppressors are portrayed as ‘predators,' ‘destroyers,' and ‘zombies'. The novel is written in allegorical tone, and shifts from autobiographical and realistic details to philosophical pondering, prophesying a new age. The Healers (1979) mixed fact and fiction about the fall of the celebrated Ashanti Empire. The healers in question are traditional medicine practitioners who see fragmentation as the lethal disease of Africa. Armah remained silent as a novelist for a long period until 1995 when he published Osiris Rising, depicting a radical educational reform group which reinstates ancient Egypt at the center of its curriculum. As an essayist Armah has dealt with the identity and predicament of Africa. His main concern is for the creation of a pan-African agency that will embrace all the diverse cultures and languages of the continent. Armah has called for the adoption of Kiswahili as the continental language.
[ 0219 ] Kenyatta, Jomo. Facing Mount Kenya: The Traditional Life of the Gikuyu. London. 1979. Heinemann. 0435902199. African Writers Series. With an introduction by B. Malinowski. paperback. AWS219. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - Facing Mount Kenya, first published in 1938, is a monograph on the life and customs of the Gikuyu people of central Kenya prior to their contact with Europeans. It is unique in anthropological literature for it gives an account of the social institutions and religious rites of an African people, permeated by the emotions that give to customs and observances their meaning. It is characterised by both insight and a tinge of romanticism. The author, proud of his African blood and ways of thought, takes the reader through a thorough and clear picture of Gikuyu life and customs, painting an almost utopian picture of their social norms and the sophisticated codes by which all aspects of the society were governed. This book is one of a kind, capturing and documenting traditions fast disappearing. It is therefore a must-read for all who want to learn about African culture.

Jomo Kenyatta (c.?1897 - 22 August 1978) was a Kenyan anti-colonial activist and politician who governed Kenya as its Prime Minister from 1963 to 1964 and then as its first President from 1964 to his death in 1978. He was the country's first indigenous head of government and played a significant role in the transformation of Kenya from a colony of the British Empire into an independent republic. Ideologically an African nationalist and conservative, he led the Kenya African National Union (KANU) party from 1961 until his death.
[ 0220 ] Head, Bessie. Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind. London. 1981. Heinemann. 0435902202. African Writers Series. 200 pages. paperback. AWS220..

DESCRIPTION - In his foreword Ronald Blythe writes: ‘I felt as I came to the end of this unforgettable book that I had understood not only Serowe.. but for the first time certain things about Africa itself which had never before found their way into literature.. I knew I was seeing and hearing things which made sense at last of much of what has occurred there this past century.' BESSIE HEAD has set all three of her outstanding novels in Botswana, her country of exile from South Africa, where she was born in 1937. WHEN RAIN CLOUDS GATHER (AWS 247) and MARU (AWS 101) were followed by A QUESTION OF POWER (AWS 149), and a sequence of stories THE COLLECTOR OF TREASURES (AWS 182), which is also set in a Botswana village. Bessie Head has used all her skills as a novelist to show an African community going about its daily work both now and in the last hundred years. Serowe is, in any case, one of the best-known villages in Africa because it is the capital of the people ruled by the Khamas, of whom Tshekedi and Seretse are the most famous. But, as in Ronald Blythe's AKENFIELD, her central intention is to recall a community and its history through the words of the thatcher and the school teacher, the potter and the preacher, the market woman and the ploughman. Here are the actual words of nearly one hundred inhabitants representing all aspects of a community. In Africa where most people still have strong village connections, readers will find instant parallels and contrasts with their own communities.

Bessie Emery Head (6 July 1937 - 17 April 1986) is usually considered Botswana's most influential writer. Bessie Emery Head was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, the child of a wealthy white South African woman and a black servant when interracial relationships were illegal in South Africa. It was claimed that her mother was mentally ill so that she could be sent to a quiet location to then give birth to Bessie without the neighbors knowing. However, the exact circumstances are disputed, and some of Bessie Head's comments, though often quoted as straight autobiography, are in fact from fictionalized settings. In the 1950s and '60s she was a teacher, then a journalist for the South African magazine Drum. In 1964 she moved to Botswana (then still the Bechuanaland Protectorate) as a refugee, having been peripherally involved with Pan-African politics. It would take 15 years for Head to obtain Botswana citizenship. Head settled in Serowe, the largest of Botswana's ‘villages' (i.e. traditional settlements as opposed to settler towns). Serowe was famous both for its historical importance, as capital of the Bamangwato people, and for the experimental Swaneng school of Patrick van Rensburg. The deposed chief of the Bamangwato, Seretse Khama, was soon to become the first President of independent Botswana. Her early death in 1986 (aged 48) from hepatitis came just at the point where she was starting to achieve recognition as a writer and was no longer so desperately poor. Most of Bessie Head's important works are set in Serowe, in particular the three novels When Rain Clouds Gather, Maru, and A Question of Power. One of her best works is When Rain Clouds Gather, in which she writes about a troubled young man called Makhaya who runs away from his birthplace, South Africa, to become a refugee in a little village called Golema Mmidi, in the heart of Botswana. Here he is faced with many challenges, one of which is the fact that Chief Matenge does not allow his presence in the village. He meets a white man named Gilbert and starts a whole new journey into the unknown. Head also published a number of short stories, including the collection The Collector of Treasures. She published a book on the history of Serowe, the village she settled in, called Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind. Her last novel, A Bewitched Crossroad, is historical, set in nineteenth-century Botswana. She had also written a story of two prophets, one wealthy and one who lived poorly called ‘Jacob: The Faith-Healing Priest'. Head's work, which emphasised the value of ordinary life and humble people, was more in touch with an earlier trend in African writing than many recent writers, who have made overtly political comments. Her writing has endured nonetheless. Religious ideas feature prominently at times, as in the work A Question of Power. It is interesting to note that Head was initially brought up as a Christian; however, she was later influenced by Hinduism (to which she was exposed through South Africa's Indian community). Most of her writing took place while she was in exile in Botswana. An exception is the early novel The Cardinals (published posthumously), written before she left South Africa. In some ways Bessie Head remained an outsider in her adopted country, and some discern she had something of a love-hate relationship with it. At times she suffered mental health problems and on one occasion put up a public notice making bizarre and shocking allegations about then President Sir Seretse Khama, which led to a period in Lobatse Mental Hospital. A Question of Power is based partly on those experiences. In 2007 the Bessie Head Heritage Trust was established, along with the Bessie Head Literature Awards. In July 2007 the library in Pietermaritzburg was renamed the Bessie Head library in her honor. In 2003 she was awarded the South African ‘Order of Ikhamanga in Gold' for her ‘exceptional contribution to literature and the struggle for social change, freedom and peace.'
[ 0221 ] Cheney-Coker, Syl. The Graveyard Also Has Teeth: Poems. London. 1980. Heinemann. 0435902210. African Writers Series. 119 pages. paperback. AWS221. Cover design by Shyam Varma.

DESCRIPTION - THE GRAVEYARD ALSO HAS TEETH came out of a great period of sadness in the poet's life, beginning with the tragic death of his brother. In mourning him the poet's anguish takes on a universal tone over the deaths of others and the loss of all forms of humanity the world over. Syl Cheney-Coker's first collection, CONCERTO FOR AN EXILE has been incorporated in this book.

Syl Cheney-Coker (b. 1945) is a poet, novelist, and journalist from Sierra Leone. Educated in the United States, he has a global sense of literary history, and has introduced styles and techniques from French and Latin American literatures to Sierra Leone. He has spent much of his life in exile from his native country, and has written extensively (in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction) about the condition of exile and the view of Africa from an African abroad. Cheney-Coker was born in Freetown with the name Syl Cheney Coker, and changed his name to its current spelling in 1970. He went to the United States in 1966, where he attended the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Oregon, and the University of Wisconsin. After his schooling he returned briefly to Sierra Leone, but accepted a position at the University of the Philippines in 1975; he later married a Filipino woman. He moved to Nigeria in 1977 to teach at the University of Maiduguri, and returned to the United States in 1988 to be Writer-in-Residence at the University of Iowa. Cheney-Coker's poetry is tinged with the anxiety of his perennially uncertain status, dealing both with exile (he has spent the majority of his adult life outside of his country) and with the precariousness of living as an intellectual in Sierra Leone. At the same time, he is concerned always with how he will be read; his poems are radical and ardent, but also erudite and allusive, which can distract a reader from Cheney-Coker's ideological project. He has been called one of the more western-influenced African poets. In the early 1990s, Cheney-Coker returned to Freetown to become editor of a progressive newspaper, the Vanguard. After the military coup of 1997, Cheney-Coker was targeted as a dissident, and barely escaped with his life. In part through the efforts of Wole Soyinka, an exiled Nigerian poet teaching at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Cheney-Coker was invited to be the first writer in the City of Asylum program in Las Vegas, Nevada. He decided to return to a somewhat more stable Sierra Leone in 2003, saying, ‘After a while, exile is neither justifiable nor tolerable.'
[ 0222 ] Vieira, Jose Luandino. Luuanda: Short Stories of Angola. London. 1980. Heinemann. 0435902229. African Writers Series. Translated from the Portuguese by Tamara L. Bender & Donna S. Hill. 118 pages. paperback. AWS222. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - In this collection, Jose Luandino Vieira employs the mixture of Portuguese and Kimbundu which characterizes the speech of most Angolans in the capital's poorer neighborhoods. He brings to life the daily joys and sorrows, victories and defeats of the people who lived in and endured Luanda's slums during colonial times. Vieira has created unforgettable characters who are not only set in the mosaic of colonial Angolan society but whose lives represent universal themes with which readers from any society can identify. .

Jose Luandino Vieira (born Jose Vieira Mateus da Graça on May 4, 1935) is an Angolan writer of short fiction and novels. Vieira was born in Lagoa de Furadouro, OurEm, Portugal and was Portuguese by birth and ethnicity, but his parents immigrated to Angola in 1938 and he grew up immersed in the African quarters (musseques) of Luanda. He wrote in the language unique to the musseque, a fusion of Kimbundu and Portuguese. He left school at the age of fifteen and worked as a mechanic. He was devoted to Angolan independence, resulting in his arrest in 1961 after an interview with the BBC in which he disclosed secret lists of deserters from the Portuguese army fighting in Africa. He would remain in jail for eleven years. Vieira's works often followed the structure of the African oral narrative and dealt with the harsh realities of Portuguese rule in Angola. His best-known work was his early short story collection, Luuanda (1963), which received a Portuguese writers' literary award in 1965, though it was banned by the Portuguese government until 1974 due to its examination of the oppressiveness of the colonial administration in Angola. His novella A vida verdadeira de Domingos Xavier (The Real Life of Domingos Xavier; 1974) portrayed both the cruelty of the Portuguese administration and the courage of ordinary Angolans during the colonial period. Other works include Velhas estorias (‘Old Stories'; 1974), Nos os do Makulusu (‘Our Gang from Makulusu'; 1974), Vidas novas (‘New Lives'; 1975), and João Vêncio: os seus amores (‘João Vêncio: Regarding His Loves'; 1979). Vieira turned down the 100,000 Euros Camões Literary Prize awarded to him in May 2006, citing personal reasons. Vieira also served as secretary-general of the Union of Angolan writers, and in that capacity helped get the works of other Angolan authors and poets published.
[ 0223 ] Ghanem, Fathy. The Man Who Lost His Shadow: A Novel in Four Books. London/Washington D.C. 1980. Heinemann/Three Continents Press. 0435902237. African Writers Series. Translated from the Arabic by Desmond Stewart. 352 pages. paperback. AWS223. Cover design by Ahmed Mustapha.

DESCRIPTION - First published in English in 1966, this novel tells the story of Yusif Abdul Hamid, a young and ambitious Cairo journalist, through the eyes of four people in turn: Mabruka, the young peasant girl who marries Yusif's aging father while strongly attracted to Yusif; Samia, a minor actress, who Yusif lives with and almost marries but in the end rejects; Muhammad Nagi, the newspaper editor who then marries Samia and who is pushed out of his job by Yusif; and finally Yusif himself, editor-in-chief of the newspaper al-Ayyam, a stranger to himself, 'someone I neither love nor hate.'

Fathi Ghanem (2 March 1924 – 24 February 1999) was an Egyptian writer. Ghanem was born in Cairo to a working-class family. He graduated from the Faculty of Law, Fuad I University, in 1944, then worked as a reporter for Ruz al-Youssef [ar], a newspaper published by the foundation of the same name. Later, he worked as an editor for Al Gomhuria and chairman of the board of directors at the Dar Al Tahrir Foundation, the newspaper's publisher.
[ 0224 ] Kavanagh, Robert Mshengu (editor). South African People's Plays. London. 1981. Heinemann. 0435902245. African Writers Series. 176 pages. paperback. AWS224. Cover photograph courtesy of S.ketsh' (Johannesburg). AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - Fanon, Cabral, Freire and others have insisted on the importance of culture in the struggle to liberate the peoples of the Third World. In South Africa in 1976 the people's theatre was an essential part of this cultural resistance, which ultimately became a political weapon in itself. In this collection there are four plays, the products not of an academic literary tradition but of struggle. Two of the plays, Too Late and Survival, were banned and Shanti was cited in the charge sheet at the SASO/BPC trial of 1975-6. Though one or two of the plays were performed before whites and the 'elite', all were aimed at popular audiences in Soweto and other black ghettoes. Their strength lies in performance and in the political and cultural function that they fulfil. This collection attempts to give the reader some understanding of what these performances meant in South Africa herself. Introductory notes describe the context, meaning and stage history of each play and offer suggestions about how each might be performed. Includes - uNosilimela by Credo V. Mutwa, Shanti by Mthuli Shezi, Too Late by Gibson Kente & Survival by the Workshop '71 Theatre Company. Fanon, Cabral, Freire and others have insisted on the importance of culture in the struggle to liberate the peoples of the Third World. In South Africa in 1976 the people's theatre was an essential part of this cultural resistance, which ultimately became a political weapon itself. In this collection there are four plays, the products not of an academic literary tradition, but of struggle. Two of the plays, TOO LATE and SURVIVAL, were banned and SHANTI was cited in the charge sheet at the SASO/BPC trial of 1975-6. Though one of two of the plays were performed before whites and the ‘elite', all were aimed at popular audiences in Soweto and other black ghettoes, Their strength lies in performance and in the political and cultural function that they fulfill. This collection attempts to give the reader some understanding of what these performances meant in South Africa herself. Introductory notes describe the context, meaning and stage history of each play and offer suggestions about how each might be performed.

Rhodes Scholar, alumnus of Cape Town, Oxford and Leeds, fourth generation African of Gaelic descent, conversant in six African and three European languages, published author, cultural activist, director, performing artist and academic in South Africa, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, Dr Robert Malcolm McLaren (aka Robert Mshengu Kavanagh) is a South African who has lived in Zimbabwe from 1984 to the present. He has a B.A. Hons. in English Literature from the University of Cape Town, an M.Phil. from Oxford and a Ph.D. from Leeds. He was born in Durban and educated in Natal - Highbury Preparatory School for Boys and Hilton College. He co-founded the following: Workshop '71 Experimental Theatre (Johannesburg, 1971), Theatre Arts Departments (Addis Ababa University, 1980/University of Zimbabwe, 1986), Zambuko/Izibuko (political theatre group, Harare, 1985), CHIPAWO Arts Education for Development and Employment Trust (Harare, 1989) and the Zimbabwe Association of Theatre for Children and Young People (ZATCYP/ASSITEJ). In 2012 he won the Ibsen Prize for a project called ‘Negotiating Ibsen in Southern Africa'. He lives in Marlborough, Harare with his second wife, Hazvinei. He has four children by his late wife, Thembani - Sibongile, Thando, Njabulo and Gugu - and three with his present wife, Hazvinei - Shalom, Rudairo and Ropafadzo.
[ 0225 ] Mahfouz, Naguib. Children of Gebelawi. New York. 1981. Three Continents Press/Heinemann. 0435994158. Translated from the Arabic by Philip Stewart. Arab Authors series. 355 pages. paperback. AA15/AWS225. Cover design by Ahmed Mustapha.

DESCRIPTION - It is not often that preachers lead their flocks into the streets to shout for the banning of novel hailed by many as a masterpiece, nor that the editor of a great newspaper has to rely on his friendship with the Head of State to ensure that a serial is published uncut to the end. But this is what happened in Nasser's Egypt in 1959 when the semi-official Al-Ahram printed ‘Children of Gebelawi' by Naguib Mahfouz. So great was the uproar that no Egyptian publisher dared bring it out in book form, and for years it passed from hand to hand in the newspaper version. It was only in 1967, and in Lebanon, that it was at last made available, slightly expurgated, by Dar-al-Adab. The reason for these strong reactions was that Naguib Mahfouz had boldly taken up the issues that most deeply divide Egypt and, perhaps, the world. The Successive heroes of his imaginary Cairo alley relive unawares the lives of Adam, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed; and their aged ancestor, Gebelawi, represents God, or rather ‘not God, but a certain idea of God that men have made', as Mahfouz put it in the course of discussion with me, so that his fate takes on a dreadful significance. Most readers became so passionately involved that they could see in the novel only their own ideology, or that of their most hated opponents, though a closer study would have shown them that the book has many dimensions and that its interpretation is no simple task. Mahfouz confounded friends and foes alike by his choice of subject. He had earned a reputation for himself as ‘the Galsworthy of Egypt', particularly with his Trilogy, which he completed in 1952 and for which he shared the State Prize for Literature in 1957. Why now did this chronicle of social history turn to a religious theme? A second look at his earlier work show that his spiritual preoccupations were by no means new. Even in MIDAQ ALLEY (available in English as number 2 of Heinemann's Arab Authors series), first published in 1947 and often superficially described as ‘Dickensian' - though Mahfouz admits to never having managed to read more than half a Dickens novel - the two key figures are Radwan Hussainy, ‘who stepped lightly over the sorrows of the world, his heart soaring towards heaven as he embraced all men in his love', and Sheikh Darwish, ‘who had abandoned family, friends and acquaintances, and had wandered off into the world of God'. Similarly, in the works published since 1959 Mahfouz has returned again and again to the subjects of illusion and reality, hallucination and mystic enlightenment, most notably in Zaabalawi (translated in volume 3 of Arab Authors) which is the author's gloss on GebelawL Naguib Mahfouz was born in 1911 in Gemalia and lived there till the age of six. Its sights and sounds and smells were to provide him with the setting for all the works written between the pharaonic novels of 1939 till 1944 and the ‘post-revolutionary' writings of 1960 onwards. He did a degree in philosophy, but turned aside from a university career feeling that it would take him away from his vocation of writer. All his book have been produced in the spare time left to him by his jobs: in the University Secretariat (1936-39), in the Ministry of Religious Affairs (1939-^54) and in the Ministry of Culture (from 1954; the year in which he also married and moved from his mother's home). With the Revolution of 1952, occurring just after he had finished writing the Trilogy, he felt ‘that the world I had made it my mission to describe had disappeared', as he told me. For five years he wrote nothing; then, in 1957, seized by a new and original literary plan, whose genesis he is unable to explain, he set to work on CHILDREN OF GEBELAWI. In it he was to take the reader one last time into his vanished world. Now, though, it was no longer the Gemalia of recent history, assailed by wireless and Marxism and British soldiers, but a half imaginary society, cut off from outside events and influences, a distillation of the old Cairo, depicted with a wealth of detail. Gebelawi Alley is situated on the frontier between real districts of Cairo and a fictitious ‘Mukattam Desert' (which is occupied in fact by the endless cities of the dead, in which the ‘houses' are family tombs). On the eastern horizon looms a real mountain, Gebel Mukattam, whose brooding presence gives animist undertones to the name of Gebelawi, which means ‘Mountain Dweller.' Over it all hangs the sky, ever changing and rarely forgotten despite the fact that so much of the action takes place in dark rooms, cramped courtyards and narrow alleys. This attention to the heavens, like so many other details, is by no means incidental but points to the deeper meaning of the book. - from he introduction by Philip Stewart. .

NAGUIB MAHFOUZ (1911-2006) was born in the crowded Cairo district of Gamaliya. He graduated in philosophy from King Fuad University in 1934, and went on to write nearly forty novel-length works, plus hundreds of short stories and numerous screenplays. He was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1988. WILLIAM M. HUTCHINS is the principal translator of Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy, and has most recently translated Mohammed Khudayyir's Basrayatha (AUC Press, 2007), Fadhil al-Azzawi's THE LAST OF THE ANGELS (AUC Press, 2007), and CELL BLOCK FIVE (AUG Press, 2008).
[ 0226 ] Farah, Nuruddin. Sweet and Sour Milk. London. 1980. Heinemann. 0435902261. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS226..

DESCRIPTION - The first novel in Farah's universally acclaimed Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship trilogy, Sweet and Sour Milk chronicles one man's search for the reasons behind his twin brother's violent death during the 1970s. The atmosphere of political tyranny and repression reduces our hero's quest to a passive and fatalistic level; his search for reasons and answers ultimately becomes a search for meaning. The often detective-story-like narrative of this novel thus moves on a primarily interior plane as 'Farah takes us deep into territory he has charted and mapped and made uniquely his own' (Chinua Achebe). 

Nuruddin Farah is the author of a number of previous novels. His books have brought him numerous awards, including the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. His plays and essays, has been featured in The New Yorker and other publications. Born in Baidoa, Somalia, Farah divides his time between Cape Town and Minneapolis, where he holds the Winton Chair in the Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota.
[ 0227 ] Emecheta, Buchi. The Joys of Motherhood. London. 1979. Heinemann. 043590972x. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS227..

DESCRIPTION - This story of a young mother's struggles in 1950s Lagos is a powerful commentary on polygamy, patriarchy, and women's changing roles in urban Nigeria.

Buchi Emecheta (born 21 July 1944, in Lagos) is a Nigerian novelist who has published over 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education have won her considerable critical acclaim and honours, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005. Emecheta once described her stories as ‘stories of the world…[where]… women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical.'
[ 0228 ] Hussein, Taha. An Egyptian Childhood: the autobiography of Taha Hussein. London. 1981. Heinemann. African Writers Series. Translated by E. H. Paxton. paperback. AWS228. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - The first part of Taha Hussein’s three-part autobiography and an important work by one of modern Egypt's greatest writers and thinkers. An Egyptian Childhood (1929) is full of the sounds and smells of rural Egypt. It tells of Hussein's childhood and early education in a small village in Upper Egypt, as he learns not only to come to terms with his blindness but to excel in spite of it and win a place at the prestigious Azhar University in Cairo.

Taha Hussein (November 15, 1889 - October 28, 1973) was one of the most influential 20th-century Egyptian writers and intellectuals, and a figurehead for the Egyptian Renaissance and the modernist movement in the Middle East and North Africa. His sobriquet was 'The Dean of Arabic Literature'. He was nominated for a Nobel prize in literature fourteen times.
[ 0229 ] Mofolo, Thomas. Chaka. Oxford. 1989. Heinemann. 0435902296. African Writers Series. A New translation by Daniel P. Kunene. 168 pages. paperback. AWS229. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - This novel is the first of many works of literature that takes the great Zulu leader, king, and emperor as its subject. The story is well-known, partly due to Mofolo but also to the works of literature by Badian, Senghor, and Mazisi Kunene. O.R. Dathorne has said, 'The historical Chaka is only the impetus for Mofolo's psychological study of the nature of repudiation.' Mofolo presents it as a study of human passion, of an uncontrolled and then uncontrollable ambition leading to the moral destruction of the character and the inevitable punishment.

Thomas Mokopu Mofolo (22 December 1876 - 8 September 1948) is considered the greatest Basotho author. He wrote mostly in the Sesotho language, but his most popular book, Chaka, has been translated into English and other languages. Thomas Mofolo was born in Khojane, Lesotho, on 22 December 1876. He was educated in the local schools of the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society and obtained a teacher's certificate in 1898. While he was working at the book depot in Morija, some of the missionaries encouraged him to write what was to become the first novel in Southern Sotho, Moeti oa bochabela (1907; The Traveler of the East). The edifying story of a young Sotho chieftain's conversion to Christianity, it is cleverly interwoven with traditional myths and praise poems. Its success prompted other young teachers to try their hand at fiction writing, thus launching one of the earliest literary movements in sub-Saharan Africa. Mofolo's next book, Pitseng (1910), is built on a rather clumsy love plot in imitation of European fiction. It contains perceptive descriptions of native mores in Lesotho and in South Africa and a thoughtful, by no means encomiastic, appraisal of the influence of Christianity on traditional marriage customs. Mofolo then composed Chaka (1925), a fictionalized account of the Zulu conqueror who built a mighty empire during the first quarter of the 19th century. Under Mofolo's pen, the eventful career of Chaka (Shaka) becomes the epic tragedy of a heroic figure whose overweening ambition drives him to insane cruelty and ultimate ruin. The earliest major contribution of black Africa to the corpus of modern world literature, Chaka is a genuine masterpiece; the narrative follows the austere curve of growth and decline which controls the structure of classic tragedy at its best; psychological motivation is sharply clarified at all points; and the author has cleverly manipulated the supernatural element, which is endowed with true symbolic value. Although the missionaries were sensitive to the high literary quality of Chaka, the pictures of pre-Christian life that the book contains made them reluctant to publish it. In his disappointment, Mofolo left for South Africa in 1910 and gave up writing. For several years he was a labour agent, recruiting workers for the gold mines of Transvaal and the plantations of Natal. After 1927 he bought a store in Lesotho; in 1937 he acquired a farm in South Africa but was evicted under the Bantu Land Act. In 1940, a broken and sick man, he returned to Lesotho, where he died on 8 September 1948.
[ 0230 ] Feinberg, Barry (editor). Poets To the People: South African Freedom Poems. London/Exeter. 1980. Heinemann. 043590230x. African Writers Series. 194 pages. paperback. AWS230. Cover photograph courtesy of International Defence and Aid Fund.

DESCRIPTION - This collection of poems by various South African poets projects the revolutionary voice steadily growing within South Africa. These poets have all been fired by the struggle for freedom; all have endured official censure and persecution because of their beliefs, some have suffered imprisonment and torture. Indeed, Victor Matlou was kidnapped in 1979 by the South African police, in violation of international flight travel laws while en route from Mozambique to Lesotho, when the plane he was travelling on was diverted to South Africa. An international campaign to secure his release has been mounted. These poems consistently and eloquently echo both the sufferings and hopes of the victims of racist tyranny. As the fight for a humane and egalitarian society has intensified, so South African poets have come increasingly to identify themselves with the majority of the people and the cause of national liberation. This is a revised and enlarged edition of the previously published book which has since been translated into several languages. The first edition was banned by the South African government in 1975. ‘Big poems about and for the people of South Africa who are engaged in the struggle against fascism. They use language as a weapon, not a toy. This collection of poems is worthy of the African Revolution.' - Adrian Mitchell - Anti-Apartheid News. ‘If Apartheid can strike at poetry, poetry can strike at Apartheid and just how effectively you can see by reading Poets to the People.. It is a powerfully moving little volume and an experience to read.' - Bob Leeson - Morning Star. ‘Exemplary anthology.' - Andrew Salkey - Times Educational Supplement.

Barry Feinberg was educated at Benoni High School, the Johannesburg School of Art (Fine Arts Diploma & National Teacher's Certificate) and the Slade Art School, University of London (Post-Graduate Diploma in Fine Art). He has worked as a freelance artist and designer, an Art and English teacher in London schools and colleges, Assistant Editor at George Rainbird Publishers, Researcher and Writer for Bertrand Russell and the Bertrand Russell Estate, a designer at the IDAF in London, Director of Research, Information & Publications at the IDAF in London, Managing Director of Kliptown Books, Ltd., Managing Director,IDAF Publications, Ltd., Director of Publications and Audio Visual Productions & Resources at the International Defence & Aid Fund for Southern Africa in London, co-editor of Mayibuye Books, University of the Western Cape, Coordinator of Publications and Productions, Mayibuye Centre and Director of the Mayibuye Centre. Feinberg has had his paintings exhibited at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, the Lidchi Art Gallery (Jhb) and the New End Gallery, Rotunda Gallery and Erica Bourne Gallery in London. His poetry has been widely anthologised and translated. He has produced and directed fourteen documentary films and videos - winning ten international awards for these and either produced or co-produced six musical and theatrical productions. Feinberg's honours include: Judge at the United Nations International Poster Competition, the Hague, Jury Member at the International Anti-Racist Film Festival, Amiens and Member of the Post Office Philatelic Consultative Committee in Pretoria. 
[ 0231 ] Jumbam, Kenjo. The White Man of God. London. 1980. Heinemann. 0435902318. African Writers Series. 151 pages. paperback. AWS231. Cover photograph by George Hallett. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - The central character in this novel of singular wisdom and charm is a young boy called Tansa who lives in a village near Bamenda in Cameroun. Tansa behaves no better and no worse than he should and he is surrounded by a family and friends in whom he finds a mixture of malice, virtue, sagacity and stupidity. The only thing that they have in common is the conflict that has arisen over what they think of 'the white man of God'. The arrival of missionaries is a traumatic experience. Some people can accept the change. Some people resent it. The climax comes when the parish priest attacks the chief juju and finds that the man behind the mask is Matthew, his head catechist. Kenjo Jumbam is able to present an honest picture of people on both sides of this chasm and to do so with understanding and delicacy.

Kenjo Jumbam (October 23, 1932 - December 12, 2005) was a celebrated Cameroonian writer and the first Anglophone Cameroon writer to publish with Heinemann's African Writers Series.
[ 0232 ] Johnson-Davies, Denys (editor). Egyptian One-act Plays. London. 1981. Heinemann. 0435902326. African Writers Series. Selected and translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies. 118 pages. paperback. AWS232. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - Includes - The interrogation by Farid Kamil, The Trap by Alfred Farag, Marital bliss by Abdel-Moneim Selim, The wheat well by Ali Salem, and The donkey market by Tewfik al-Hakim.

Denys Johnson-Davies (also known as Abdul Wadud) was an eminent Arabic-to-English literary translator who translated, inter alia, several works by Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, Sudanese author Tayeb Salih, Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish and Syrian author Zakaria Tamer. Johnson-Davies, referred to as 'the leading Arabic-English translator of our time' by Edward Said, translated more than twenty-five volumes of short stories, novels, plays, and poetry, and was the first to translate the work of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. He was also interested in Islamic studies and was co-translator of three volumes of Prophetic Hadith. He wrote a number of children's books adapted from traditional Arabic sources, including a collection of his own short stories, Fate of a Prisoner, which was published in 1999. Born in 1922 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada of English parentage, Johnson-Davies spent his childhood in Sudan, Egypt, Uganda, and Kenya, and then was sent to England at age 12. Johnson-Davies studied Oriental languages at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and lectured on translation and English literature at several universities across the Arab World. In 2006, he published his memoirs In 2007, he was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award 'Culture Personality of the Year', valued at about $300,000. In his latter years he lived between Marrakesh and Cairo. Denys Johnson-Davies died in Egypt on 22 May 2017.
[ 0233 ] Nyamfukudza, S. The Non-Believer's Journey: A Novel of the Zimbabwean War. London. 1980. Heinemann. 0435902334. African Writers Series. 113 pages. paperback. AWS233..

DESCRIPTION - The Non-Believer's Journey is set during the Zimbabwe war for independence in the 1970s. The anti-hero Sam, a teacher, faces his ambivalence toward the conflict, ultimately leading to a dead end. Increasingly discontented with work, drink, and sexual adventure, he returns home for the funeral. After receiving a letter from his father about the killing of his uncle by the boys (as the guerrillas were called) when they were told that he was a sell-out, Sam sets out to go back to his village for his uncle’s burial; but the trip ends up becoming more than that.

Stanley Nyamfukudza (born 1951) is a Zimbabwean writer. He was born in Wedza District, Zimbabwe. In 1973, he was ejected from Salisbury University for participation in student riots against racism on the campus. From there, he moved to England where he was awarded a scholarship to study literature at the University of Oxford and completed a degree in English. He returned to an independent Zimbabwe in 1980. Nyamfukudza has become one of Zimbabwe's longest established writers. His 1980 work The Non-believer's Journey focuses on the war of liberation against colonialism. Since then, he has published two collections of short stories: Aftermaths in 1980 and If God was a Woman in 1991. He presented the plenary speech, titled 'Reflections on Zimbabwe's intellectual development', at the 2004 Nordic Africa Institute conference.
[ 0234 ] Kunene, Mazisi. Anthem of the Decades: a Zulu epic. London. 1981. Heinemann. 0435902342. African Writers Series. Translated from Zulu by the author. 312 pages. paperback. AWS234. Cover illustration 'Two of King Mpande's Harem Girls', by George French Angas, from The Kafirs Illustrated (1849). AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - This epic, together with Mazisi Kunene's Emperor Shaka the Great, throws down a challenge to all the preconceptions about African literature. A reader has responded to that challenge, maintaining that 'While its wellspring of inspiration derives from the traditional boasts and Zulu cosmology it is not a pastiche, an imitation or a compilation. It is an original creation, carried by a majestic and in some ways unfettered imagination, yet an imagination harnessed to reason and structure. The structure gives it coherence and power.'

MAZISI KUNENE has pleased, delighted and provoked readers with his Zulu epic Emperor Shaka the Great (AWS 211). He is also the author of Zulu Poems (Andre Deutsch) and a new collection The Ancestors and the Sacred Mountain (AWS 235) is forthcoming. In 1958 he went as Head of the Department of African Studies to the University College at Roma, in what is now Lesotho. He was a founder member of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain and became Director of Education for the South African United Front. In 1962 he became Chief Representative for the African National Congress in Europe and USA, changing to Director of Finance in 1972. He has lectured widely and has been Visiting Professor in African Literature at Stanford. He is Associate Professor in African Literature and Languages at the University of California, Los Angeles. His work on the Zulu epic goes on and in his recent work he has evolved a new approach to the African cosmological outlook and concept. This new approach constitutes the basis of his latest series of five epics.
[ 0235 ] Kunene, Mazisi. The Ancestors and the Scared Mountain: Poems. London. 1982. Heinemann. 0435902350. African Writers Series. Translated from Zulu. 75 pages. paperback. AWS235. Cover photograph by Ingrid Crewdson.

DESCRIPTION - THE ANCESTORS & THE SACRED MOUNTAIN is a work of concentrated power. In it Mazisi Kunene has brought to maturity a poetic style which gives both a reflection of the Zulu original and yets reads as English verse of imagination. .

Mazisi (Raymond) Kunene (12 May 1930 - 11 August 2006) was a South African poet best known for his poem Emperor Shaka the Great. While in exile from South Africa's apartheid regime, Kunene was an active supporter and organizer of the anti-apartheid movement in Europe and Africa. He would later teach at UCLA and become Africa's and South Africa's poet laureate. Kunene was born in Durban, in the modern province of KwaZulu-Natal. From very early he began writing poetry and short stories in Zulu, and by age eleven he was being published in local papers. He later undertook a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Natal in Zulu and history and later a Master of Arts in Zulu Poetry. His Master's thesis was titled An Analytical Survey of Zulu Poetry, Both Traditional and Modern. There he criticized the changing nature of Zulu literature, and its emulation of the Western tradition. He won a Bantu Literary Competition in 1956 and left for London to study at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London in 1959. He opposed the apartheid government as the head of the African United Front. Fleeing into exile from the country in 1959, he helped push for the anti-apartheid movement in Britain between 1959-1968. Kunene was closely affiliated with the African National Congress, quickly becoming their main representative in Europe and the United States in 1962. He would later become the director of finance for the ANC in 1972. He became a Professor of African literature at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1975 after lecturing in a number of universities as a cultural advisor for UNESCO. He remained at UCLA for nearly two decades, retiring in 1992. Kunene wrote and published poetry from very early in his life. His works were written originally in Zulu and then translated into English. In 1966, his works were banned by the Apartheid government of South Africa. In 1970, Kunene published Zulu Poems, an anthology of poems ranging from "moral reflection to political commentary." In Emperor Shaka the Great, published in English in 1979, Kunene tells the story of the rise of the Zulu under Shaka. World Literature Today contributor Christopher Larson described it as "a monumental undertaking and achievement by any standards." This extremely nationalistic work charted the growth of the Zulu nation under Shaka, as he reforms the military and the nation and conquers many of the tribes around Zululand. Anthem of the Decades:A Zulu Epic published in English in 1981 tells the Zulu legend of how death came to mankind. In 1982, Kunene published a second collection of poems titled The Ancestors and the Sacred Mountain: Poems containing 100 of his poems. This collection had a particular emphasis on socio-political topics. Unodumehlezi Kamenzi was published in 2017 on the tenth anniversary of his death. This book is the isiZulu edition of Emperor Shaka the Great and embraces Kunene's original dream to have his poem published as intended in the original isiZulu form. Kunene returned to South Africa in 1992 where he taught at the University of Natal until his retirement. UNESCO made him Africa's poet laureate in 1993 and in 2005 he became South Africa's first poet laureate. He died 11 August 2006 in Durban after a lengthy bout of cancer. He was survived by his wife and four children.
[ 0236 ] Mapanje, Jack. Of Chameleons and Gods: Poems. Oxford. 1991. Heinemann. 0435911945. African Writers Series. 80 pages. paperback. AWS236. Cover design by Vinston Bair.

DESCRIPTION - A volume of poetry written by a Malawi prisoner of conscience during his ten-year imprisonment. In the words of Jack Mapanje (1981): 'The verse in this volume spans some ten turbulent years in which I have been attempting to find a voice (or voices) as a way of hanging on to some sanity. Obviously here voices are too easily muffled, this is a difficult task to set oneself. This explains why the product of these energies sometimes seems to be too cryptic to be decoded.' 'full of fine physical imagery, acute observation and a strong sense of his own roots and values. Mapanje is fresh, lively, and inventively aggressive.' Peter Bland, London Magazine. Jack Mapanje, poet and theoretical linguist was imprisoned in Malawi from September 1987 to May 1991. He was detained without charge or trial.

Jack Mapanje is a poet, linguist, editor and human rights activist. He received the 1988 Rotterdam Poetry International Award for his first book of poems, Of Chameleons and Gods (1981) and the USA's Fonlon-Nichols Award for his contribution to poetry and human rights. He was head of the Department of English at the University of Malawi where the Malawi authorities arrested him in 1987 after his first book of poems had been banned, and he was released in 1991 after spending three years, seven months and sixteen days in prison, following an international outcry against his incarceration. He has since published five poetry books, The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prison (1993) from Heinemann, and Skipping Without Ropes (1998), The Last of the Sweet Bananas: New & Selected Poems (2004), Beasts of Nalunga (2007) and Greetings from Grandpa (2016) from Bloodaxe, as well as his prison memoir And Crocodiles Are Hungry at Night (Ayebia Clarke Publishing, 2011); he co-edited three anthologies, Oral Poetry from Africa (1983), Summer Fires: New Poetry of Africa (1983) and The African Writers' Handbook (1999); and edited the acclaimed Gathering Seaweed: African Prison Writing (2002). Beasts of Nalunga was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2007. Mapanje has held residences in the Netherlands, the Republic of Ireland and throughout Britain, including two years with the Wordsworth Trust at Dove Cottage in Cumbria. He lives in exile in York with his family, and is a visiting professor in the faculty of art at York St John University. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Bedfordshire in 2015.
[ 0237 ] Marechera, Dambudzo. Black Sunlight. London. 1980. Heinemann. 0435902377. African Writers Series. 128 pages. paperback. AWS237. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - DAMBUDZO MARECHERA made an immediate impact with his first book House of Hunger (AWS 207) which was a winner of The Guardian fiction prize. Doris Lessing said of it 'Marechera has in him the stuff and substance that go to make a great writer'. His reading from it was one of the highpoints of the African Writer's section of the 1979 Berlin Festival. Born in what at long last is now Zimbabwe he was thrown out of the University of Rhodesia and then went for a period to New College, Oxford. He says that he has a cockroach-eye view of life, as seen from bedding down on other people's floors. Dambudzo Marechera uses language without inhibitions. Christian, the principal character of Black Sunlight, is the creation of a very active imagination. He is a press photographer who moves across the span of a society in disorder, giving hasty glimpses of its chaos. He is an 'internal exile' who has lost the will to hold onto his environment. As usual, our readers are provoked to comparisons with other modern writers; this time it's the names Burgess, Beckett, Armah, Soyinka, and Joyce which whirl in and out of their words.

Dambudzo Marechera (born Charles William Dambudzo Marechera, June 4, 1952, Rusape, Southern Rhodesia - August 18, 1987, Harare) was a Zimbabwean novelist and poet.
[ 0238 ] Peters, Lenrie. Selected Poetry. London. 1981. Heinemann. 0435902385. African Writers Series. 143 pages. paperback. AWS238. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - This book provides a selection from Satellites and Katchikali as well as from Lenrie Peter's more recent work. He has an incisive style and although he writes within the tradition of European poetry he uses African themes and images. Romartus N. Egudu has recently said 'of all African poets of English expression, he is the least concerned about his country and most concerned about the fate of the continent as a whole. He considers himself first an African, and secondly a Gambian. Although Peters has not used the techniques of oral literature, or African linguistic devices, his poems reflect the African spirit and sensibility in their handling of socio-political problems'.

LENRIE PETERS has a voice which has demanded thoughtful consideration since Mbari published his first collection in 1964. It was followed by Sate//ites (AWS 37) and Katchikali (AWS 103). His novel is The Second Round (AWS 22). He was born in Banjul in The Gambia in 1932. He went to the Prince of Wales School, Freetown and Trinity College, Cambridge. He is a surgeon and worked in hospitals at Guildford and Northampton before returning to his native Gambia.
[ 0239 ] Kourouma, Ahmadou. The Suns of Independence. London. 1981. Heinemann. African Writers Series. Translated from the French Les soleils des independances by Adrian Adams. paperback. AWS239. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - The "Suns of Independence" considered a masterpiece of modern African literature, enables the reader to gain unique insight into African culture and conflicts. Through Fama and Salimata, the husband and wife at the heart of the story, Kourouma conveys the confusion that torments many Africans when a traditional and a later, more materialistic culture collide. The last of the Dumbuya princes who had reigned over the Malinke tribe before the European conquest, Fama seeks a place for himself within the new hierarchy of bureaucrats and border guards. Salimata, haunted by memories of a ritualistic excision and a brutal rape, searches for the means to have a child who will pass on the Dumbuya legacy to future generations. Interwoven with tales and proverbs from the ancient Malinke traditions, this modern novel brilliantly captures the struggles, desires, and dreams of a people in a West African country living through the tumultuous days of Independence.

Ahmadou Kourouma (24 November 1927 Boundiali - 11 December 2003 Lyon) was an Ivorian novelist. The eldest son of a distinguished MalinkE family, Ahmadou Kourouma was born in 1927 in Côte d'Ivoire. Raised by his uncle, he initially pursued studies in Bamako, Mali. From 1950 to 1954, when his country was still under French colonial control, he participated in French military campaigns in Indochina, after which he journeyed to France to study mathematics in Lyon. Kourouma returned to his native Côte d'Ivoire after it won its independence in 1960, yet he quickly found himself questioning the government of FElix Houphouët-Boigny. After brief imprisonment, Kourouma spent several years in exile, first in Algeria (1964–69), then in Cameroon (1974–84) and Togo (1984–94), before finally returning to live in Côte d'Ivoire. Determined to speak out against the betrayal of legitimate African aspirations at the dawn of independence, Kourouma was drawn into an experiment in fiction. His first novel, Les soleils des indEpendances (The Suns of Independence, 1970) contains a critical treatment of post-colonial governments in Africa. Twenty years later, his second book Monnè, outrages et dEfis, a history of a century of colonialism, was published. In 1998, he published En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages (translated as Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote), a satire of postcolonial Africa in the style of Voltaire in which a griot recounts the story of a tribal hunter's transformation into a dictator, inspired by president GnassingbE EyadEma of Togo. In 2000, he published Allah n'est pas obligE (translated as Allah is Not Obliged), a tale of an orphan who becomes a child soldier when traveling to visit his aunt in Liberia. At the outbreak of civil war in Côte d'Ivoire in 2002, Kourouma stood against the war as well as against the concept of Ivorian nationalism, calling it 'an absurdity which has led us to chaos.' President Laurent Gbagbo accused him of supporting rebel groups from the north of the country. In France, each of Ahmadou Kourouma's novels has been greeted with great acclaim, sold exceptionally well, and been showered with prizes including the Prix Renaudot in the year 2000 and the Prix Goncourt des LycEens for Allah n'est pas obligE. In the English-speaking world, Kourouma has yet to make much of an impression: despite some positive reviews, his work remains largely unknown outside university classes in African fiction. At the time of his death, he was working on a sequel to Allah n'est pas obligE, entitled Quand on refuse on dit non (translated roughly as 'When One Disagrees, One Says No'), in which the protagonist of the first novel, a child soldier, is demobilized and returns to his home in Côte d'Ivoire, where a new regional conflict has arisen.
[ 0240 ] Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary. London. 1981. Heinemann. 0435902407. African Writers Series. 232 pages. paperback. AWS240. Cover design by Christie Archer. Cover design based on a poster by the Ngugi Defence Committee, London.

DESCRIPTION - The international outcry over Ngugi's detention without trial by the Kenyan authorities reached him even in Kamiti Maximum Security Prison. With great accomplishment, he describes the purposeful degradation and humiliation of the political detainees, the neglect and casual cruelty that undermined their health, the debilitating blend of tension and tedium that marked each day in prison. From time to time the routine was fractured: by acute distress, when Ngugi refused to wear the chains that were a condition of family visits; by astonishment, when a warder lectured Ngugi about the tyranny of foreign languages; by an agonizing sense of loss, when Ngugi's novel, written in Gikuyu, was seized by the prison guards. (It was later returned and appeared in English under the title DEVIL ON THE CROSS). An artfully integrated series of reflections enables him to consider his own writing, the nature of imprisonment and the way forward for the people of Kenya. .

Ngugi wa Thiong'o (born January 5, 1938) is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gikuyu. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal, Mutiiri. In 1977, Ngugi embarked upon a novel form of theater in his native Kenya which sought to liberate the theatrical process from what he held to be ‘the general bourgeois education system', by encouraging spontaneity and audience participation in the performances. Ngugi's project sought to ‘demystify' the theatrical process, and to avoid the ‘process of alienation [which] produces a gallery of active stars and an undifferentiated mass of grateful admirers' which, according to Ngugi, encourages passivity in ‘ordinary people'. Although Ngaahika Ndeenda was a commercial success, it was shut down by the authoritarian Kenyan regime six weeks after its opening. Ngugi was subsequently imprisoned for over a year. Adopted as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, the artist was released from prison, and fled Kenya. In the United States, he taught at Yale University for some years, and has since also taught at New York University, with a dual professorship in Comparative Literature and Performance Studies, and the University of California, Irvine. Ngugi has frequently been regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His son is the author Mukoma wa Ngugi. Ngugi was born in Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kiambu district, Kenya, of Kikuyu descent, and baptised James Ngugi. His family was caught up in the Mau Mau War; his half brother Mwangi was actively involved in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, and his mother was tortured at Kamriithu homeguard post. He received a B.A. in English from Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, in 1963; during his education, a play of his, THE BLACK HERMIT, was produced in Kampala in 1962. He published his first novel, WEEP NOT, CHILD, in 1964, which he wrote while attending the University of Leeds in England. It was the first novel in English to be published by an East African. His second novel, THE RIVER BETWEEN (1965), has as its background the Mau Mau rebellion, and described an unhappy romance between Christians and non-Christians. THE RIVER BETWEEN is currently on Kenya's national secondary school syllabus. His novel A Grain of Wheat (1967) marked his embrace of Fanonist Marxism. He subsequently renounced English, Christianity, and the name James Ngugi as colonialist; he changed his name back to Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and began to write in his native Gikuyu and Swahili. The uncensored political message of his 1977 play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I WILL MARRY WHEN I WANT) provoked then Vice President Daniel arap Moi to order his arrest. While detained in the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, he wrote the first modern novel in Gikuyu, Caitaani mutharaba-Ini (DEVIL ON THE CROSS), on prison-issued toilet paper. After his release, he was not reinstated to his job as professor at Nairobi University, and his family was harassed. Due to his writing about the injustices of the dictatorial government at the time, Ngugi and his family were forced to live in exile. Only after Arap Moi was voted out of office, 22 years later, was it safe for them to return. His later works include Detained, his prison diary (1981), DECOLONISING THE MIND: THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE IN AFRICAN LITERATURE (1986), an essay arguing for African writers' expression in their native languages, rather than European languages, in order to renounce lingering colonial ties and to build an authentic African literature, and MATIGARI (1987), one of his most famous works, a satire based on a Gikuyu folktale. In 1992 he became a professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University, where he held the Erich Maria Remarque Chair. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature as well as the Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine. On August 8, 2004, Ngugi returned to Kenya as part of a month-long tour of East Africa. On August 11, robbers broke into his apartment: they assaulted both the Professor and his wife, and stole money and a computer. Since then, Ngugi has returned to America, and in the summer 2006 the American publishing firm Random House published his first new novel in nearly two decades, WIZARD OF THE CROW, translated to English from Gikuyu by the author. On November 10, 2006, while in San Francisco at Hotel Vitale at the Embarcadero, Ngugi was harassed and ordered to leave the hotel by an employee. The event led to a public outcry and angered the Kenyan community in the San Francisco Bay area and abroad, prompting an apology by the hotel.
[ 0241 ] Akare, Thomas. The Slums. London. 1981. Heinemann. 0435902415. African Writers Series. 182 pages. paperback. AWS241. Cover design by John Myers.

DESCRIPTION - While other writers have described slum life almost as visitors, Akare writes from the centre of deprivation with documentary detachment and trenchant cynicism. He does not sentimentalize the plight of his dispossessed hero, Eddy, who makes a living of a kind washing cars in Nairobi's slums and is taken up by the attractive Zakia. She and her highly placed women friends belong to the other Nairobi, where affluence and boredom take their toll. They come to the slums to encounter the real life, to find young lovers and to consult witch doctors about the medicine that will bring home their wayward husbands and restore their families to happiness. The slum dwellers are familiar with the currency of exploitation and repay the women in the same coin. The procession of days devoted to cheating, gambling, drinking, drug-taking and prostitution leads nowhere; it is nothing more than the acceptance of death. The allegory is a harsh and unyielding one. Akare's condemnation of poverty and its causes is total, and he offers no solution, cultural, philosophical or economic. His pessimism speaks for a new generation that rejects idealism and mocks the hollow rhetoric of progress.

THOMAS AKARE was born in Kisumu, Kenya, in 1950. He was educated at St Patrick's School and at Highway Secondary School. In 1971 he joined Nation Newspapers and later worked for Stellascope before turning to full-time writing.
[ 0242 ] Aluko, T. M. Wrong Ones in the Dock. London. 1982. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS242..

DESCRIPTION - The plot of Wrong Ones in the Dock is based on an incident early 1980s in which forty-three of the sixty-two suspects standing trial in some courts in Lagos were suffocated in the enclosed lorry conveying them to and from the courts. The lorry with its passengers was left under the scorching heat with very little air space. The result is that forty- three suspects died. The novel is centred on two of the remaining survivors- a man and his son (Jonathan and Paul Egbor respectively). The crisis arises at No 22 Fasanya Street in Lagos. A quarrel occurs among some neighbours- the families of Gilbert Bassey and Jonathan Egbor. This fracas results in a fight Gilbert in a attempt to hit Jonathan with a club inadvertently clubs his own mother to death and passes the guilt over to the opponent. This warrants police arrest and detention of Jonathan and his son Paul.

T. M. ALUKO was born in 1918 at Ilesha and educated at Government College, Ibadan. He studied civil engineering and town planning in Lagos and London, and in 1960 was appointed Director of Public Works for Western Nigeria. He has now joined the staff of the University of Lagos. He first attracted notice through short stories which won prizes in contests organized by the British Council in Nigeria. A number of his stories and articles were then published In West Africa Review and broadcast by the BBC African Service. One Man One Wife was first published in 1959 by the Nigerian Printing and Publishing Company in Lagos. Since then he has published two other novels, ONE MAN ONE MATCHET (1964) and KINSMAN AND FOREMAN (1966).
[ 0243 ] Mutloatse, Mothobi (editor). Africa South: Contemporary Writings. London. 1981. Heinemann. 0435902431. African Writers Series. 208 pages. paperback. AWS243..

DESCRIPTION -

Mothobi Mutloatse (born in 1952), is a writer and publisher. Born in Johannesburg, he gained experience in journalism with the Golden City Post, Weekend World, and The Voice before founding Skotaville. Deeply interested in largely forgotten black literary and historical traditions, he has compiled anthologies of black writing including: Forced Landing: Africa South-Contemporary Writing (1980) (banned on publication), a ‘cultural history penned down by the black man himself.' Reconstruction: Ninety Years of Black Historical Literature (1981) focuses on hitherto ignored historical and journalistic texts by such writers as Tiyo Soga, Hope Dube, Noni Jabavu, and Sol T. Plaatje. Most recently Struik has published Tauza - Bob Gosani's People about the late Bob Gosani, one of the original Drum photographers of the 1950s, who worked with all the big names of that era. Mutloatse's creative writing comprises short fiction and a work for the stage and he has also written a book for children. He also served on the M-Net Literary Awards panel of advisors in 2005.
[ 0244 ] Ya-Otto, John (with Ole Gjerstad and Michael Mercer). Battlefront Namibia: an autobiography. London. 1982. Heinemann. 043590244x. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS244..

DESCRIPTION - The author tells the stirring story of his development from a school teacher to a leader deeply involved in the Namibian fight for independence from South Africa.

John Ya-Otto (10 February 1938 - 25 May 1994) was a Namibian trade unionist, politician, author and diplomat. Ya-Otto began a career in politics following the 1959 Old Location Massacre in Windhoek's Old Location black township. Eventually, Ya-Otto fled into exile and worked as SWAPO's labor minister. He established relationships with trade unionists around the world. In 1981, he published his only book Battlefront Namibia, detailing SWAPO's and his own struggle for independence. He was arrested in 1966 following the Battle of Ongulumbashe, which was the opening attack by SWAPO on South African military and police in northern Namibia. He and 38 other SWAPO activists were arrested, with most receiving 10-year prison sentences. However, due to a lack of case against him, Ya-Otto received a five-year suspended sentence and was released a month later. Following independence, he returned to Namibia and was elected to the National Assembly of Namibia with SWAPO. Later, he was assigned the position of Ambassador to Angola due to failing health. He died in Luanda on 25 May 1994.
[ 0246 ] Ngugi wa Thiong'o & Ngugi, wa Mirii. I Will Marry When I Want. London. 1982. Heinemann. 0435902466. African Writers Series. 122 pages. paperback. AWS246. Cover design by Martin Lovis.

DESCRIPTION - In I WILL MARRY WHEN I WANT. The two authors show the plight of poor peasants in a system in which only the rich and the powerful control every aspect of life. English version of the Gikuyu play ‘Ngaahika Ndeenda'. This is the renowned play which was developed with Kikuyu actors at the Kamiriithu Cultural centre at Limuru. It proved so powerful, especially in its use of song, that it was banned and was probably one of the factors leading Ngugi to detention without trial. The original Gikuyu edition went to three printings in the first three months of publication. In March 1982 the Kamiriithu theatre was dismantled by the authorities when the Gikuyu musical by the two Ngugis, Mother, Cry for Me, was in final rehearsal waiting for a license for performance at the National Theatre in Nairobi.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o (born January 5, 1938) is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gikuyu. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. Ngugi wa Mirii (1951 - 3 May 2008) was a Kenyan playwright who lived in exile in Zimbabwe, where he died in Harare. He was known for his play, I Will Marry When I Want, which he co-authored with fellow Gikuyu writer Ng?g? wa Thiong'o. Born in Roromo, Limuru, Kenya, Ngugi wa Mirii was educated at Ngenia Secondary School and from 1972 to 1974 worked with the Kenya Posts and Telecommunications Corporation. He took a diploma in Adult Education at the Institute of Adult Studies, Nairobi University, and then joined the Institute of Development Studies. While working there he became involved with peasants and workers in community development at Kamiriithu, Limuru. In 1982, he went to Zimbabwe where he lived in exile. He was known as a supporter of Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF. On 3 May 2008, Ngugi wa Mirii was killed in a car accident in Zimbabwe, at the age of 57. He drove into a stationary lorry nearby the suburb of Eastlea.
[ 0247 ] Head, Bessie. When Rain Clouds Gather. London. 1987. Heinemann. 0435907263. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS247..

DESCRIPTION - Rural Botswana is the backdrop for When Rain Clouds Gather, the first novel published by one of Africa's leading woman writers in English, Bessie Head (1937-1986). Inspired by her own traumatic life experiences as an outcast in Apartheid South African society and as a refugee living at the Bamangwato Development Association Farm in Botswana, Head's tough and telling classic work is set in the poverty-stricken village of Golema Mmidi, a haven to exiles. A South African political refugee and an Englishman join forces to revolutionize the villagers' traditional farming methods, but their task is fraught with hazards as the pressures of tradition, opposition from the local chief, and the unrelenting climate threaten to divide and devastate the fragile community. Head's layered, compelling story confronts the complexities of such topics as social and political change, conflict between science and traditional ways, tribalism, the role of traditional African chiefs, religion, race relations, and male female relations.

Bessie Emery Head (6 July 1937 - 17 April 1986) is usually considered Botswana's most influential writer. Bessie Emery Head was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, the child of a wealthy white South African woman and a black servant when interracial relationships were illegal in South Africa. It was claimed that her mother was mentally ill so that she could be sent to a quiet location to then give birth to Bessie without the neighbors knowing. However, the exact circumstances are disputed, and some of Bessie Head's comments, though often quoted as straight autobiography, are in fact from fictionalized settings. In the 1950s and '60s she was a teacher, then a journalist for the South African magazine Drum. In 1964 she moved to Botswana (then still the Bechuanaland Protectorate) as a refugee, having been peripherally involved with Pan-African politics. It would take 15 years for Head to obtain Botswana citizenship. Head settled in Serowe, the largest of Botswana's ‘villages' (i.e. traditional settlements as opposed to settler towns). Serowe was famous both for its historical importance, as capital of the Bamangwato people, and for the experimental Swaneng school of Patrick van Rensburg. The deposed chief of the Bamangwato, Seretse Khama, was soon to become the first President of independent Botswana. Her early death in 1986 (aged 48) from hepatitis came just at the point where she was starting to achieve recognition as a writer and was no longer so desperately poor. Most of Bessie Head's important works are set in Serowe, in particular the three novels When Rain Clouds Gather, Maru, and A Question of Power. One of her best works is When Rain Clouds Gather, in which she writes about a troubled young man called Makhaya who runs away from his birthplace, South Africa, to become a refugee in a little village called Golema Mmidi, in the heart of Botswana. Here he is faced with many challenges, one of which is the fact that Chief Matenge does not allow his presence in the village. He meets a white man named Gilbert and starts a whole new journey into the unknown. Head also published a number of short stories, including the collection The Collector of Treasures. She published a book on the history of Serowe, the village she settled in, called Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind. Her last novel, A Bewitched Crossroad, is historical, set in nineteenth-century Botswana. She had also written a story of two prophets, one wealthy and one who lived poorly called ‘Jacob: The Faith-Healing Priest'. Head's work, which emphasised the value of ordinary life and humble people, was more in touch with an earlier trend in African writing than many recent writers, who have made overtly political comments. Her writing has endured nonetheless. Religious ideas feature prominently at times, as in the work A Question of Power. It is interesting to note that Head was initially brought up as a Christian; however, she was later influenced by Hinduism (to which she was exposed through South Africa's Indian community). Most of her writing took place while she was in exile in Botswana. An exception is the early novel The Cardinals (published posthumously), written before she left South Africa. In some ways Bessie Head remained an outsider in her adopted country, and some discern she had something of a love-hate relationship with it. At times she suffered mental health problems and on one occasion put up a public notice making bizarre and shocking allegations about then President Sir Seretse Khama, which led to a period in Lobatse Mental Hospital. A Question of Power is based partly on those experiences. In 2007 the Bessie Head Heritage Trust was established, along with the Bessie Head Literature Awards. In July 2007 the library in Pietermaritzburg was renamed the Bessie Head library in her honor. In 2003 she was awarded the South African ‘Order of Ikhamanga in Gold' for her ‘exceptional contribution to literature and the struggle for social change, freedom and peace.'
[ 0248 ] Ba, Mariama. So Long a Letter. London. 1983. Heinemann. 0435902482. Translated from the French by Modupe Bode-Thomas. Winner of the Noma Prize. African Writers Series. 90 pages. paperback. AWS248. Cover photograph courtesy of Berghs Foirlag AB, Sweden.

DESCRIPTION - SO LONG A LETTER is a sequence of reminiscences, some wistful, some bitter, recounted by Senegalese school teacher Ramatoulaye, who has recently been widowed. The letter, addressed to her old friend Aissatou, is a record of her emotional struggle for survival after her husband's abrupt decision to take a second wife. Although sanctioned by Islam, his action is a calculated betrayal of her trust and a brutal rejection of their life together. The novel is a perceptive testimony to the plight of those articulate women who live in social milieux dominated by attitudes and values that deny them their proper place. `It is not only the fact that this is the most deeply felt presentation of the female condition in African fiction which gives distinction to this novel, but also its undoubted literary qualities, which seem to place it among the best novels that have come out of our continent' - West Africa.

Mariama Bâ (April 17, 1929–August 17, 1981) was a Senegalese author and feminist, who wrote in French. Born in Dakar, she was raised a Muslim, but at an early age came to criticise what she perceived as inequalities between the sexes resulting from African traditions. Raised by her traditional grandparents, she had to struggle even to gain an education, because they did not believe that girls should be taught. Bâ later married a Senegalese member of Parliament, Obèye Diop, but divorced him and was left to care for their nine children. Her frustration with the fate of African women - as well as her ultimate acceptance of it - is expressed in her first novel, So Long a Letter. In it she depicts the sorrow and resignation of a woman who must share the mourning for her late husband with his second, younger wife. Abiola Irele called it ‘the most deeply felt presentation of the female condition in African fiction'. This short book was awarded the first Noma Prize for Publishing in Africa in 1980. Bâ died a year later after a protracted illness, before her second novel, Scarlet Song, which describes the hardships a woman faces when her husband abandons her for a younger woman he knew at youth, was published.
[ 0248 ] Ba, Mariama. So Long a Letter. Portsmouth. 1989. Heinemann. 0435905554. Translated from the French by Modupe Bode-Thomas. African Writers Series. 90 pages. paperback. AWS248. Cover illustration by John Montgomery. Cover design by Keith Pointing.

DESCRIPTION - Winner Of The Noma Award. SO LONG A LETTER is a sequence of reminiscences, some wistful, some bitter, recounted by Senegalese school teacher Ramatoulaye, who has recently been widowed. The letter, addressed to her old friend Aissatou, is a record of her emotional struggle for survival after her husband's abrupt decision to take a second wife. Although sanctioned by Islam, his action is a calculated betrayal of her trust and a brutal rejection of their life together. The novel is a perceptive testimony to the plight of those articulate women who live in social milieux dominated by attitudes and values that deny them their proper place. `It is not only the fact that this is the most deeply felt presentation of the female condition in African fiction which gives distinction to this novel, but also its undoubted literary qualities, which seem to place it among the best novels that have come out of our continent' - West Africa.

Mariama Bâ (April 17, 1929–August 17, 1981) was a Senegalese author and feminist, who wrote in French. Born in Dakar, she was raised a Muslim, but at an early age came to criticise what she perceived as inequalities between the sexes resulting from African traditions. Raised by her traditional grandparents, she had to struggle even to gain an education, because they did not believe that girls should be taught. Bâ later married a Senegalese member of Parliament, Obèye Diop, but divorced him and was left to care for their nine children. Her frustration with the fate of African women - as well as her ultimate acceptance of it - is expressed in her first novel, So Long a Letter. In it she depicts the sorrow and resignation of a woman who must share the mourning for her late husband with his second, younger wife. Abiola Irele called it ‘the most deeply felt presentation of the female condition in African fiction'. This short book was awarded the first Noma Prize for Publishing in Africa in 1980. Bâ died a year later after a protracted illness, before her second novel, Scarlet Song, which describes the hardships a woman faces when her husband abandons her for a younger woman he knew at youth, was published.
[ 0249 ] Obasanjo, Olusegun. My Command: An Account of the Nigerian Civil War, 1967-1970. London. 1981. Heinemann. 0435902490. African Writers Series. 177 pages. paperback. AWS249..

DESCRIPTION - MY COMMAND is the first book about the Nigerian Civil War to be written by one of the top commanders - one who was eventually to become Head of State. The author starts with a concise survey of the political background between Independence in 1960 and the outbreak of war seven years later. When the war began the author was a colonel in charge of 2 Area Command. After two years he replaced Colonel Adekunle as Commander of the 3 Marine Commando Division, which played a crucial role in winning the Nigerian Civil War for the Federal Government. The book gives a vivid and detailed account of the military operations on all fronts, which will be of absorbing interest to the lay reader as well as to those concerned with military history. The author concludes with an account of the management of the last days, with an objective assessment of foreign attitudes and involvement, and with a chapter on the human aspect. Throughout, the author illuminates his narrative with interesting anecdotes which reveal him not only as an outstanding commander, but as a man of great humanity. General Olusegun Obasanjo was Head of State from February 1976 until 1, October '1979 when he handed over to an elected civilian regime, thus ending another epoch in the history of the country.

GENERAL OLUSEGUN OBASANJO was born at Abeokuta, Ogun State, on 5 March 1937. After attending Abeokuta Baptist Boys High School, he joined the Nigerian Army in 1958. In May 1969, he was appointed General Officer commanding the 3 Marine Commando Division. Following the abortive coup d'Etat of 13 February 1976, in which General Murtala Mohammed was assassinated, General Obasanjo became the Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. In this position, he led Nigeria back to civilian rule, handing over to an elected government on 1 October 1979. General Obasanjo is the first Distinguished Fellow of the University of Ibadan and now lives in retirement in Abeokuta. He devotes his time to farming and writing - especially about Nigeria's recent past.
[ 0250 ] Ousmane, Sembene. The Last of the Empire. London. 1983. Heinemann. 0435902504. African Writers Series. Translated from the French by Adrian Adams. 238 pages. paperback. AWS250. Cover design By Ingrid Crewdson.

DESCRIPTION - The jaws of the telex began to grind. The Minister of Information tore off the text which was being put out by the European Press Agency: SINCE THIS MORNING THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC, LEON MIGNANE HAS PERFORMED NONE OF HIS DUTIES. ALL HIS APPOINTMENTS HAVE BEEN POSTPONED TO A LATER DATE. CONTRADICTORY RUMOURS ARE TO BE HEARD IN WELL-INFORMED CIRCLES. THE MINISTER OF STATE IN CHARGE OF JUSTICE HANDED IN HIS RESIGNATION LAST NIGHT.. Doyen Cheikh TidianeSalI had decided to resign not because of complicity but because he, like the President, was in his eighties. He was as mystified as the rest of his cabinet colleagues: 'A President who disappears into thin air! A Trick. Why? To what end?' Not even the Minister of Finance Mam Lat SoukabE, despite his affair with the President's wife, knew. Not even Daouda the Prime Minister knew, even though he got the President's doctor to tell the press otherwise. All the evidence left was a crashed car and a dead Presidential chauffeur. Have French agents been involved? Does the army know? Is somebody trying to destabilize the old and tired regime? If so they are succeeding. Hour by hour, day by tense day the events escalate making a coup ever more probable.

SEMBENE OUSMANE, filmmaker and writer, is probably best-known for his novel of the great Senegal Dakar-Niger railway strike God's Bits of Wood (AWS 63). However, his powerful films of his own political parables, The Money Order (AWS 92) and Xala (AWS 175) have given him a unique eminence amongst writers of the last quarter century. Ceddo his film in Wolof was banned in Senegal, the country in which he was born in "1923. His political message about the years of independence has given him a great prestige among intellectuals and people alike; his reputation can only be compared to that of Ngugi.
[ 0251 ] Lewin, Hugh. Bandiet: Seven Years in a South African Prison. London. 1981. Heinemann. 0435902512. African Writers Series. 229 pages. paperback. AWS251..

DESCRIPTION - HUGH LEWIN was born in the Eastern Transvaal, South Africa, in 1939. He went to Rhodes University. While there he became a member of the national executive of the National Union of South African Students, and his passport was withdrawn after he had attended a students' conference in Nigeria in 1960. He worked as a sub-editor on Drum and other papers. In July 1964 he was detained under the 90-day law and served a full seven-year prison sentence. During his imprisonment he gained two more degrees. On release, rather than go under 24-hour arrest, he left South Africa on a one-way visa. In London he has worked for the International Defence and Aid Fund and as a journalist on The Observer, The Guardian and South. He is now training journalists in Zimbabwe in association with Moto. a fine book, honest, unsensational, delicately perceived, powerfully written - and, occasionally, it is magnificent.' Sunday Times moments of overwhelming feeling the chapter on the hanging jail is almost unbearable.' The Guardian. simply-written and harrowing account of the appalling price conscience must pay in South Africa.' New Statesman 'A splendid book. Quite apart from the quality of the writing and the obvious truthfulness of the story, which is free from all rancour and exaggeration, it is a document of historical value. Alan Paton '. readable, often exciting, and sometimes funny account of a tragic situation.' New Society.

Hugh Lewin (3 December 1939 - 16 January 2019) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and writer. He was imprisoned from 1964 to 1971 for his activities in support of the African Resistance Movement, and then spent 20 years in exile, returning to South Africa in 1992. An account of his experience, Bandiet (Afrikaans: 'bandit'), won the Olive Schreiner Prize in 2003.
[ 0252 ] Farah, Nuruddin. Sardines. London. 1982. Heinemann. 0435902520. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS252..

DESCRIPTION - Winner of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Farah's landmark Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship trilogy is comprised by the novels Sweet and Sour Milk, Sardines, and Close Sesame. In this volume, the second of the three, a woman loses her job as editor of the national newspaper and then finds her efforts to instill her daughter with a sense of dignity and independence threatened by an oppressive government and the traditions of conservative Islam. Sardines brilliantly combines a social commentary on life under a dictatorship with a compassionate exploration of African feminist issues.

Nuruddin Farah was born in 1945 in Baidoa, in what is now the Republic of Somalia. His Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship trilogy consists of the novels Sweet and Sour Milk, Sardines, and Close Sesame. His other books include From a Crooked Rib, A Naked Needle, and Maps. In 1991, he received the Swedish Tucholsky Literary Award, given to literary exiles, and he was the recipient of the German DAAD fellowship in 1990.
[ 0253 ] Aniebo, I. N. C. Of Wives, Talismans, and the Dead: Short Stories. London. 1983. Heinemann. 0435902539. African Writers Series. Arranged by Willfred F. Feuser. 224 pages. paperback. AWS253..

DESCRIPTION - Of Wives, Talismans and the Dead is a collection of short stories by influential author, I.N.C. Aniebo. Written originally in the 1960s, these tales explore superstition, Westernisation, and the rising tensions of an unequal society in post-independent Nigeria. 'Now, dry your tears my child,' his father said gently. 'I am going to drive him, away. He will not disturb you again. Dead men should not wander in the land of the living.' In the title story, 'Of Wives, Talismans and the Dead', eleven-year-old Ibe worries about embarrassing himself in front of his father, finding time to play hide and seek with his friends, and, most importantly, his impending marriage with a young girl named Egeolu. Ibe's tender innocence is set against the gravity of death and marriage as I.N.C. Aniebo captures the enduring traditions of 1960s Nigeria from the perspective of a young boy. Throughout the collection, Aniebo masterfully weaves together tales of exploitation, cultural change, and the desire to challenge authority. Of Wives, Talismans and the Dead is an outstanding illustration of classic Nigerian literature.

Ifeanyichukwu Ndubuisi Chikezie Aniebo, commonly known as I. N. C. Aniebo (born 31 March 1939), is a Nigerian novelist and short story writer, who has been called ‘the master craftsman of the Nigerian short story'. Aniebo trained as an artillery officer; his first stories were written under a pseudonym to avoid censorship. He fought for Biafra in the Nigerian Civil War, and The Anonymity of Sacrifice (1974) gives a sense of the horrors and personal conflicts of that war. Aniebo subsequently studied at the University of California, Los Angeles, before returning to Nigeria in 1979 to teach Creative Writing and Literature at the English Department of the University of Port Harcourt.
[ 0254 ] Scanlon, Paul A. (editor). Stories from Central and Southern Africa. London. 1989. Heinemann. 0435902547. African Writers Series. 207 pages. paperback. AWS254. Cover photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - This is a teaching anthology which illustrates the art of short fiction and the short story with examples from Zimbabwe and Malawi, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland as well as from the longer established South African tradition. Professor Scanlon has adopted a broader approach as a result of the experience of teaching in Southern Africa. Includes 'Beggar my neighbour' by Dan Jacobson, 'Kwashiorkor' by Can Themba, 'About a girl who met a dimo' by Susheela Curtis, 'Hajji Musa and the Hindu fire-walker' by Ahmed Essop, 'The sisters' by Pauline Smith, 'Tselane and the giant' by B. L. Leshoai, 'Johannesburg, Johannesburg' by Nathaniel Nakasa, 'Coming of the dry season' by Charles Mungoshi, 'A soldier's embrace' by Nadine Gordimer, 'Witchcraft' by Bessie Head, 'The old woman' by Luis B. Honwana, 'Dopper and Papist' by Herman C. Bosman, 'The dishonest chief' by Ellis Singano and A. A. Roscoe, 'The Soweto bride' by Mbulelo Mzamane, 'A sunrise on the veld' by Doris Lessing, 'The soldier without an ear' by Paul Zeleza, 'Riva' by Richard Rive, 'Sunlight in Trebizond Street' by Alan Paton, 'The Christmas reunion' by Dambudzo Marechera, 'The king of the waters' by A. C. Jordan, 'Power' by Jack Cope, and 'In corner B' by Es'kia (Zeke) Mphahlele.

Paul Scanlon was Head of the Department of English at the University of Botswana and Swaziland. He has also taught in universities in Nigeria, Jamaica, Barbados, Ireland and Canada and is now Professor of English at the University College of Bahrain.
[ 0255 ] Iroh, Eddie. The Siren in the Night. Exeter. 1982. Heinemann. 0435902555. African Writers Series. 203 pages. paperback. AWS255. Cover illustration by Martin Lovis. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - The Nigerian civil war has ended. Biafra has surrendered. But a new war is just beginning. Ben Odo Udaja, a one-time Colonel of the People's Army, defected from Biafra towards the end of the war. At first he is apprehensive about his fate. With surrender and amnesty, however, he begins to see less to fear, except perhaps reprisals from his former Biafran collaborators. But Colonel Mike Kolawole, head of the Federal Security and Intelligence Directorate, himself no stranger to acts of mindlessness, is convinced that amnesty should not mean amnesia. Kolawole considers the Biafran surrender is a ruse and Ben Udaja and his ilk are the new leaders of a rebel resurgence. In this fast moving thriller, Eddie Iroh brings his war trilogy to its exciting conclusion.

EDDIE IROH, author of Forty-eight Guns for the General (AWS 189) and Toads of War (AWS 213), now completes his action-packed trilogy of the war in Biafra. During the war he was desk editor for the Biafran War Information Bureau. Afterwards he worked for Reuters, the news agency, for Evans, the publishers, and then for the Features and Documentary Department of Nigerian Television, Enugu. Since 1979 he has been the Head and Controller of the Documentary Department, Nigerian Television Authority, Lagos, where he is currently writing and directing a documentary series on the origin and development of the Nigerian peoples called ‘Portrait of a Culture'.
[ 0256 ] Bruner, Charlotte H. (editor). Unwinding Threads: Writing By Women in Africa. London. 1983. Heinemann. 0435902563. African Writers Series. 208 pages. paperback. AWS256. Cover design by Diana Overton.

DESCRIPTION - An African woman writing fiction today has to be exceptional. She has to defy prevailing tradition to speak out as an individual. This anthology contains short stories and extracts from novels by women all over Africa. The pioneer West Africans wrote to raise national pride for their countries' coming independence. Southern African activists raise their voices against political and economic repression and racism. Northern African women seek to lift their veils to emerge from the enforced domesticity and female servitude. The experience, the goal, the language, the audience, differ from one writer to another. However, their works all affirm, as Doris Lessing wrote: ‘that filter which is a woman's way of looking at life has the same validity as that filter which is a man's way.'

Charlotte H. Bruner (1917–1999) was an American scholar who was one of the first in the United States to write extensively about, and translate the work of, African women writers. She was inducted into the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame in 1997. Charlotte Hughes Johnston was born May 8, 1917 in Urbana, Illinois, to Charles Hughes Johnston and Nell Converse (Bomar) Johnston. She received her undergraduate education at the University of Illinois (B.A., 1938) and her M.A. from Columbia University in 1939. That same year, she married David Kincaid Bruner, who would become a faculty member in the Department of English and Speech at Iowa State College (which later became Iowa State University). They had two children, Nell and Charles. Bruner joined the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures as a professor of French at Iowa State College in 1954 and retired from the university in 1987 after more than three decades of teaching and research. As a scholar, she dedicated her career to writing about and publishing translations of literature by African women, helping to create a wider public for these writers. She edited two volumes of short stories by African women: The Heinemann Book of African Women's Writings (1993) and Unwinding Threads (1994) and was one of several editors for The Feminist Companion to Literature in English (1990). She has been called an outstanding pioneer in the fields of both African studies and world literature, pursuing her studies at a time when American academics were largely uninterested in African literature and taught mainly European classics. In the early 1970s, Bruner and David spent a year in Africa interviewing African writers, and on their return three dozen of their interviews were aired as a series of radio programs entitled "Talking Sticks". From 1980 to 1986, Bruner cohosted (with David) a weekly series of radio programs, "First Person Feminine", in which she read from and discussed international women's literature. Bruner served as vice-president of the African Literature Association. She was inducted into the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame in 1997, two years before her death on December 4, 1999. Her name is inscribed in the university's Plaza of Heroines.
[ 0257 ] Calder, Angus / Mapanje, Jack / Peterse, Cosmo (editors). Summer Fires: New Poetry of Africa. London. 1983. Heinemann. 0435902571. African Writers Series. 116 pages. paperback. AWS257..

DESCRIPTION - An anthology of entries from the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award.

Angus Lindsay Ritchie Calder (5 February 1942 – 5 June 2008) was a Scottish writer, historian, and poet. Initially studying English literature, he became increasingly interested in political history and wrote a landmark study on Britain during the Second World War in 1969 entitled The People's War. He subsequently wrote several other historical works but became increasingly interested in literature and poetry and worked primarily as a writer, though often holding a number of university teaching positions. A socialist, he was a prominent Scottish public intellectual during the 1970s and 1980s. Jack Mapanje was born in Malawi in 1944 and has lived in Malawi and Britain. He is a poet and theoretical linguist, his first collection of poems Of Chameleons and Gods was published by Heinemann in 1981. On its second reprint, Of Chameleons and Gods was banned in Malawi and Mapanje was subsequently detailed in Mikuyu Maximum Detention Centre near Zomba for three years, seven months and sixteen days. No charges were brought against him. He was released in May 1991 following intense pressure from fellow writers and activists. His second title The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prison (1993) was also published in the AWS. He is a distinguished academic currently based at the University of Leeds. He lives in England with his wife Mercy and three children. Cosmo George Leipoldt Pieterse (born 1930 in Windhoek, Namibia) is a South African playwright, actor, poet, literary critic and anthologist. Cosmo Pieterse went to the University of Cape Town and taught in Cape Town until leaving South Africa in 1965. He was banned under the Riotous Assemblies Act of 1962. He subsequently taught in London and at Ohio University in the United States: arriving at Ohio University in 1970, he became a tenured faculty member in 1976. However, after travelling to meet his London publisher in 1979 he was denied re-entry to the US on classified information, allegedly for being "a suspected communist". In London, in the later 1960s and early '70s, Pieterse worked for the BBC World Service at Bush House and for the Transcription Centre, an organisation that under the direction of Dennis Duerden recorded and broadcast the works of African writers in Europe and Africa. Also an occasional actor, Pieterse appeared in The Burning, a 1968 30-minute short drama film directed by Stephen Frears. As a poet, Pieterse has been characterised as producing work that is very "European in its tone, metaphors, and delivery", as Laura Linda Holland writes: "Cosmo Pieterse's poems, like those of [Dennis] Brutus, are heavily inundated with Western influences, concerns, and motifs while retaining a definite African bias. .Cosmo Pieterse uses his love of words to create poetry of hope and renewal." Pieterse edited several anthologies of plays and poetry for the African Writers Series published by Heinemann.
[ 0258 ] Pheto, Molefe. And Night Fell: Memoirs of a Political Prisoner in South Africa. London. 1985. Heinemann. 043590258x. African Writers Series. 218 pages. paperback. AWS258..

DESCRIPTION - Memoir by a Soweto music teacher, active in the promotion of Black culture and in opposition to apartheid, of the 281 days he was held, without trial, as a political prisoner in South Africa (271 of these days in solitary confinement).

Molefe Pheto (born 1935) is a former South African musician and music teacher who, as an activist in the Black Consciousness Movement, became a political prisoner in 1975. He was a friend and spokesperson of South African President Nelson Mandela. Pheto was born in Alexandra Township, South Africa, Pheto was an active participant in the Black Consciousness Movement since 1970. In 1971 he founded Mhloti, working with others such as Wally Serote, producing music, poetry, and theatrical events and performing speeches by political activists and schools, churches and political rallies. He organised three Black Arts festivals for MDALI (the Music, Drama, Arts and Literature Institute in Soweto), of which he was a founder member and spokesman, and in 1975 he was detained under South Africa's 1963 Terrorism Act for 10 months. He was held in Johannesburg's police headquarters, John Vorster Square. In 1977, Pheto left South Africa and, after the murder of Steve Biko, began a life of exile in Britain. In 1983, Allison & Busby published his memoir, And Night Fell: Memoirs of a Political Prisoner in South Africa, which was banned in South Africa. After 20 years in Britain, Pheto returned to South Africa and settled on a farm in Magaliesburg, publishing his second book, entitled The Bull from Moruleng: Vistas of Home and Exile, in 2014.
[ 0259 ] NEVER PUBLISHED. A volume called This is the Time was advertised as No. 259, but no such volume exists in any of the library catalogues we consulted. Research in the AWS archive at Reading University reveals that this was a projected anthology of Central and Southern African poetry, which was instead published as When My Brothers Come Home: Poems from Central and Southern Africa, edited by Frank M. Chipasula (Middleton, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1985).[12]. London. 0. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS259..

DESCRIPTION -

Frank Mkalawile Chipasula (born 16 October 1949) is a Malawian writer, editor and university professor, 'easily one of the best of the known writers in the discourse of Malawian letters'. Born in Luanshya, Zambia, Frank Chipasula attended St. Peter's Primary School on Likoma Island, Soche Hill Day Secondary School, Malosa Secondary School, Chancellor College, University of Malawi, and, finally, the Great East Road Campus of the University of Zambia, Lusaka, where he graduated B.A., in exile, in 1976. Before leaving Malawi, Chipasula had worked as a freelance broadcaster for the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation while studying English and French at the university. In Lusaka, he served as English Editor for the National Education Company of Zambia, his first publishers, following his graduation from the University of Zambia. In 1978 Chipasula went into exile in the United States as a result of the Hastings Banda government, studying for his M.A. in Creative Writing at Brown University, a second M.A. in African American Studies at Yale University and gaining a Ph.D in English literature from Brown University in 1987. Previously a professor of Black Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Howard University, Chipasula has also worked as the education attache at the Malawian embassy in Washington, D.C. His first book,Visions and Reflections (1972), is also the first published poetry volume in English by a Malawian writer. As well as poetry, which has been widely anthologised, he has written radio plays and fiction. Since January 10, 1976, Chipasula has been married to Stella, a former school teacher, whom he met in Mulanje, Malawi, in 1972. They have two grown children, James Masauko Mgeni Akuzike and Helen Chipo.
[ 0260 ] NEVER PUBLISHED. Kofi Awoonor's Until the Morning After: Collected Poems 1963-1985 was to have been AWS number 260, but was apparently withdrawn by the author and instead published by Greenfield Review Press, New York, in 1987.[12]. London. 0. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS260..

DESCRIPTION -

[ 0261 ] Anyidoho, Kofi. A Harvest of Our Dreams, with Elegy for the Revolution: poems. London. 1984. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS261..

DESCRIPTION - Kofi Anyidoho's poetry is respected as distinct in the way he weaves modernity into tradition and inspires hope by extending the three-chord rope of Ewe oral tradition. He not only writes with the background of Ewe oral tradition experiences but also enacts the very performance and oration of his poems in griotic style.

Kofi Anyidoho (born 25 July 1947) is a Ghanaian poet and academic who comes from a family tradition of Ewe poets and oral artists. He is currently Professor of Literature at the University of Ghana. He has received numerous awards for his poetry, including the Valco Fund Literary Award, the Langston Hughes Prize, the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award, the Fania Kruger Fellowship for Poetry of Social Vision, Poet of the Year (Ghana), and the Ghana Book Award. Born in Wheta, in Ghana's Volta Region, Anyidoho was educated in Ghana and the USA, and holds a B.A. Honours degree in English & Linguistics from the University of Ghana, Legon, an M.A. in Folklore from Indiana University Bloomington and gained his PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. Having trained as a teacher at Accra Training College and at the Advanced Teacher Training College-Winneba, he taught primary, middle and secondary school, before joining the University of Ghana-Legon. Currently the Professor of Literature in the English Department, he has also been Director of the CODESRIA African Humanities Institute Program, acting Director of the School of Performing Arts and Head of the English Department. He was installed as the first occupant of the Kwame Nkrumah Chair in African Studies at the University of Ghana on 18 March 2010.
[ 0262 ] Nagenda, John. The Seasons of Thomas Tebo. London. 1986. Heinemann. 0435908243. African Writers Series. 155 pages. paperback. AWS262. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Lynn Hendry.

DESCRIPTION - John Nagenda's vivid and entertaining novel is an insider's view of recent events in Uganda. It tells the story of Thomas Tebo, an enchanted, magical youth who becomes dangerously involved in politics, and is eventually forced into a depressing exile. This account of how a precocious, sensuous child lost his innocence is a compelling allegorical portrait of the Ugandan people, struggling to cope with the horror of violence, but never losing hope: indeed, although Tebo cannot help but succumb to the perverse, rotten world about him, he still clings to his fundamental faith - a faith deeply rooted in a glorious and idyllic past.

John Nagenda (1938- ), Ugandan poet, fiction writer, scholar and columnist, belongs to a generation of writers who were the first to forge a literature of East Africa. He was born on 25 April 1938 in Gahini, Uganda, the son of William and Sala (Bakaluba) Nagenda. Receiving his early education at local schools, Nagenda was an avid reader by the age of ten and began to develop an interest in writing in his middle teens. He attended Makerere University College (now Makerere University) in Kampala, graduating in 1962, the year that Uganda achieved independence. At the forefront of the movement to establish an African nationalist literature during this period, the university fostered the talents of such prominent East African writers as Peter Nazareth of Uganda, David Rubadiri of Malawi, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o of Kenya. During his undergraduate years Nagenda served as editor of Penpoint, Makerere's literary magazine. His early poems and stories appeared in that publication and in the newly founded Transition. According to Simon Gikandi, editor of The Encyclopedia of African Literature (2003), Nagenda's early writing is indicative of 'the transitional moment in East African literature in English, when writers educated in the British tradition were trying to adopt the forms of prose and poetry learnt in the colonial school and university to represent the African landscape [. .] and to account for their own coming into being as subjects caught between old and modern ways'. This effort to 'find local substitutes for Wordsworth's Lake District', as Gikandi puts it, is apparent in Nagenda's poem 'Gahini Lake', which appears in Origin East Africa (1965), a groundbreaking Makerere anthology edited by David Cook. Another notable work to come out of this period is Nagenda's short story 'And This, At Last', which appears in Pan African Short Stories (1965), edited by Neville Denny. Nagenda graduated from Makerere in 1962. Nagenda lived in exile in England for several years, during the tyrannical rule in the 1970s of Idi Amin and the political turmoil that ensued after his ousting in 1979. Virtually absent from the literary scene during these years, the author re-emerged in 1986 with the publication of his first novel, The Seasons of Thomas Tebo. An allegorical portrait of the Ugandan people, the narrative focuses on the title character, a precocious and idealistic young man whose innocence is lost as he enters the political power struggle of the post-independence era. The novel established Nagenda as a leading figure in the Ugandan literary revival. Nagenda is also the author of Mukasa (1973), a children's book. His poetry is represented in New Voices of the Commonwealth (1968), edited by Howard Sergeant. The Writer in Modern Africa (1968), edited by Per Waestberg contains the text of a speech that Nagenda delivered at the African-Scandinavian Writers' Conference in 1967. 'Generations in Conflict', his essay about Ghanaian writers Ama Ata Aidoo, J.C. de Graft, and R. Sarif Easmon, appears in Protest and Conflict in African Literature (1969), edited by Cosmo Pieterse and Donald Munro. After Yoweri Museveni took office as president of Uganda in 1986, Nagenda returned from exile and was appointed by Museveni to sit on the newly established Commission of Inquiry into Violations of Human Rights, a body designated to investigate abuses that had occurred in the country since the advent of independence. Nagenda went on to become Museveni's Senior Adviser on Public Relations and Media. In addition to this official role, he writes a weekly column entitled 'One Man's Week', which appears in the Saturday edition of The New Vision newspaper. Although the demands of these positions have kept him fully occupied in recent years, the author has expressed his intention to return to his poetry and other creative writing in the future. In a biographical profile that appears on the website associated with his column, Nagenda describes writing as a strenuous but exhilarating process which he calls 'the perpetual battle against the sentence'. He explains, 'To "defeat the sentence" by putting one word next to another in the best possible way open to you, is a reward in itself. You lose when the sentence, the challenger, refuses to fall in place as you want it. The carpenter must feel the same regarding a table, the singer the song, the painter the picture, the architect the building. Such fights occupy a lifetime, if you are lucky.' Nagenda has also worked as an editor for Oxford University Press and as a radio and television producer in New York, London, and Kampala. For several years he was a member of Uganda's national cricket team. Over the course of his long and multi-faceted career, Nagenda has built a reputation as one of Uganda's leading men of letters. Today he is widely regarded as one of his country's most prominent and respected columnists. However, his creative work has received little attention from critics and scholars. An exception is David F. Dorsey's 'Romance and Revolution in Three African Novels', a comparative study of The Seasons of Thomas Tebo with The Rape of the Pearl (1985), by Magala-Nyago of Uganda, and The Seed of Redemption (1986), by Francis Mading Deng of Sudan, which appears in College Language Association Journal vol. 31, no. 2 (December 1987). Also valuable is an interview with Nagenda, conducted by South African essayist, novelist and scholar Lewis Nkosi, which appears in African Writers Talking: A Collection of Interviews (1972), edited by Cosmo Pieterse and Dennis Duerden.
[ 0263 ] Serote, Mongane. To Every Birth its Blood. London. 1983. Heinemann. 0435902636. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS263..

DESCRIPTION - The many people of Alexandra Township are the characters in this book in which readers can discover the links in a chain of extended families, friendships, street gangs and political groups.

Mongane Wally Serote (born 8 May 1944) is a South African poet and writer. Serote was born in Sophiatown, Johannesburg, South Africa, and went to school in Alexandra, Lesotho, and Soweto. He first became involved in the Black Consciousness Movement when he was finishing high school in Soweto. His presence in that town linked him to a group known as the 'township' or 'Soweto' poets, and his poems often expressed themes of political activism, the development of black identity, and violent images of revolt and resistance. He was arrested by the apartheid government under the Terrorism Act in June 1969 and spent nine months in solitary confinement, before being released without charge. He went to study in New York City, obtaining a Fine Arts degree at Columbia University, before going to work in Gaborone, Botswana, and later London for the African National Congress in their Arts and Culture Department. After contributing poems to various journals, in 1972 he published his first collection, Yakhal'Inkomo. It won the Ingrid Jonker Poetry Prize in 1973. He was a Fulbright Scholar and received a fine arts degree from Columbia University in 1979. He was not able to return to South Africa and he began a life in exile, living in Botswana and London, where he was involved in the Medu Art Ensemble. In 1993, he won the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. In 2004, he received the Pablo Neruda award from the Chilean government. He has served as chair of the parliamentary select committee for arts and culture, and was also the CEO of Freedom Park, a national heritage site in Pretoria opened in 2007. He has founded a few NGOs, iIKSSA Trust where he is the Chairperson, IARI which he is also the CEO. He sits on a few advisory boards in the country dealing with Arts, Culture, Indigenous Knowneldge and African Renaissance issues.
[ 0264 ] De Graft, Joe. Muntu. London. 1977. Heinemann. 0435902644. African Writers Series. 104 pages. paperback. AWS264..

DESCRIPTION - Muntu is a broad treatment of African history from creation to the modern day.

Joseph Coleman de Graft, known as Joe de Graft (2 April 1924 - 1 November 1978), was a prominent Ghanaian writer, playwright and dramatist, who was appointed the first director of the Ghana Drama Studio in 1962. He produced and directed plays for radio, stage and television, as well as acting, and was also a poet and educator.
[ 0265 ] NEVER ASSIGNED. NOTHING ASSIGNED. London. 0. Heinemann. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS265..

DESCRIPTION -

[ 0266 ] p'Bitek, Okot. Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol. Oxford. 1984. Heinemann. 0435902660. African Writers Series. Translated from the Acholi by Okot p'Bitek. Introduction by G. A. Heron. Illustrations by Frank Horle. 152 pages. paperback. AWS266..

DESCRIPTION - Song of Lawino, one of the most successful African literary works, is now made available in the African Writers Series together with Song of Oco/, the husband's reply to Lawino's claim. As Okot himself wrote, these songs are 'translated from the Acoli by the author who has thus clipped a bit of the eagle's wings and rendered the sharp edges of the warrior's sword rusty and blunt, and has also murdered rhythm and rhyme.' 'Together, Song of Lawino and Song of Oco/ constitute a heated debate over the future of Africa. In graphic metaphor and with dramatic intensity, p'Bitek presents the conflict between the new and the old, and in the process reveals a remarkable sensitivity to the values of both.' - Richard F. Bauerle - Books Abroad.

OKOT p'BlTEK made people in Africa realise that poetry can be enjoyable even through the medium of English, especially if it relates to traditional oral literature. Okot was born in 1931 in Gulu in Northern Uganda. He was a man of diverse talents; he composed and produced an opera, played football for Uganda and obtained degrees from Bristol, Aberystwyth and Oxford. He was for a stormy period Director of Uganda's National Theatre and started Arts Festivals at Gulu and Kisumu. He taught at the universities of Makerere, Nairobi, Ife, Texas and Iowa. He became Professor of Creative Writing at Makerere but died in 1982. His other major works are Songs of Malay and Prisoner (EAPH), The Horn of My Love (AWS 147) and Hare and Hornbill (AWS 193). A further collection of his essays will be published by Heinemann, Nairobi.
[ 0267 ] Idris, Yusuf. Rings of Burnished Brass: Short Stories. London/Washington DC. 1984. Heinemann/Three Continents Press. 0435994212. Translated from the Arabic by Catherine Cobham. 142 pages. paperback. AWS267. Cover illustration by Ahmed Mustapha.

DESCRIPTION - These stories have the completeness of a novel. or novella, but are written with the economy and intensity of the short story at its most precise and dramatic. Idris takes his readers directly to the heart of his stories and the people who inhabit that fictional world. The stories are remarkable for the consistency of their underlying preoccupation with human compassion and love, and the mysterious sacredness of human life, as for the variety of subject matter and stylistic development and experimentation. The title story ‘Rings of Burnished Brass' tells of an encounter between a well-off middle-aged woman and a poor boy of eighteen, while ‘The Stranger' is the story of a young boy's relationship with an outlaw and murderer in the Egyptian countryside during the Second World War. ‘The Black Policeman' is a somber story of a torturer and one of his victims. ‘The Siren' is the drama of a surrender, that of the peasant woman Fathiyya to the Man in the Suit, reflecting her surrender to urban civilization, to Cairo, the sea from which ‘thousands of hands stretched out,.. treacherous sirens calling to her, smoothing the way for her to plunge in.' Idris restores faith to the art of good story telling which he relishes, comsummates and protects.

Yusuf Idris (also Yusif Idris, May 19, 1927 - August 1, 1991) was an Egyptian writer of plays, short stories, and novels. Idris was born in Faqous. He originally trained to be a doctor, studying at the University of Cairo. He sought to put the foundations of a modern Egyptian theatre based on popular traditions and folklore, his main success in this quest was his most famous work, a play called "Al-Farafeer" depicting two main characters: the Master and the "Farfour" [=poor layman]. For some time he was a regular writer in the famous daily newspaper Al-Ahram. It is known that he was nominated several times to win the Nobel prize for literature. From the English edition of The Cheapest Nights: "While a medical student his work against Farouk's regime and the British led to his imprisonment and suspension from College. After graduation, he worked at Kasr el Eini, the largest government hospital in Egypt. He supported Nasser's rise to power but became disillusioned in 1954 at the time when his first collection of stories The Cheapest Nights was published. Yusuf Idris' stories are powerful and immediate reflections of the experiences of his own rebellious life. His continuing contact with the struggling poor enables him to portray characters sensitively and imaginatively." Idris won the 1997 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature for his novel City of Love and Ashes. Idris' daughter Basma Idris is also a published writer.
[ 0268 ] Sepamia, Sepho. A Ride on the Whirlwind: a novel. London. 1981. Heinemann. 0435902687. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS268..

DESCRIPTION - Set during the 1976 June riots in Soweto, this book provides a moving account of the tensions and turbulence, intrigue and confusion which enveloped the township and rocked the nation.

Sydney Sipho Sepamla (1932 - 9 January 2007) was a contemporary South African poet and novelist. Born in a township near Krugersdorp, Sipho Sepamla lived most of his life in Soweto. He studied teaching at Pretoria Normal College and published his first volume of poetry, Hurry Up to It!, in 1975. During this period he was active in the Black Consciousness movement and his 1977 book The Soweto I Love, partly a response to the Soweto Uprising of 16 June 1976, was banned by the apartheid regime. He was a founder of the Federated Union of Black Artists (now the Fuba Academy of Arts) and editor of the literary magazine New Classic and the theatre magazine S'ketsh. He published several volumes of poetry and novels. He received the Thomas Pringle Award (1977) and the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his writing. More recently in democratic South Africa he was a member of the government's Arts and Culture Task Group.
[ 0269 ] Pepetela. Mayombe. London. 1984. Heinemann. 0435905953. African Writers Series.. paperback. AWS269..

DESCRIPTION - Pepetela's novel is a fascinating study of the tensions produced by racism, tribalism, and sexual morals.

Artur Carlos Maurício Pestana dos Santos (born 1941) is a major Angolan writer of fiction. He writes under the name Pepetela. A white Angolan, Pepetela was born in Benguela, Portuguese Angola, and fought as a member of the MPLA in the long guerrilla war for Angola's independence. Much of his writing deals with Angola's political history in the 20th century. Mayombe, for example, is a novel that portrays the lives of a group of MPLA guerrillas who are involved in the anti-colonial struggle in Cabinda, Yaka follows the lives of members of a white settler family in the coastal town of Benguela, and A Geração da Utopia reveals the disillusionment of young Angolans during the post-independence period. Pepetela has also written about Angola's earlier history in A Gloriosa Família and Lueji, and has expanded into satire with his series of Jaime Bunda novels. His most recent works include Predadores, a scathing critique of Angola's ruling classes, O Quase Fim do Mundo, a post-apocalyptic allegory, and O Planalto e a Estepe, a look at Angola's history and connections with other former communist nations. Pepetela won the Camões Prize, the world's highest honour for Lusophone literature, in 1997. 'Pepetela' is a Kimbundu word that means 'eyelash,' which is a translation of his Portuguese surname, 'Pestana'. The author received this nom de guerre during his time as an MPLA combatant.
[ 0270 ] Achebe, Chinua and Innes, C. L. (editors). African Short Stories. Portsmouth. 1987. Heinemann. 0435905368. African Writers Series. The last of the AWS series given a series number. AWS titles after this are not numbered. 159 pages. paperback. AWS270. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Christine Tongue.

DESCRIPTION - ‘A fine anthology, well selected, well ordered, and altogether a pleasure to read. The editors have chosen twenty stories by twenty different writers from all over Africa, grouping them geographically into four different sections: West, East, North, and Southern Africa.. They have done a particularly good job of balancing the work of lesser-known, younger writers with established figures: David Owoyele as well as Achebe, Abdulrazak Gurnah as well as Ngugi, Ahmed Essop as well as Nadine Gordimer and Bessie Head.' - World Literature Today. African short stories. Includes 'The false prophet' by Sembene Ousmane, 'Certain winds from the south' by Ama Ata Aidoo, 'The apprentice' by Odun Balogun, 'The will of Allah' by David Owoyele, 'Civil peace' by Chinua Achebe, 'The gentlemen of the jungle' by Jomo Kenyatta, 'The green leaves' by Grace Ogot, 'Bossy' by Abdulrazak Gurnah, 'The spider's web' by Leonard Kibera, 'Minutes of glory' by Ngugi wa Thiong'o, 'An incident in the Ghobashi household' by Alifa Rifaat, 'A handful of dates' by Tayeb Salih, 'A conversation from the third floor' by Mohamed El-Bisatie, 'Papa, snake & I' by B. L. Honwana, 'The bridegroom' by Nadine Gordimer, 'The betrayal' by Ahmed Essop, 'Protista' by Dambudzo Marechera, 'The coffee-cart girl' by Ezekiel Mphahlele, 'Snapshots of a wedding' by Bessie Head, and 'Reflections in a cell' by Mafika Gwala.

CHINUA ACHEBE published THINGS FALL APART in 1958. It was followed by NO LONGER AT EASE (AWS 3) and ARROW OF GOD (AWS 16). A MAN OF THE PEOPLE (AWS 31) aroused widespread interest on publication at the time of the January 1966 coup because of its prophetic ending. The effects of his novels, and of his editorship of the African Writers Series has had a dramatic impact on the development of the literature of Africa. Some of the stories in GIRLS AT WAR (AWS 100) and some of the poems in BEWARE SOUL BROTHER (AWS 120) are set in the war. His essays were published in 1975 under the title MORNING YET ON CREATION DAY (Heinemann). He was educated at Government College, Umuahia and University College, Ibadan. By the time he left the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in 1966 he had become Director of External Broadcasting. Since the war he has been at the Universities of Nigeria, Massachusetts and Connecticut. He has now returned to Nsukka. Among many recent honours has been the award of a Fellowship of the Modern Languages Association of America and of Doctorates at the Universities of Stirling and Southampton. He has recently followed Heinrich Boll, the Nobel prizewinner, as the recipient of the Scottish Arts Council's Neil Gunn Fellowship. Chinua Achebe is best known as a novelist. But the years of the Nigerian crisis and the civil war were not, for both practical and psychological reasons, a time for work on full-length novels. He found poetry a means of expressing his distress, even though few of the poems speak directly of the war. He has added some new poems to this collection which has already been published in Nigeria. C. L. Innes, a lecturer and literary critic of African and Caribbean literature, has taught English and Comparative Literature at universities in Australia, the United States and England, where she lectures at the University of Kent. She has co-edited Critical Perspectives on Chinua Achebe (Heinemann) and published a number of articles on African, Australia,, and Irish literature. Her most recent books are The Devil's Own Mirror: The Irish and the African in Modern Literature (Three Continents Press, Washington, D.C.) and Chinua Achebe Cambridge University Press).
[ 0271 ] Rifaat, Alifa. Distant View of a Minaret. London. 1985. Heinemann. 0435909126. African Writers Series.. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - More convincingly than any other woman writing in Arabic today, Alifa Rifaat, an Egyptian, lifts the veil on what it means to be a woman living within a traditional Muslim society. Her writing articulates a subtle revolt against, and a sympathetic insight into, the place of women in the essentially male-dominated Islamic environment. Change, development, and understanding are called for but the invocation is couched in specifically Arab terms; her inspiration lies not in the Women's Movement of the West but remains within a strictly religious, even Orthodox Qur'anic framework.

Fatimah Rifaat (June 5, 1930 - January 1996), better known by her pen name Alifa Rifaat, was an Egyptian author whose controversial short stories are renowned for their depictions of the dynamics of female sexuality, relationships, and loss in rural Egyptian culture. While taking on such controversial subjects, Fatimah Rifaat's protagonists remained religiously faithful with passive feelings towards their fate. Her stories did not attempt to undermine the patriarchal system; rather they were used to depict the problems inherent in a patriarchal society when men do not adhere to their religious teachings that advocate for the kind treatment of women. Fatimah Rifaat used the pseudonym Alifa to prevent embarrassment on the part of her family due to the themes of her stories and her writing career.
[ 0272 ] Amadi, Elechi. Estrangement. London. 1986. Heinemann. 0435905643. African Writers Series. 244 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Danny Holliday.

DESCRIPTION - As the refugees return, filling bars and greeting the friends they thought were dead, it seems as if normality has returned. For Alekiri, Ibekwe, Major Dansuku and Christie however, the end of war does not bring healing. Isolated and confused, they have to face the legacy of their own broken and disturbed lives. ESTRANGEMENT is a portrait of the aftermath of the Biafran War, a shattering period brought to life through the very different experiences of ordinary people. Long recognized as one of Nigeria's leading novelists, Amadi weaves together his tale with an assured sensitivity that is rarely paralleled, and a deep affection for his country in a time of great change.

Elechi Amadi (born 12 May 1934) is a Nigerian author of plays and novels that are generally about African village life, customs, beliefs and religious practices, as they were before contact with the Western world. Amadi is best regarded for his 1966 first novel, The Concubine, which has been called ‘an outstanding work of pure fiction'. Born in 1934, in Aluu in the Ikwerre local government area of Rivers State, Nigeria, Elechi Amadi attended Government College, Umuahia (1948-1952), Survey School, Oyo (1953-1954), and the University of Ibadan (1955-1959), where he obtained a degree in Physics and Mathematics. He worked for a time as a land surveyor and later was a teacher at several schools, including the Nigerian Military School, Zaria (1963-1966). Amadi did military service in the Nigerian army and was on the Nigerian side during the Nigeria-Biafra War, retiring in the rank of Captain. After the war Amadi left the army to work for the Rivers State government. Positions he held include Permanent Secretary (1973-1983), Commissioner for Education (1987-1988) and Commissioner for Lands and Housing (1989-1990). He has been writer-in-residence and lecturer at Rivers State College of Education, where he has also been Dean of Arts, head of the Literature Department and Director of General Studies. On 13 May 1989 a symposium was held at the University of Port Harcourt to celebrate Amadi's 55th birthday. In May 2004, a conference was organized by the Association of Nigerian Authors, Rivers State Branch, to mark Elechi Amadi's 70th birthday. On 5 January 2009 Amadi was kidnapped at his home in Aluu town, Port Harcourt, by unknown gunmen. He was released 23 hours later, on the evening of 6 January. Elechi Amadi has said that his first publication was in 1957, a poem entitled ‘Penitence' in a University of Ibadan campus magazine called The Horn, edited by John Pepper Clark. Amadi's first novel, The Concubine, was published in London in 1966 and was hailed as a ‘most accomplished first performance'. Alastair Niven in his critical study of the novel wrote: ‘Rooted firmly among the hunting and fishing villages of the Niger delta, The Concubine nevertheless possesses the timelessness and universality of a major novel.' The Concubine was made into a film, written by Elechi Amadi and directed by accomplished Nollywood film director Andy Amenechi, which premiered in Abuja in March 2007. The setting of Amachi's second novel, The Great Ponds, published in 1969, is pre-colonial Eastern Nigeria, and is about the battle between two village communities over possession of a pond. In 1973 Amadi autobiographical non-fiction, Sunset in Biafra, was published. It records his personal experiences in the Nigeria-Biafra war, and according to Niven ‘is written in a compelling narrative form as though it were a novel'.
[ 0273 ] Echewa, T. Obinkaram. The Crippled Dancer. London. 1986. Heinemann. 0435906666. African Writers Series. 238 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Maggie Smith.

DESCRIPTION - Powerless to resist his grandfather's bitter, lifelong struggle with the village chief, Ajuzia is drawn into a world of feuding and intrigue. Even his childhood rivalry with the notorious 'Bush Radio' turns sour and Ajuzia soon finds himself up against a disturbing conspiracy - one that seeks to destroy his family's fortune by re-writing its past.

T OBINKARAM ECHEWA is a Nigerian native, who currently resides in the United States and teaches English at West Chester University, in Pennsylvania. His books include The Land's Lord, winner of the 1976 English-Speaking Union Prize, and The Crippled Dancer, regional finalist for the 1986 Commonwealth Book Prize. Echewa is also the author of two children's books, The Ancestor Tree andThe Magic Tree, as well as the political satire How Tables Came to Umu Madu.
[ 0274 ] Lopes, Henri. Tribaliks: Contemporary Congolese Stories. Portsmouth. 1987. Heinemann. 0435907638. Translated from the French by Andrea Leskes. African Writers Series. 86 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Paul Wearing. Cover design by Keith Pointing.

DESCRIPTION - PAPERBACK ORIGINAL. Winner of the Grand Prix Litteraire de L'Afrique Noire. This outstanding collection of eight short stories pieces together a startlingly perceptive view of a post-colonial African nation. With compassion and understanding, Henry Lopes focuses on the multifarious problems and contradictions which confront educated black minorities, throughout Africa, in their attempts to develop modern, egalitarian states. The writer relates with compelling realism the experiences of both the victim and the oppressor to highlight the main themes that dominate the stories: tribalism, the abuse of political power, education, and the predicament of women. These issues affect all levels of society - from Ndoue, the sycophantic government official and Ngouakou-Ngouakou, who rallies for women's liberation whilst refusing his wife to servitude, to Raphael, a student whose love is thwarted by tribal prejudice, and Carmen, the maid, who lives in fear of losing her son at the hands of the local fetishist.

Henri Lopes held many senior positions in the Congo-Brazzaville government, including that of Prime Minster. He now works in Paris, where he is Assistant Director General o UNESCO. His most recent novel, THE LAUGHING CRY, has also been translated into English.
[ 0275 ] Ousmane, Sembene. The Black Docker. London. 1987. Heinemann. 0435908960. African Writers Series. Translated from the French by Ros Schwartz. 120 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Fraser Taylor.

DESCRIPTION - ‘My client's guilt seems proven simply through the colour of his skin. He is the beast capable of anything, the savage who drinks the blood of his victims.' Diaw Falla, the black docker, is highly regarded in his community - a little Africa in the south of France. His toil in the docks, a perpetual and unequal rivalry of bone against steel, is directed to one end, to finance his true obsession, writing. He is driven on by the hope he has invested in his masterpiece; the salvation which will raise him above his daily hardships and lead to fame and happiness. But he is a victim of a society in which he is constantly on trial, and in which all trust is misplaced. In this, his first novel, Sembene Ousmane, the leading French African writer and film maker, draws on his own experiences and the problems of racism, prejudice and injustice to recreate vividly the uneasy atmosphere of the Marseilles docklands, and France, in the 1950s.

Ousmane Sembene, who was born into a Senegalese fishing family in 1923, worked at a diversity of jobs before writing his first book, THE BLACK DOCKER, in 1956. Since then he has written several novels and short story collections, through which he tells the saga of his land and its people. He has also gained a reputation for his films, particularly BLACK GIRL and THE MONEY ORDER, which were well received both in the U.S. and abroad.
[ 0276 ] Rive, Richard. Buckingham Palace. Portsmouth. 1987. Heinemann. 0435909185. African Writers Series.. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - The novel traces close community of District Six through its moments of triumph and despair, its loves, its hatreds- and its bizarre characters. In 1966 parts of District Six were declared for white occupation only, in terms of South Africa's notorious Group Areas Act. The inhabitants were forced to leave for the bleak wastelands of the Cape Flats.

Richard Moore Rive (Cape Town, 1 March 1931 - 4 June 1989) was a South African writer. Rive was born on 1 March 1931 in Caledon Street in the working-class coloured District Six of Cape Town. His father was African, and his mother was coloured. Rive was given the latter classification under apartheid. Rive went to St Mark's Primary School and Trafalgar High School, both in District Six, and then to Hewat College of Education in Athlone, where he qualified as a teacher. Later he acquired a BA degree from the University of Cape Town, followed by an MA degree from Columbia University in the United States, and a Doctorate from Oxford University. He was for many years the Head of the English Department at Hewat College. Rive was a visiting professor at several overseas universities, including Harvard University in 1987. He also delivered guest lectures at more than fifty universities on four continents. He was a prominent sportsman (a South African hurdles champion while a student) and a school sports administrator. In 1963 he was given a scholarship organised by the editor of Drum magazine, Es'kia Mphahlele. In 1965 he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship. He wrote a doctoral thesis on Olive Schreiner which was published posthumously, in 1996. Rive was a firm believer in anti-racism and decided to stay in his country in the hope of influencing its development there. Rive initially published his stories in collections or in South African magazines like Drum and Fighting Talk. He edited anthologies for Heinemann's African Writers Series: the short story anthology Quartet (1963) - containing stories by Alex La Guma, James Matthews, Alf Wannenburgh and Rive himself - and the prose anthology Modern African Prose (1964). His short story 'The Bench', for which he won a prize, is still anthologised. 'The Bench' takes the well known story of Rosa Parks and sets it in South Africa. He also wrote three novels. Emergency (1964) was set against the Sharpeville massacre. Buckingham Palace District Six, was published in 1986 and turned into a musical by a theatre in Cape Town. He also published an autobiography entitled Writing Black in 1981. His last novel, Emergency Continued, was published posthumously. Rive was shot to death at his home in Cape Town in 1989. On August 23, 2013, Rive and two other esteemed South African authors Ronnie Govender and Don Mattera were honoured for their contributions to the fight against apartheid through literature at the Aziz Hassim Literary Awards held in Durban. The authors all reflected on non-racial enclaves in South Africa during that era: Rive focused on District Six, Govender on Cato Manor, and Mattera on Sophiatown.
[ 0277 ] Tambo, Oliver. Preparing for Power: Oliver Tambo Speaks. Portsmouth. 1987. Heinemann. 0435909649. African Writers Series. Foreword by Nelson Mandela. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - This unique collection of speeches, writings and rare interviews by the President of the African National Congress, with a foreword by Nelson Mandela, and compiled by Mrs. Adelaide Tambo, gives a coherent and comprehensive view of ANC policy, both within South Africa and on a world-wide scale, over three decades. For much of this time Oliver Tambo has been the movement's leading spokesman. This is essential reading, not only for policy makers and academics, but for all those who support the basic struggle for human rights.

Oliver Reginald Kaizana Tambo (27 October 1917 - 24 April 1993), also known as O. R. Tambo, was a South African anti-apartheid politician and revolutionary who served as President of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1967 to 1991.
[ 0278 ] Achebe, Chinua. Anthills of the Savannah. Portsmouth. 1988. Heinemann. 0435905384. African Writers Series. 233 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Paul Wearing.

DESCRIPTION - Chinua Achebe's THINGS FALL APART, published Nearly thirty years ago, was hailed as a classic and in millions and in aver forty languages found the world, His 4th novel A Man of the People published in 1966 was in Anthony Burgess' 1984 selections of the 99 best novels in English since 1939. Now comes this fine novel full of savage irony, set in a country where power has corrupted ideals, terror has silenced all but the bravest, and only fools and flatterers survive. Two years after the military coup that swept a brilliant young Sandhurst-trained army officer to power, an uneasy calm reigns in the backward West African state of Kangan. The failure of referendum to make him President-for-Life has left His Excellency nervous and embittered, and more and mare he looks to his bullish head of state security for reassurance and a firm hand with those he suspects of disloyalty. For the men who helped put him in power, his oldest friends, the future is suddenly dangerous and uncertain. Chris Oriko, Commissioner for Information, whom His Excellency blames for the referendum defeat, knows his days are numbered as his former classmate grows into the role of ruthless dictator. Ikem Osodi, poet and editor of the National Gazette, is lust as uneasy but believes his crusading editorials may yet have influence on his childhood friend, In the blood-letting that follows peaceful demonstration from the drought-stricken, north, both men are in danger of their lives, Together with their friend Beatrice Okoh, who is strong, beautiful and wise, they are players in a drama of love and friendship, betrayal and death, that mirrors the history of their troubled land. ANTHILLS OF THE SAVANNAH is an outstanding novel of contemporary Africa, bleak, angry, disenchanted and yet, ultimately, full of hope. .

CHINUA ACHEBE published THINGS FALL APART in 1958. It was followed by NO LONGER AT EASE (AWS 3) and ARROW OF GOD (AWS 16). A MAN OF THE PEOPLE (AWS 31) aroused widespread interest on publication at the time of the January 1966 coup because of its prophetic ending. The effects of his novels, and of his editorship of the African Writers Series has had a dramatic impact on the development of the literature of Africa. Some of the stories in GIRLS AT WAR (AWS 100) and some of the poems in BEWARE SOUL BROTHER (AWS 120) are set in the war. His essays were published in 1975 under the title MORNING YET ON CREATION DAY (Heinemann). He was educated at Government College, Umuahia and University College, Ibadan. By the time he left the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in 1966 he had become Director of External Broadcasting. Since the war he has been at the Universities of Nigeria, Massachusetts and Connecticut. He has now returned to Nsukka. Among many recent honours has been the award of a Fellowship of the Modern Languages Association of America and of Doctorates at the Universities of Stirling and Southampton. He has recently followed Heinrich Boll, the Nobel prizewinner, as the recipient of the Scottish Arts Council's Neil Gunn Fellowship. Chinua Achebe is best known as a novelist. But the years of the Nigerian crisis and the civil war were not, for both practical and psychological reasons, a time for work on full-length novels. He found poetry a means of expressing his distress, even though few of the poems speak directly of the war. He has added some new poems to this collection which has already been published in Nigeria.
[ 0279 ] Karodia, Farida. Coming Home and Other Stories. Oxford. 1988. Heinemann. 0435907387. African Writers Series. 185 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by David Band. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - A PAPERBACK ORIGINAL. In Coming Home and Other Stories, Farida Karodia paints a haunting and captivating picture of South Africa, the land of her birth. The nine stories embrace an astonishing variety of themes and characters. Some, like the title novella 'Coming Home' , deal with deeply personal issues of change and estrangement, drawn from the writer's own experiences while in 'The Necklace' we live through the hopeless drunken despair of Burns Mpangela, who is unemployed and unable to support his family. Other stories explore relationships and fears that are peculiarly South African. The collection as a whole reflects the author's love and depth of concern for the fate of her nation. South Africa's political tragedy is powerfully expressed in human terms, through the poverty, loneliness and rootlessness of truncated lives.

Farida Karoida was born in 1942 in the eastern Cape province, a location that inspired the setting for her first novel, Daughters of Twilight (1986). She taught in Johannesburg, South Africa, Zambia, Swaziland. In 1968 the government of South Africa withdrew her passport. Facing forced interment in South Africa, she emigrated to Canada. She remained there, where she published her first novel and wrote in multiple mediums, including film, television, and CBC radio dramas. She returned to South Africa in 1994. She now works as a free-lance writer and divides her time between Canada and South Africa. Her first novel was Daughters of the Twilight was published in 1986, and was a runner up for the Fawcett Literature Prize. Although she was living in Canada at the time, the book concerns what difficulties non-whites faced in getting an education under apartheid. However by 1990 she had also written about Canada. Further during time spent in India in 1991 she wrote and filmed Midnight Embers. Her novel A Shattering of Silence (1993), set during the Mozambique civil war, follows Faith, the daughter of Canadian missionaries, after the murder of her parents. Against an African Sky and Other Stories (1994) was one of her first works after she returned to South Africa.In 2000, her novel Other Secrets was nominated for an IMPAC Dublin Award. Nor have her novels set in Africa focused only on South Africa. Boundaries (2003)focuses on the return of three women to a small South African town, Vlenterhoek
[ 0281 ] Zimunya, Musaemura / Porter, Peter/ Anyidoho, Kofi (editors). The Fate of Vultures: New Poetry of Africa. Oxford. 1989. Heinemann. 0435905503. African Writers Series. 126 pages. paperback. Cover design by Carrie Craig.

DESCRIPTION - This selection of poems is from 4500 entries submitted for the 1988 BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award. The collection reflects the great depth and vigour of contemporary African poetry. CONTENTS: Early Morning City Blues by Ama Asantewa Ababio; We Mothers by Ama Asantewa Ababio; Passover by Alex Agyei-agyiri; To Abuenameh At Four by Funso Aiyejina; Elegy For Oduduwa by Afam Akeh; Mid-year Blues by Afam Akeh; Nectar by Afam Akeh; There Was Thunder Without Rain by Richard Afari Baafour; Waiting For Others by Biyi Bandele-thomas; Cinnamon by Philip Bateman; My Duty by Charles Agboola Bodunde; Prologue by Charles Agboola Bodunde; Second Passage by Charles Agboola Bodunde; Manifesto On Ars Poetica by Frank Mkalawile Chipasula; Poor Old Joe by John Murray Coates; Our Black Stars by James Putsch Commey; Greendale, Harare by Jonathan Cumming; European Effigies by Achmat Dangor; Journey To Glasgow by Achmat Dangor; Places Of Stone by Achmat Dangor; Akosua Oye by Kofi Dondo; Self-portrait by Patrick Ebewo; A Writer's Pains by Godwin Ede; It Is Easy To Forget by Ezenwa-ohaeto; Persecution by Bode-law Faleyimu; Songs Of Abiku by Bode-law Faleyimu; Another Dawn by Francis Faller; The Refugee by Francis Faller; Those Treacherous Words by Francis Faller; They Said I Abused The Government by Femi Fatoba; Fragments by Harry Garuba; The Turn Coat by Arthur K. De Graft-rosenior; The Balancing Rocks by Martin Gwete; Nursery Rhyme After A War by Chenjerai Hove; To The Wielders Of Flags by Chenjerai Hove; Caskets by Esiaba Irobi; Judy by Esiaba Irobi; Soniya by Esiaba Irobi; The First Child by Frederick Bobor James; The Surfer by Beverley Jansen; The Shylock Of The West by Wumi Kaji; Yesterday They Came Again by Ken N. Kamoche; Jacaranda Tree by Lawrence Karanja; The Captain's Daughter by Kolosa Kargbo; How We Lose Them by Kolosa Kargbo; The Beggar's Challenge by Bayo Lawal; Vituperation: Prologue by Bayo Lawal; Ancestor At Eighteen by Manango Lisongwe; Land Of Blood And Fame by Don Mattera; Let The Fire Fall. by Don Mattera; Sunset Over Mparayi by Zondive Mbano; Sankatana by Bennet Leboni Buti Moleko; Flight From The Sun by Lupenga Mphande; Locusts by Lupenga Mphande; Monkey Bay by Edison Mpina; The Fighter by Fekassa Mwada; Dark Blotches On Eyelids by Gichora Mwangi; If by Gichora Mwangi; Waiting (for S) by Gichora Mwangi; African Demagoguery by Crispin Namane; My Hands by Valerie Nkomeshya; Zimbabwe Independence by Pheroze Nowrojee; The Man I Killed by Silas Obadiah; By The Long Road by Walter Odame; Dear Child by Walter Odame; The Fate Of Vultures by Tanure Ojaide; Song For My Land by Tanure Ojaide; Where Everybody Is King by Tanure Ojaide; The Spirit Of My Land by Felicity Atuki Okoth; Oh Africa by Isi Omoifo; Die Poyie-poyie by Thembile Ka Pepeteka; Letter To A College Boy by Sobhna Keshavelal Poona; Pauses And Punctuations by Sobhna Keshavelal Poona; Say No Black Women by Sobhna Keshavelal Poona; Elegy To A Lost Land by Kofi Sam; The Sun Rising, Bishopscourt by Gloria Sandak-lewin; Where Did Aids Come From? by Erasmus Elikplim Forster Senaye; When I Grow Up by Sam Ukala; The Stone by Michael Andrew Wakabi; A Pattern Of Dust by Timothy Wangusa; Law Of The Jungle by Willie T. Zingani.

Musaemura Bonas Zimunya (born 14 November 1949) is one of Zimbabwe's most important contemporary writers. Zimunya was born in Umtali, Rhodesia (now Mutare, Zimbabwe), to Mandiera Watch and Kufera Zimunya. In 1973 he was expelled from the University of Rhodesia for 'disturbing the peace'. While exiled in Great Britain he studied at the University of Kent, Canterbury. He got a Bachelor's degree in 1978 and a Master's degree in 1979. His MA dissertation was later published as Those Years of Drought and Hunger: The Birth of African Fiction in English in Zimbabwe. In 1980, he returned to newly independent Zimbabwe where he settled and married Viola Catherine, and took a University of Zimbabwe position as a professor of English that he has kept since. He has been secretary general of the Zimbabwean Writers' Union. In 1992 he received a Fulbright scholarship to the Pratt Institute in New York. He left Zimbabwe in 1999 for the USA and is currently Director of Black Studies at Virginia Tech. Zimunya's poetry deals with the beauty of Zimbabwe, but also with its poverty and history of suffering, and with urban alienation from spiritual heritage. Most of his published work is in English, but he also writes in Shona. Zimunya began publishing poems when he was still at school, in literary journals like Two-Tone and Chirimo. His early poetry often revealed an imaginative appreciation of the beauty of nature. While his collection Thought Tracks (1982) represents a generation that felt marginalized by colonialism, Kingfisher, Jikinya and other poems, published in the same year, is a celebration of love and nature. Country Dawns and City Lights (1985) takes a disillusioned look at the idealization of rural life, while also confronting the difficulties faced by the urban dweller. Perfect Poise (1993) and Selected Poems (1995) are collections that contain both the lyricism of his earlier work and the cynical perspective of the critic. Zimunya has published one collection of short stories, Nightshift (1993), and a volume of literary criticism. His work has also been published in British and Amerikan anthologies, in Kizito Muchemwas Zimbabwean Poetry in English (1978), and in the collection he co-edited with Mudereri Khadani, And Now the Poets Speak (1981). In the afterword to the Serbian/English version of his Collected Poems in 1995, Zimunya described his poetry thus: When you read these poems, it is my cherished hope that you will gain some insight… into the brutality of colonialism, the vagaries of growing up permanently dispossessed in a racially structured society, the tortuous quest for reconciliation of a shattered old culture with a hostile and spiritless new world cultivated to disadvantage the African and… the undying quest for harmony with nature… And then also you may wonder about the chaos artistic rhythms and traditions forever tussling for my creative attention. Peter Neville Frederick Porter OAM (16 February 1929 - 23 April 2010) was a British-based Australian poet. He is the author of more than 15 collections of poetry, and the editor and translator of several more, including Once Bitten, Twice Bitten (1961), The Automatic Oracle (1987), The Chair of Babel (1992), Dragons in Their Pleasant Palaces (1997), Both Ends Against the Middle (1999), Saving from the Wreck (2001), and Better Than God (2009). Porter's work displays a deep knowledge of literary and social history yet is attuned to contemporary civilization and current jargon. Alan Brownjohn, reviewing Better Than God for the Times Online, identified Porter as a poet, traveler and social observer, noting that his manner is calm, deliberate, sometimes distinctly grand, emotionally reticent. Porter edited The Best Australian Poetry (2005) and Selected Poems of Lawrence Durrell (2006) and translated After Martial (1972), a collection based on the poems of the Latin poet Martial. Porter was a writer-in-residence at universities in both Australia and England. He received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, the Whitbread Prize for Poetry, the Duff Cooper Prize, and the 1990 Gold Medal of the Australian Literary Society. He died in 2010. Kofi Anyidoho (born 25 July 1947) is a Ghanaian poet and academic who comes from a family tradition of Ewe poets and oral artists. He is currently Professor of Literature at the University of Ghana. He has received numerous awards for his poetry, including the Valco Fund Literary Award, the Langston Hughes Prize, the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award, the Fania Kruger Fellowship for Poetry of Social Vision, Poet of the Year (Ghana), and the Ghana Book Award. Born in Wheta, in Ghana's Volta Region, Anyidoho was educated in Ghana and the USA, and holds a B.A. Honours degree in English & Linguistics from the University of Ghana, Legon, an M.A. in Folklore from Indiana University-Bloomington and gained his PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. Having trained as a teacher at Accra Training College and at the Advanced Teacher Training College-Winneba, he taught primary, middle and secondary school, before joining the University of Ghana-Legon. Currently Professor of Literature in the English Department, he has also been Director of the CODESRIA African Humanities Institute Program, acting Director of the School of Performing Arts and Head of the English Department. He was installed as the first occupant of the Kwame Nkrumah Chair in African Studies at the University of Ghana on 18 March 2010.
[ 0282 ] Mahjoub, Jamal. Navigation of a Rainmaker. Oxford. 1989. Heinemann. 0435905600. African Writers Series. 192 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing and Celeste Henny.

DESCRIPTION - A PAPERBACK ORIGINAL. 'The desert is a broken place where the wind and the sand and the stars live.' It is a place where humans may scratch an existence - until the rains fail. Then the people must go to the towns, and an age-old, elemental way of life confronts a newer society, one that strives to be part of the modern world but is itself built on shifting sand. Tanner is a stranger in this, his father's land, Sudan. He travelled here from his mother's arid England in search of some kind of fulfilment, but now he is stranded in the stagnant pool of Khartoum, a silent witness to the suffering around him The current of his life quickens with the arrival of a mysterious American, who may be technocrat or terrorist. With him Tanner travels south, Into the heart of the desert, where there is no more room for compromise. In a first novel of striking imagination and unflinching awareness, Jamal Mahjoub traces a journey that is more than lines on a map. It takes us into a present-day Africa beset with contrasts and contradictions, enduring the ancient scourges of famine and war; into the struggling mind of a man trying to come to terms with his life. With a vision of humanity apocalyptic in scale, Navigation of a Rainmaker will resonate far beyond one individual and one continent.

Jamal Mahjoub (born London 1966) is a mixed-race writer of British and Sudanese parents. He writes in English and has published seven novels under his own name. In 2012, Mahjoub began writing a series of crime fiction novels under the pseudonym Parker Bilal. Writing in The Observer, Zoe Heller described Mahjoub's first novel, Navigation of a Rainmaker as providing "a rich picture, both of Africa's vast, seemingly insuperable problems - and of the moral dilemmas faced by a well-meaning, ineffectual stranger". Wings of Dust, Mahjoub's second novel explores the legacy of the first generation of Northern Sudanese who were educated in the West in the 1950s and inherited the task of creating the newly independent nation. In the Hour of Signs recounts the story of the Mahdi who led a revolt in 19th-century Turko-Egyptian Sudan, expelling the Khedive Ismail's troops. According to the TLS the novel conveys "A profound awareness that man refuses to learn from history, because he is blind to the guises in which it repeats itself.". In the process General Gordon was killed which led to the British Reconquest and the formation of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1898. "Mahjoub's first three novels can be loosely read as a trilogy of political events in Sudan. Emulating the turmoil and uncertaintly of the sudan, his writing distinguishes itself by its dynamism" The Carrier (1998) is split between the early 17th century and present-day Denmark, where an archaeological find reveals a link to a visitor from the Arab world in medieval times. The novel's astronomical theme touches on the discovery of Heliocentricity and the work of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. Travelling with Djinns tells the story of Yasin, a man with a similar background to the author, who absconds with his young son Leo and travels through Europe in a Peugeot 504. In The Drift Latitudes, Rachel, following the death of her son, becomes aware of the existence of a half-sister, Jade; the product of a relationship her father had late in life. The novel depicts life around a jazz club in Liverpool frequented by African sailors in the 1960s. Nubian Indigo addresses the author's Nubian heritage on his father's side. The novel uses a mixture of fable and multiple characters to describe events around the evacuation of Nubian villages as a consequence of the raising of the Aswan High Dam. The novel was first published in French in 2006. Mahjoub's work has been broadly acclaimed and translated. In 1993, The Cartographer's Angel won a one-off short story prize organised by The Guardian newspaper in conjunction with the publisher Heinemann Books. In the 2000s his work received much attention in Europe. In 2001 in Italy he was a finalist for the La cultura del mare prize started by Alberto Moravia. In 2004 in France The Carrier (French:Le TElescope de Rachid) won the Prix de L'Astrolabe, an award given annually at the Etonnants Voyageurs festival in St Malo. In 2005, "The Obituary Tango" was shortlisted for the Caine Prize. In 2006 a short story, "Carrer Princessa", won the NH Hotels Mario Vargas Llosa prize for short stories. In 2012 Mahjoub began publishing crime fiction under the pseudonym "Parker Bilal". The Golden Scales is the first of a projected series set in Cairo featuring the exiled Sudanese detective Makana. The second book in the series, Dogstar Rising, appeared in February 2013. The third book in the series is "The Ghost Runner, published in 2014.
[ 0283 ] Mungoshi, Charles L. The Setting Sun and the Rolling World. Portsmouth. 1989. Heinemann. 0435905589. African Writers Series.. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - The Setting Sun and the Rolling World is a short story collection published in 1987 by Zimbabwean author Charles Mungoshi. Across 17 stories, Mungoshi explores profound cultural divides in his native country between tradition and modernization, rural and urban life, and colonialism and African nationalism.

CHARLES L. MUNGOSHI was born near Enkeldoorn, Rhodesia in 1947. He was educated at All Saints School, Daramombe School and St. Augustine's Secondary School. He worked for a year as a research assistant with the Forestry Commission and then for three years for Textbook Sales in Salisbury. He has published a collection of stories, COMING OF THE DRY SEASON (OUP Nairobi) and a novel in Shona.
[ 0284 ] Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Matigari. Portsmouth. 1989. Heinemann. 0435905465. African Writers Series.. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - Who is Matigari? Is he young or old; a man or fate; dead or living. or even a resurrection of Jesus Christ? These are the questions asked by the people of this unnamed country, when a man who has survived the war for independence emerges from the mountains and starts making strange claims and demands. Matigari is in search of his family to rebuild his home and start a new and peaceful future. But his search becomes a quest for truth and justice as he finds the people still dispossessed and the land he loves ruled by corruption, fear, and misery. Rumors spring up that a man with superhuman qualities has risen to renew the freedom struggle. The novel races toward its climax as Matigari realizes that words alone cannot defeat the enemy. He vows to use the force of arms to achieve his true liberation. Lyrical and hilarious in turn, Matigari is a memorable satire on the betrayal of human ideals and on the bitter experience of post-independence African society.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o (born January 5, 1938) is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gikuyu. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal, Mutiiri. In 1977, Ngugi embarked upon a novel form of theater in his native Kenya which sought to liberate the theatrical process from what he held to be ‘the general bourgeois education system', by encouraging spontaneity and audience participation in the performances. Ngugi's project sought to ‘demystify' the theatrical process, and to avoid the ‘process of alienation [which] produces a gallery of active stars and an undifferentiated mass of grateful admirers' which, according to Ngugi, encourages passivity in ‘ordinary people'. Although Ngaahika Ndeenda was a commercial success, it was shut down by the authoritarian Kenyan regime six weeks after its opening. Ngugi was subsequently imprisoned for over a year. Adopted as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, the artist was released from prison, and fled Kenya. In the United States, he taught at Yale University for some years, and has since also taught at New York University, with a dual professorship in Comparative Literature and Performance Studies, and the University of California, Irvine. Ngugi has frequently been regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His son is the author Mukoma wa Ngugi. Ngugi was born in Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kiambu district, Kenya, of Kikuyu descent, and baptised James Ngugi. His family was caught up in the Mau Mau War; his half brother Mwangi was actively involved in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, and his mother was tortured at Kamriithu homeguard post. He received a B.A. in English from Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, in 1963; during his education, a play of his, THE BLACK HERMIT, was produced in Kampala in 1962. He published his first novel, WEEP NOT, CHILD, in 1964, which he wrote while attending the University of Leeds in England. It was the first novel in English to be published by an East African. His second novel, THE RIVER BETWEEN (1965), has as its background the Mau Mau rebellion, and described an unhappy romance between Christians and non-Christians. THE RIVER BETWEEN is currently on Kenya's national secondary school syllabus. His novel A Grain of Wheat (1967) marked his embrace of Fanonist Marxism. He subsequently renounced English, Christianity, and the name James Ngugi as colonialist; he changed his name back to Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and began to write in his native Gikuyu and Swahili. The uncensored political message of his 1977 play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I WILL MARRY WHEN I WANT) provoked then Vice President Daniel arap Moi to order his arrest. While detained in the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, he wrote the first modern novel in Gikuyu, Caitaani mutharaba-Ini (DEVIL ON THE CROSS), on prison-issued toilet paper. After his release, he was not reinstated to his job as professor at Nairobi University, and his family was harassed. Due to his writing about the injustices of the dictatorial government at the time, Ngugi and his family were forced to live in exile. Only after Arap Moi was voted out of office, 22 years later, was it safe for them to return. His later works include Detained, his prison diary (1981), DECOLONISING THE MIND: THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE IN AFRICAN LITERATURE (1986), an essay arguing for African writers' expression in their native languages, rather than European languages, in order to renounce lingering colonial ties and to build an authentic African literature, and MATIGARI (1987), one of his most famous works, a satire based on a Gikuyu folktale. In 1992 he became a professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University, where he held the Erich Maria Remarque Chair. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature as well as the Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine. On August 8, 2004, Ngugi returned to Kenya as part of a month-long tour of East Africa. On August 11, robbers broke into his apartment: they assaulted both the Professor and his wife, and stole money and a computer. Since then, Ngugi has returned to America, and in the summer 2006 the American publishing firm Random House published his first new novel in nearly two decades, WIZARD OF THE CROW, translated to English from Gikuyu by the author. On November 10, 2006, while in San Francisco at Hotel Vitale at the Embarcadero, Ngugi was harassed and ordered to leave the hotel by an employee. The event led to a public outcry and angered the Kenyan community in the San Francisco Bay area and abroad, prompting an apology by the hotel.
[ 0285 ] Vassanji, M. G. The Gunny Sack. Portsmouth. 1989. Heinemann. 0435905449. African Writers Series. 276 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Katarzyna Klein. Author photograph by Nurjehan Aziz.

DESCRIPTION - ‘Ji Bai opened a small window into that dark past for me.. and a whole world flew in.'.. Salim Juma, a Tanzanian Asian and great grandson of an African slave, is bequeathed a gunny sack by his mystical grandaunt. It is an ancient sack, the drab dusty Shehrazade of the Indian and African settlements; a sack full of mementos that she would hold out to his mesmerised eyes when he was a boy. Nicknamed ‘Shehru', the gunny unravels a gallery of characters whose unwritten stories reflect the Asian experience in East Africa over tour generations. The novel is both the story of one extended family's arrival and existence in East Africa as well as a repository for the collective memory and oral history of many other African Asians. As one of the first African Asian novels of its kind, The Gunny Sack tells a tale deeply committed to both traditions and to the future of contemporary Africa.

M.G. Vassanji is the author of six acclaimed novels: THE GUNNY SACK, which won the regional Commonwealth Prize; NO NEW LAND; THE BOOK OF SECRETS, which won the very first Giller Prize; AMRIIKA; THE IN-BETWEEN WORLD OF VIKRAM LALL, which also won the Giller Prize, and THE ASSASSIN'S SONG, which was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award for Fiction. He is also the author of two collections of short fiction, UHURU STREET and WHEN SHE WAS QUEEN, and a work of non-fiction, A PLACE WITHIN: REDISCOVERING INDIA. He lives in Toronto with his wife and two sons.
[ 0286 ] Wangusa, Timothy. Upon This Mountain. Oxford. 1989. Heinemann. 0435905422. African Writers Series. 122 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Vikki Liogier..

DESCRIPTION - A PAPERBACK ORIGINAL. 'Father, have you ever touched heaven?' asks Mwambu. The fragile question leads this hopeful village boy up spiritual and physical mountains to seek out his young dreams. Instead of finding beauty and truth, Mwambu is forced to confront a reality incongruent with his ideals: adultery, ritualistic brutality and the 'red man's ' hypocrisy reveal a world turned upside down. Traditional rituals collide with western values and Mwambu's descent from the Mountain - his coming of age - describes the poignant transition from childhood to adult awareness. Mwambu's story unfolds in a Ugandan rural village during the time when 'the war of the whole world' - the Second World War had just broken out. Timothy Wangusa, poet and first-time novelist, weaves a lyrical, refreshing tale around the journey we must all make.

Timothy Wangusa (born 1942) is a Ugandan poet and novelist. Wangusa was chairman of Uganda Writers Association and founder president of International PEN Uganda Centre. Wangusa is an ethnic Mumasaaba, born in Bugisu, in eastern Uganda. He studied English at Makerere University where he later served on faculty, and the University of Leeds (UK). He wrote his MA and PhD on British and African poetry, respectively. Wangusa started working at Makerere University in 1969. He was appointed as Professor in 1981 (the first from his Bugisu. In his acceptance speech 'A Wordless World' he looked at how words were starting to lose meaning and there was a continuous shift from words and speech. Later Wangusa served as Head of Department of Literature and Dean of Faculty of Arts. He was also Minister of Education in the Ugandan Government (1985–86) and Member of Parliament (1989–96). Presently, he serves as Senior Presidential Advisor In Museveni's government. Wangusa played a pivotal role in establishing the Department of Languages and Literature at Uganda Christian University, an Anglican University in Mukono. His collection of poems Salutations: Poems 1965-1975 (1977), reissued with additional poems as A Pattern of Dust: Selected Poems 1965-1990 (1994), reflects his rural origins. The novel Upon This Mountain (1989) tells the story of Mwambu, who is determined to touch heaven, and describes his journey towards adulthood. The novel combines African folklore and proverbs with Christian symbolism. Its main theme is that of growing up in the Ugandan society and what challenges come with growing up in the traditional setting. Wangusa's work has been featured on the pan-African poetry platform Badilisha Poetry Radio.
[ 0287 ] Chinodya, Shimmer. Harvest of Thorns. Oxford. 1989. Heinemann. 0435905821. African Writers Series. 248 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Colin Williams.

DESCRIPTION - HARVEST OF THORNS is an important new novel by one of Zimbabwe's most talented young writers. It marks the history of Zimbabwe's war of liberation as recounted by its writers and story-tellers. HARVEST OF THORNS tells the story of a young man who grows up in the turbulence of the 1960s and how his adolescent experiences were molded by the political events of the country. Benjamin finds himself torn in the conflicts between Christianity and Nationalism, between the demands of parental discipline and the attractions of new ideas and beliefs. Isolated and troubled, he is provoked into leaving school to join the freedom fighters. He makes his way to Mozambique, where the crucible a war leaves nobody untouched. The young Benjamin develops into manhood with a remarkable maturity. This is the prime strength of HARVEST OF THORNS: that it provides so fine a blend of private and public reality, and it sets the writer's perception of people and situations firmly in the broad context of social and political complexity. At the same time, Shimmer Chinodya's own maturing style shows a rich blend of humor and metaphor, boldly presented with a beguiling clarity. HARVEST OF THORNS is a novel of great significance which will give all those who read it a greater understanding of the road along which Zimbabwe has traveled, as well as of the possible directions ahead.

Shimmer Chinodya (born 1957 Gwelo, Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland) is an Zimbabwean novelist. He studied at Mambo Primary School. He was expelled from Goromonzi after demonstrating against Ian Smith's government. He graduated from the University of Zimbabwe, and from the University of Iowa, with an MA in Creative Writing, in 1985. He won the 1990 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Africa region.
[ 0288 ] Laing, Kojo. Godhorse: Poems. Oxford. 1990. Heinemann. 043590552x. African Writers Series. 57 pages. paperback. Cover design by Carrie Craig.

DESCRIPTION - A PAPERBACK ORIGINAL. This is a powerful, witty and original collection by Ghana's leading novelist and poet, Kojo Laing, with the linguistic inventiveness praised in his novels Search Sweet Country and Woman of the Aeroplanes, combines the ritualistic African and the abstracted European poetic tradition. His intense yet often playful contemplation of truths is reflected in his varied treatments of nature, love, death, politics and portraits of daily life. Godhorse is evocative, ironic and often humorous. Above all it communicates feeling and energy. Some reviews of Search Sweet Country - 'Hugely ambitious, joyfully spendthrift of language and ideas' The Listener. 'A novel of charm, invention and many poetic delights' Books & Bookmen'. The first truly modern novel to come out of Africa' Literary Review.

B. Kojo Laing or Bernard Kojo Laing (born 1 July 1946) is a Ghanaian novelist and poet, whose writing is characterised by its hybridity, whereby he uses Ghanaian Pidgin English and vernacular languages alongside standard English. His first two novels in particular - Search Sweet Country(1986) and Woman of the Aeroplanes (1988) - were praised for their linguistic originality, both books including glossaries that feature the author's neologisms as well as Ghanaian words. Laing was born in Kumasi, capital of Ghana's Ashanti region, the eldest son and fourth of the six children of George Ekyem Ferguson Laing (an Anglican priest who became the first African rector of the Anglican Theological College in Ashanti) and Darling Egan. Baptized as Bernard Ebenezer, he later stopped using his English Christian name, favouring his African identity instead. After some early education in Accra, Laing in 1957 went to continue his primary and secondary schooling in Scotland, attending Bonhill Primary School and the Vale of Leven Academy in Alexandria, Dunbartonshire. He graduated from Glasgow University in 1968 with a master's degree, before returning to Ghana and joining the civil service, remaining there until 1979. He subsequently worked for five years as an administrative secretary of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana-Legon and in 1984 became head of Saint Anthony's School in Accra. Laing emerged as a poet in the 1970s, with work ‘occasionally drawing on the techniques of surrealism', but received significant attention only with the appearance his first novel, Search Sweet Country, which was published in 1986 to critical acclaim, and won prizes including the Valco Award and the Ghana Book Award. Search Sweet Country was reissued by McSweeney's in 2012, with an Introduction by Binyavanga Wainaina. Reviewing it in The Slate Book Review, Uzodinma Iweala writes: ‘Reading Search Sweet Country is like reading a dream, and indeed at times it feels like the magical landscapes of writers like the Nigerian Ben Okri or the Mozambican Mia Couto. Each page delivers an intense blast of vivid imagery, a world in which landscapes come to life when inanimate objects receive human characterization. Laing. is a master stylist, and Search Sweet Country delivers an absorbing, if demanding, world for both its characters and the reader.' Publishers Weekly called it an ‘intricate, beautifully rambling novel. a compelling and rewarding read', while the reviewer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette observed: ‘'Search Sweet Country' can be read over and over, continually surprising with a fresh turn of phrase or nuance in character, always engaging, always beautiful. The search is worthwhile.' Laing's second novel, Woman of the Aeroplanes, was published in 1988, and has drawn comparison with the work of Ayi Kwei Armah. Laing has since published two further novels: Major Gentl and Achimota Wars (1992), which also won a Valco Award in 1993, and Big Bishop Roko and the Altar Gangsters (2006). His poetry collection, Godhorse was published in 1989. Laing has also written short stories, one of which - ‘Vacancy for the Post of Jesus Christ' - was included in The Heinemann Book of Contemporary African Stories (1992), edited by Chinua Achebe and C. L. Innes. Laing lives in Accra and since 2005 has devoted himself full-time to writing.
[ 0289 ] Cheney-Coker, Syl. The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar. Oxford. 1990. Heinemann. 0435905724. African Writers Series. 398 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Chris Gilvan-Cartwright.

DESCRIPTION - After three collections of poetry, all well-received in the west, Cheney-Coker wrote a novel, THE LAST HARMATTAN OF ALUSINE DUNBAR, which was published in 1990. The novel, extremely ambitious in scale and scope, describes the entire history of a fictional country, Malagueta, with roots in the Atlantic slave trade (similar to Sierra Leone or Liberia, both populated chiefly with former slaves). The novel is intended as a break with the tradition of the African novel and its dominant writers, Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Chinua Achebe. To achieve this independence, it draws both on the peculiar histories of the post-slavery nations of northwest Africa and on literatures from outside of the continent. Cheney-Coker's interest in Gabriel García Márquez, in particular, has led some critics to consider the novel to belong to the genre of magical realism-the title character demonstrates mysterious powers similar to those of some of García Márquez's characters-though others have questioned that assumption.

Syl Cheney-Coker (b. 1945) is a poet, novelist, and journalist from Sierra Leone. Educated in the United States, he has a global sense of literary history, and has introduced styles and techniques from French and Latin American literatures to Sierra Leone. He has spent much of his life in exile from his native country, and has written extensively (in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction) about the condition of exile and the view of Africa from an African abroad. Cheney-Coker was born in Freetown with the name Syl Cheney Coker, and changed his name to its current spelling in 1970. He went to the United States in 1966, where he attended the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Oregon, and the University of Wisconsin. After his schooling he returned briefly to Sierra Leone, but accepted a position at the University of the Philippines in 1975; he later married a Filipino woman. He moved to Nigeria in 1977 to teach at the University of Maiduguri, and returned to the United States in 1988 to be Writer-in-Residence at the University of Iowa. Cheney-Coker's poetry is tinged with the anxiety of his perennially uncertain status, dealing both with exile (he has spent the majority of his adult life outside of his country) and with the precariousness of living as an intellectual in Sierra Leone. At the same time, he is concerned always with how he will be read; his poems are radical and ardent, but also erudite and allusive, which can distract a reader from Cheney-Coker's ideological project. He has been called one of the more western-influenced African poets. In the early 1990s, Cheney-Coker returned to Freetown to become editor of a progressive newspaper, the Vanguard. After the military coup of 1997, Cheney-Coker was targeted as a dissident, and barely escaped with his life. In part through the efforts of Wole Soyinka, an exiled Nigerian poet teaching at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Cheney-Coker was invited to be the first writer in the City of Asylum program in Las Vegas, Nevada. He decided to return to a somewhat more stable Sierra Leone in 2003, saying, ‘After a while, exile is neither justifiable nor tolerable.'
[ 0290 ] Cheney-Coker, Syl. Blood in the Desert's Eyes: Poems. Oxford. 1990. Heinemann. 0435905740. African Writers Series. 112 pages. paperback. Cover design by Vinston Bair.

DESCRIPTION - In this compelling collection of poetry, accomplished poet, Syl Cheney-Coker's distinctive voice speaks of his native land, Sierra Leone, the desert, poverty, and childhood. Throughout, his imagery and themes reflect his concern for political injustice where it is found, and his fluent and elegant use of language produces a powerful, free-flowing verse. Cheney Coker's work draws its inspiration from both European and African poetic and cultural traditions, paying homage to such artists and musicians of the west as Goya and Vivaldi while expressing his deep love and concern for the continent of his birth.

Syl Cheney-Coker (b. 1945) is a poet, novelist, and journalist from Sierra Leone. Educated in the United States, he has a global sense of literary history, and has introduced styles and techniques from French and Latin American literatures to Sierra Leone. He has spent much of his life in exile from his native country, and has written extensively (in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction) about the condition of exile and the view of Africa from an African abroad. Cheney-Coker was born in Freetown with the name Syl Cheney Coker, and changed his name to its current spelling in 1970. He went to the United States in 1966, where he attended the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Oregon, and the University of Wisconsin. After his schooling he returned briefly to Sierra Leone, but accepted a position at the University of the Philippines in 1975; he later married a Filipino woman. He moved to Nigeria in 1977 to teach at the University of Maiduguri, and returned to the United States in 1988 to be Writer-in-Residence at the University of Iowa. Cheney-Coker's poetry is tinged with the anxiety of his perennially uncertain status, dealing both with exile (he has spent the majority of his adult life outside of his country) and with the precariousness of living as an intellectual in Sierra Leone. At the same time, he is concerned always with how he will be read; his poems are radical and ardent, but also erudite and allusive, which can distract a reader from Cheney-Coker's ideological project. He has been called one of the more western-influenced African poets. In the early 1990s, Cheney-Coker returned to Freetown to become editor of a progressive newspaper, the Vanguard. After the military coup of 1997, Cheney-Coker was targeted as a dissident, and barely escaped with his life. In part through the efforts of Wole Soyinka, an exiled Nigerian poet teaching at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Cheney-Coker was invited to be the first writer in the City of Asylum program in Las Vegas, Nevada. He decided to return to a somewhat more stable Sierra Leone in 2003, saying, ‘After a while, exile is neither justifiable nor tolerable.'
[ 0291 ] Couto, Mia. Voices Made Night. Oxford. 1990. Heinemann. 0435905708. Translated from the Mozambican Portuguese by David Brookshaw. African Writers Series. 115 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Celeste Henney.

DESCRIPTION - FIRST ENGLISH LANGUAGE PUBLICATION. 'There exists in nothingness that illusion of plentitude which causes life to stop and voices to become night.' In this collection of stories, the Mozambican poet, Mia Couto, expresses, through striking poetic metaphors, the emptiness and absurdity of lives bound by poverty and subject to arbitrary incursions of extreme violence. The frustrated longing of the lipless snake catcher who surrounds his lady's house with snakes; or the man who fears his wife is a witch and scalds her with boiling water, are caught in dual tension. In Voices Made Night, an African cosmology portrays a surreal world defined by its contradictions, set against a background of political instability. 'A book full of poetic moments and strange happenings, a landmark in Mozambican prose fiction.' - Jornal de Letras. 'The great merit of this book. is the courage with which it reveals the voices of a people struggling to conquer an identity.' - Diario Popular. 'One wants to read it at one go, avidly, smitten by Africa and its images, full of beauty, strength and magic.' - Diario de Lisboa.

Antonio Emílio Leite Couto (born July 5, 1955), better known as Mia Couto, is a world-renowned Mozambican writer. Couto was born in the city of Beira, Mozambique's second largest city, where he was also raised and schooled. He is the son of Portuguese emigrants who moved to the former Portuguese colony in the 1950s. At the age of fourteen, some of his poetry was published in a local newspaper, Notícias da Beira. Three years later, in 1971, he moved to the capital Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) and began to study medicine at the University of Lourenço Marques. During this time, the anti-colonial guerrilla and political movement FRELIMO was struggling to overthrow the Portuguese colonial rule in Mozambique. In April 1974, after the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon and the overthrow of the Estado Novo regime, Mozambique was about to become an independent republic. In 1974, FRELIMO asked Couto to suspend his studies for a year to work as a journalist for Tribuna until September 1975 and then as the director of the newly-created Mozambique Information Agency (AIM). Later, he ran the Tempo magazine until 1981. His first book of poems, Raiz de Orvalho, was published in 1983; it included texts aimed against the dominance of Marxist militant propaganda. Couto continued working for the newspaper Notícias until 1985 when he resigned to finish his course of study in biology. Not only is Mia Couto considered one of the most important writers in Mozambique, but many of his works have been published in more than 20 countries and in various languages, including Portuguese, English, French, German, Italian, Serbian and Catalan. In many of his texts, he undertakes to recreate the Portuguese language by infusing it with regional vocabulary and structures from Mozambique, thus producing a new model for the African narrative. Stylistically, his writing is influenced by magical realism, a style popular in modern Latin American literatures, and his use of language is reminiscent of the Brazilian writer Guimarães Rosa, but also deeply influenced by the baiano writer Jorge Amado. He has been noted for creating proverbs, sometimes known as ‘improverbs', in his fiction, as well as riddles, legends, metaphors, giving his work a poetical dimension. An international jury at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair named his first novel, Terra Sonâmbula (Sleepwalking Land), one of the best 12 African books of the 20th century. In 2007, he became the first African author to win the prestigious Latin Union literary prize, which has been awarded annually in Italy since 1990. Mia Couto became only the fourth writer in the Portuguese language to take home this prestigious award, having competed against authors from Portugal, France, Colombia, Spain, Italy, and Senegal. Currently, he is a biologist employed by the Limpopo Transfrontier Park while continuing his work on other writing projects.
[ 0292 ] Gool, Reshard. Cape Town Coolie. Oxford. 1990. Heinemann. 0435905686. African Writers Series. 185 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Gerard Sekoto from 'Houses District Six.

DESCRIPTION - A PAPERBACK ORIGINAL. Nineteen forty-seven is drawing to a close and South Africa breathes with difficulty under the imminent shroud of official apartheid. Liberal lawyer Henry Naidoo is at once a pawn of fate and a man convinced of the effectiveness of his choices: he encounters a kaleidoscopic world in which anarchists, capitalists, Marxists, the State and its oppressed people collide with one another against the splendid natural beauty of the Cape. Henry's ultimate fusion of love and political action results in both truth and tragedy: 'There is only one kind of true love,' he realises, 'and that is responsible compassion.' REshard Gool's novel illuminates the painful challenges thrown up by South Africa's past - challenges that are still being faced in a world where there is no place for the uncommitted. 'Paton showed us what it is like to be a sensitive Afrikaaner in that country. but (this) novel takes in the entire, fantastic complex.'

Reshard Gool was born in England of South African parents, and later moved to Canada where he was publisher, author and professor before he died in 1988. He is the author of The Nemesis Casket, a modern baroque novel, and several volumes of poems including In Medusa's Eye.
[ 0293 ] Head, Bessie. A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writing. Portsmouth. 1990. Heinemann. 0435905783. Selected & Edited by Craig MacKenzie. African Writers Series. 107 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Sunita Singh. Author photograph by George Hallett.

DESCRIPTION - HEINEMANN AFRICAN WRITERS SERIES A PAPERBACK ORIGINAL 'I need a quiet backwater and a sense of living as though I am barely alive on the earth, treading a small, careful pathway through life.' Intense personal experiences of South Africa's brutal social system, a sense of stifled creativity and a distaste for politics made Bessie Head leave for Botswana on an exit permit at the age of 27. There, in her chosen rural 'haven' of Serowe, and despite a severe mental breakdown, she wrote the novels and stories that earned her international recognition as one of Africa's most remarkable and individual writers. A Woman Alone is a collection of autobiographical writings, sketches and essays which covers the entire span of Bessie Head's creative life, up to her death in 1986 at the age of 49. It reveals a woman of great sensitivity and vitality, inspired through her knowledge of suffering in a `reverence for ordinary people' and finding some healing for her own anguish in a quiet corner of Africa.

Bessie Emery Head (6 July 1937 - 17 April 1986) is usually considered Botswana's most influential writer. Bessie Emery Head was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, the child of a wealthy white South African woman and a black servant when interracial relationships were illegal in South Africa. It was claimed that her mother was mentally ill so that she could be sent to a quiet location to then give birth to Bessie without the neighbors knowing. However, the exact circumstances are disputed, and some of Bessie Head's comments, though often quoted as straight autobiography, are in fact from fictionalized settings. In the 1950s and '60s she was a teacher, then a journalist for the South African magazine Drum. In 1964 she moved to Botswana (then still the Bechuanaland Protectorate) as a refugee, having been peripherally involved with Pan-African politics. It would take 15 years for Head to obtain Botswana citizenship. Head settled in Serowe, the largest of Botswana's ‘villages' (i.e. traditional settlements as opposed to settler towns). Serowe was famous both for its historical importance, as capital of the Bamangwato people, and for the experimental Swaneng school of Patrick van Rensburg. The deposed chief of the Bamangwato, Seretse Khama, was soon to become the first President of independent Botswana. Her early death in 1986 (aged 48) from hepatitis came just at the point where she was starting to achieve recognition as a writer and was no longer so desperately poor. Most of Bessie Head's important works are set in Serowe, in particular the three novels When Rain Clouds Gather, Maru, and A Question of Power. One of her best works is When Rain Clouds Gather, in which she writes about a troubled young man called Makhaya who runs away from his birthplace, South Africa, to become a refugee in a little village called Golema Mmidi, in the heart of Botswana. Here he is faced with many challenges, one of which is the fact that Chief Matenge does not allow his presence in the village. He meets a white man named Gilbert and starts a whole new journey into the unknown. Head also published a number of short stories, including the collection The Collector of Treasures. She published a book on the history of Serowe, the village she settled in, called Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind. Her last novel, A Bewitched Crossroad, is historical, set in nineteenth-century Botswana. She had also written a story of two prophets, one wealthy and one who lived poorly called ‘Jacob: The Faith-Healing Priest'. Head's work, which emphasised the value of ordinary life and humble people, was more in touch with an earlier trend in African writing than many recent writers, who have made overtly political comments. Her writing has endured nonetheless. Religious ideas feature prominently at times, as in the work A Question of Power. It is interesting to note that Head was initially brought up as a Christian; however, she was later influenced by Hinduism (to which she was exposed through South Africa's Indian community). Most of her writing took place while she was in exile in Botswana. An exception is the early novel The Cardinals (published posthumously), written before she left South Africa. In some ways Bessie Head remained an outsider in her adopted country, and some discern she had something of a love-hate relationship with it. At times she suffered mental health problems and on one occasion put up a public notice making bizarre and shocking allegations about then President Sir Seretse Khama, which led to a period in Lobatse Mental Hospital. A Question of Power is based partly on those experiences. In 2007 the Bessie Head Heritage Trust was established, along with the Bessie Head Literature Awards. In July 2007 the library in Pietermaritzburg was renamed the Bessie Head library in her honor. In 2003 she was awarded the South African ‘Order of Ikhamanga in Gold' for her ‘exceptional contribution to literature and the struggle for social change, freedom and peace.'
[ 0294 ] Head, Bessie. Tales of Tenderness and Power. Oxford. 1990. Heinemann. 0435905791. African Writers Series. 144 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing Cover illustration by Sunita Singh Author photograph by George Hallett..

DESCRIPTION - During her lifetime (1937-86), Bessie Head was hailed as one of Africa's greatest writers. This anthology of stories, personal observations and historic legends - some previously unpublished - is a fitting tribute to her versatility and power as a story-teller and commentator. TALES OF TENDERNESS AND POWER draws on writings which have roots in the author's own experience in Botswana. It reflects her fascination with the country's people and their history and her identification with individuals and their conflicting emotions. ‘She enjoyed observing, smiling, forgiving or raging and then recording.' These tales reveal her affinity with human goodness and tenderness and her fear and resentment of the misuse of power. Bessie Head has been described as writing with ‘an extraordinary simplicity and breadth of vision'. This collection will honour her vision and posthumously reinforce her literary status. ‘It should be widely read for it confirms the stature and rich complexity of Head's literary legend.' Andries Walter Oliphant, New Nation ‘TALES OF TENDERNESS AND POWER is a good book which reasserts Head as one of Africa's great writers, and pays a deserved tribute to a woman who gave the best part of her life to literature.' Kaizer M Nyatsumba, Tribute.

Bessie Emery Head (6 July 1937 - 17 April 1986) is usually considered Botswana's most influential writer. Bessie Emery Head was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, the child of a wealthy white South African woman and a black servant when interracial relationships were illegal in South Africa. It was claimed that her mother was mentally ill so that she could be sent to a quiet location to then give birth to Bessie without the neighbors knowing. However, the exact circumstances are disputed, and some of Bessie Head's comments, though often quoted as straight autobiography, are in fact from fictionalized settings. In the 1950s and '60s she was a teacher, then a journalist for the South African magazine Drum. In 1964 she moved to Botswana (then still the Bechuanaland Protectorate) as a refugee, having been peripherally involved with Pan-African politics. It would take 15 years for Head to obtain Botswana citizenship. Head settled in Serowe, the largest of Botswana's ‘villages' (i.e. traditional settlements as opposed to settler towns). Serowe was famous both for its historical importance, as capital of the Bamangwato people, and for the experimental Swaneng school of Patrick van Rensburg. The deposed chief of the Bamangwato, Seretse Khama, was soon to become the first President of independent Botswana. Her early death in 1986 (aged 48) from hepatitis came just at the point where she was starting to achieve recognition as a writer and was no longer so desperately poor. Most of Bessie Head's important works are set in Serowe, in particular the three novels When Rain Clouds Gather, Maru, and A Question of Power. One of her best works is When Rain Clouds Gather, in which she writes about a troubled young man called Makhaya who runs away from his birthplace, South Africa, to become a refugee in a little village called Golema Mmidi, in the heart of Botswana. Here he is faced with many challenges, one of which is the fact that Chief Matenge does not allow his presence in the village. He meets a white man named Gilbert and starts a whole new journey into the unknown. Head also published a number of short stories, including the collection The Collector of Treasures. She published a book on the history of Serowe, the village she settled in, called Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind. Her last novel, A Bewitched Crossroad, is historical, set in nineteenth-century Botswana. She had also written a story of two prophets, one wealthy and one who lived poorly called ‘Jacob: The Faith-Healing Priest'. Head's work, which emphasised the value of ordinary life and humble people, was more in touch with an earlier trend in African writing than many recent writers, who have made overtly political comments. Her writing has endured nonetheless. Religious ideas feature prominently at times, as in the work A Question of Power. It is interesting to note that Head was initially brought up as a Christian; however, she was later influenced by Hinduism (to which she was exposed through South Africa's Indian community). Most of her writing took place while she was in exile in Botswana. An exception is the early novel The Cardinals (published posthumously), written before she left South Africa. In some ways Bessie Head remained an outsider in her adopted country, and some discern she had something of a love-hate relationship with it. At times she suffered mental health problems and on one occasion put up a public notice making bizarre and shocking allegations about then President Sir Seretse Khama, which led to a period in Lobatse Mental Hospital. A Question of Power is based partly on those experiences. In 2007 the Bessie Head Heritage Trust was established, along with the Bessie Head Literature Awards. In July 2007 the library in Pietermaritzburg was renamed the Bessie Head library in her honor. In 2003 she was awarded the South African ‘Order of Ikhamanga in Gold' for her ‘exceptional contribution to literature and the struggle for social change, freedom and peace.'
[ 0294 ] Hove, Chenjerai. Bones. Oxford. 1990. Heinemann. 0435905767. African Writers Series. 113 pages. paperback. AWSunnumbered. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Maggie Smith. Illustrated by Paula Cox. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - WINNER OF THE 1989 NOMA AWARD. First published in Zimbabwe, where it received wide praise, Bones is a confident and convincing extended prose poem. In this novel, Chenjerai Hove has successfully engaged language which is marvellously rich in Shona idiom to give Zimbabwean peasants a voice, a means of conveying their struggle for liberation in an essentially white man's world. The psychological and physical struggle of Marita, a farm labourer on a white commercial farm, is a powerful central thread within a complex but accessible poetic tapestry. Memories of those who knew this influential woman throw up images of the determination she had to bring her son safely back from the freedom fighters and liberation war, and of how she stood strong against oppression whilst others tended towards subservience. Marita's story powerfully illustrates how attitudinal change is a vital ingredient in the fight for freedom. Janita, Marita's disciple and her son's lover, reiterates this strength, keeping the fighting spirit against the oppressors alive. 'His village is the world and its simple and unsophisticated peasants are actors who portray our roles under oppression today.'

Chenjerai Hove (9 February 1956 - 12 July 2015) was a Zimbabwean poet, novelist and essayist who wrote in both English and Shona. Modernist in their formal construction, but making extensive use of oral conventions, Hove's novels offer an intense examination of the psychic and social costs - to the rural population, especially, of the war of liberation in Zimbabwe." He died on 12 July 2015; he was in Norway at the time and his death has been attributed to liver failure. The son of a local chief, Chenjerai Hove was born in Mazvihwa, near Zvishavane, Rhodesia. He attended school at Kutama College and Marist Brothers Dete, in the Hwange district of Zimbabwe. After studying in Gweru, he became a teacher and then took degrees at the University of South Africa and the University of Zimbabwe. He also worked as a journalist, and contributed to the anthology And Now the Poets Speak. A critic of the policies of the Mugabe government, he was living in exile at the time of his death as a fellow at the House of Culture in Stavanger, Norway, as part of the International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN). Prior to this, he held visiting positions at Lewis and Clark College and Brown University; he was also once a poet-in-residence in Miami. Chenjerai Hove's work was translated into several languages (including Japanese, German, and Dutch). He won several awards over the course of his career, including the 1989 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.
[ 0295 ] Maja-Pearce, Adewale (editor). The Heinemann Book of African Poetry in English. Portsmouth. 1990. Heinemann. 0435913239. African Writers Series. 224 pages. paperback. Cover design by Vinston Bair. .

DESCRIPTION - A PAPERBACK ORIGINAL. 'The Maja-Pearce selection reinforces the sense of wonderment that so many varieties of poetic dialect can emerge through one language.' - New Statesman & Society. 'Adewale Maja-Pearce presents an impressive array of African poets without recourse to ideological discrimination.. This volume is capable of changing and influencing the minds of those unfamiliar with African literature in verse.' - West Africa. This anthology aims to represent the best African poetry written in English over the last thirty years. It does not pretend to be a comprehensive collection but is a reflection of the excellence to be found within a tradition which, once known as 'emergent', has indisputably arrived. A sense of development over time has been captured by Adewale Maja-Pearce through the chronological placing of the poets. Familiar names such as Wole Soyinka, Dennis Brutus and Kojo Laing are present along with the new talent of a younger generation which includes Chenjerai Hove and Gabriel Gbadamosi. Naturally, each poem is unique, each style particular to one poet, but there is a common achievement present in the work of all - the art of having allied courageously the conditions of African society with the craft of poetry.

Adewale Maja-Pearce (born 1953) is an Anglo-Nigerian writer, journalist and critic, who is best known for his documentary essays. He is the author of several books, including the memoirs In My Father's Country (1987) and The House My Father Built (2014), several other non-fiction titles and a collection of short stories entitled Loyalties and Other Stories (1986). Adewale Maja-Pearce was born in London, England, to British and Yoruba parents. He grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, attending St. Gregory's College, Obalende (1965–69), and returned to Britain to be educated at the University College of Wales, Swansea (BA, 1972–75), and at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University (1984–86), where he gained a Master of Arts degree in African studies. He was employed a researcher at Index on Censorship and became the journal's Africa Editor (1986–97), as well as being Series Editor of the Heinemann African Writers Series (1986–94). Having returned to Nigeria, he lives in Surulere, Lagos, in a house inherited by his father, which he has written about in his 2014 memoir The House My Father Built. Maja-Pearce runs an editorial services agency called Yemaja, as well as a small publishing company, The New Gong. Maja-Pearce has written in various genres, his early published work featuring short stories drawing on his Nigerian background, with his collection Loyalties and Other Stories appearing in 1986. Most notable, however, as an essayist, he has written several non-fiction books, including the 2005 Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa and Other Essays, which in the opinion of critic Uzor Uzoatu 'affords us the opportunity of dipping into the immense world of Maja-Pearce as he, in twenty-three heartfelt essays and reviews, illuminates the benighted mores of modern Nigeria, the identity question in South Africa … and engages with seminal minds across the world. This book is a treasure, a profound testament.' Maja-Pearce was the editor of Christopher Okigbo's Collected Poems (1986), as well as of anthologies such as The Heinemann Book of African Poetry in English (1990) and Who's Afraid of Wole Soyinka?: Essays on Censorship (1991), and also wrote the 1998 and 1999 annual reports on human rights violations in Nigeria. His memoirs include 1987's In My Father's Country: A Nigerian Journey and, most recently, The House My Father Built (2014), which the reviewer for the online magazine Bakwa described in the following terms: 'a harrowing tale of Nigeria as it then was (1993-1999); a memoir of Adewale Maja-Pearce's quest to possess his birth right, his country and personal dignity. Mr Maja-Pearce presents the greatest cast of characters in the history of Nigerian literature. And nothing comes close, no clichE, except you consider Basi and Company by Ken Saro-Wiwa.' Maja-Pearce has written journalism, essays and reviews for a range of international publications, among them The New York Times, Granta, The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The London Magazine, and Prospect. He became a contributing opinion writer for The International New York Times in 2013. Maja-Pearce is married to the artist/activist Juliet Ezenwa.
[ 0296 ] Akwanya, Amechi. Orimili. Portsmouth. 1991. Heinemann. 0435906704. Paperback Original. African Writers Series. 186 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Sam Piyasena. Cover design by Keith Pointing.

DESCRIPTION - ORIMILI takes his name from the great river that flows through his hometown of Kokocha - but while the river flows on to the wider world beyond, Orimili is anchored to his home, and yearns to strengthen those ties further. His ambition is to be accepted in the company of elders, to wear the thick white thread of office around his ankle. In this first novel, Amechi Akwanya has created a complex community at the point of irrevocable change. With masterly precision and acute insight he delineates the forces that animate human relationships - that bind them and destroy them, and define society.

Amechi Nicholas Akwanya MA, PhD, was born in 1952 in Awkuzu, near Onitsha, Nigeria. He attended primary school in Awkuzu, and secondary school at All Hallows Seminary, Onitsha. At third level, Akwanya studied philosophy and theology (1972-1980), at Bigard Memorial Seminary, Enugu, Nigeria. He was ordained priest in July 1980, and travelled to Ireland two years later where he studied at Maynooth College, National University of Ireland, between 1982 and 1989. Akwanya gained a BA in English and Geography (1985), an MA in English (1986) and returned to Nigeria in 1989 having achieved a PhD in English. The theme of his doctoral dissertation was 'Structuring and Meaning in the Nigerian Novel.'Akwanya is a member of the International Association for the study of Anglo-Irish literature. He has had work on 'Echewa's Narrative Strategy' published in Nigeria Today (1989), and has produced work on 'The Nigerian, Chinua Achebe's Writing: An Investment in Speech' for The Irish Review. Orimili is Akwanya's first novel.
[ 0297 ] Chipasula, Frank M. Whispers in the Wings: Poems. Oxford. 1991. Heinemann. 0435911929. African Writers Series. 111 pages. paperback. Cover design by Vinston Bair.

DESCRIPTION - Marked by a simplicity bordering on song, and drawing on elements of Malawian folklore, these poems are at once articulate and forceful. Arranged in four movements and a finale, they confront tyranny in Frank Chipasula's homeland, Malawi, and then travel outwards through East, Central, and Southern Africa, dealing with the themes of colonial and post-colonial oppression, exile, and the nature of good and evil.

Frank Mkalawile Chipasula (born 16 October 1949) is a Malawian writer, editor and university professor, "easily one of the best of the known writers in the discourse of Malawian letters". Born in Luanshya, Zambia, Frank Chipasula attended St. Peter's Primary School on Likoma Island, Soche Hill Day Secondary School, Malosa Secondary School, Chancellor College, University of Malawi, and, finally, the Great East Road Campus of the University of Zambia, Lusaka, where he graduated B.A., in exile, in 1976. Before leaving Malawi, Chipasula had worked as a freelance broadcaster for the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation while studying English and French at the university. In Lusaka, he served as English Editor for the National Education Company of Zambia, his first publishers, following his graduation from the University of Zambia. In 1978 Chipasula went into exile in the United States as a result of the Hastings Banda government, studying for his M.A. in Creative Writing at Brown University, a second M.A. in African American Studies at Yale University and gaining a Ph.D in English literature from Brown University in 1987. Previously a professor of Black Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Howard University, Chipasula has also worked as the education attache at the Malawian embassy in Washington, D.C. His first book,Visions and Reflections (1972), is also the first published poetry volume in English by a Malawian writer. As well as poetry, which has been widely anthologised, he has written radio plays and fiction. Since January 10, 1976, Chipasula has been married to Stella, a former school teacher, whom he met in Mulanje, Malawi, in 1972. They have two grown children, James Masauko Mgeni Akuzike and Helen Chipo.
[ 0298 ] Gordimer, Nadine. Crimes of Conscience: Selected Short Stories. London. 1991. Heinemann. 0435906682. African Writers Series. 121 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Angela J. Hogg.

DESCRIPTION - A PAPERBACK ORIGINAL. Set in Southern Africa, this powerful collection of short stories highlights Nadine Gordimer's outstanding ability to pierce the core of the human condition. Personal experiences are set against the turmoil of a violent world where the instability of fear and uncertainty lead unwittingly to crimes of conscience: a woman betrays her husband's best friend; activist and spy are drawn together in passionate embrace; refugees are moved against their will. The situations are real and often chilling, the themes of each story neatly bound, like the characters within, in the atmosphere of a political stranglehold. 'If one were never to read any other literature about South Africa, Gordimer's work would be enough. For more than 30 years she has delineated each shift and change in the system in novels and short stories that intertwine the personal with the political. ‘As a literary keeper of records she has no peer.' - The Sunday Times.

Nadine Gordimer (20 November 1923 - 13 July 2014) was a South African writer, political activist and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was recognized as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has - in the words of Alfred Nobel - been of very great benefit to humanity". Gordimer's writing dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. Under that regime, works such as Burger's Daughter and July's People were banned. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organization was banned, and gave Nelson Mandela advice on his famous 1964 defence speech at the trial which led to his conviction for life. She was also active in HIV/AIDS causes.
[ 0299 ] Ojaide, Tanure. The Blood of Peace & Other Poems. Oxford. 1991. Heinemann. 0435911937. African Writers Series. 128 pages. paperback. Cover design by Vinston Bair.

DESCRIPTION - Tanure Ojaide - 1987 Africa regional winner of the African Commonweath Poetry Prize, and 1988 winner of the All-Africa Okigbo Prize for poetry and the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Prize - is a leading member of the new generation of African poets. His simple rhythmical poems are presented in three separate sections - Verdicts, the Blood of Peace and the Warrior's Trail. Ojaide's melodic style lends a disguise to a deep-rooted political content, and the collection ultimately calls for all Nigerians, and Africans, to stand firm against corruption and demand their rights. `strong, supple, various, colorful, moving, invariably interesting. .' - Hayden Carruth, veteran American poet. `I personally regard him (Ojaide) as perhaps the most important voice in the generation of African writers following Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka.' - Joseph Bruchac, The Greenfield Review Literary Center.

Tanure Ojaide (born 1948) is a prolific Nigerian poet and writer. He is noted for his unique stylistic vision and for his intense criticism of imperialism, religion, and other issues. He is regarded as a socio-political and an ecocentric poet.
[ 0300 ] Achebe, Chinua and Innes, C. L. (editors). The Heinemann Book of Contemporary African Short Stories. Oxford. 1992. Heinemann. 043590566x. African Writers Series. 200 pages. paperback. Cover design by Stafford & Stafford. Cover illustration by Christopher Corr.

DESCRIPTION - Capturing the diversity of African writing from across the anthology draws together well-established authors and the best of new From the harsh realities of South Africa, elegantly described by Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer, to the fantastic world of Booker Prize winner Ben Okri, from the magic realism of Mozambican Mia Couto, to the surreal world of Ghanaian Kojo Laing, the editors have distilled the essence of contemporary African writing. Blending the supernatural and the secular, the market-place and the shrine, this anthology gives the reader a taste of the full range of African literary styles.

CHINUA ACHEBE published THINGS FALL APART in 1958. It was followed by NO LONGER AT EASE (AWS 3) and ARROW OF GOD (AWS 16). A MAN OF THE PEOPLE (AWS 31) aroused widespread interest on publication at the time of the January 1966 coup because of its prophetic ending. The effects of his novels, and of his editorship of the African Writers Series has had a dramatic impact on the development of the literature of Africa. Some of the stories in GIRLS AT WAR (AWS 100) and some of the poems in BEWARE SOUL BROTHER (AWS 120) are set in the war. His essays were published in 1975 under the title MORNING YET ON CREATION DAY (Heinemann). He was educated at Government College, Umuahia and University College, Ibadan. By the time he left the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in 1966 he had become Director of External Broadcasting. Since the war he has been at the Universities of Nigeria, Massachusetts and Connecticut. He has now returned to Nsukka. Among many recent honours has been the award of a Fellowship of the Modern Languages Association of America and of Doctorates at the Universities of Stirling and Southampton. He has recently followed Heinrich Boll, the Nobel prizewinner, as the recipient of the Scottish Arts Council's Neil Gunn Fellowship. Chinua Achebe is best known as a novelist. But the years of the Nigerian crisis and the civil war were not, for both practical and psychological reasons, a time for work on full-length novels. He found poetry a means of expressing his distress, even though few of the poems speak directly of the war. He has added some new poems to this collection which has already been published in Nigeria. C. L. Innes, a lecturer and literary critic of African and Caribbean literature, has taught English and Comparative Literature at universities in Australia, the United States and England, where she lectures at the University of Kent. She has co-edited Critical Perspectives on Chinua Achebe (Heinemann) and published a number of articles on African, Australia,, and Irish literature. Her most recent books are The Devil's Own Mirror: The Irish and the African in Modern Literature (Three Continents Press, Washington, D.C.) and Chinua Achebe Cambridge University Press).
[ 0301 ] Bandele-Thomas, Biyi. The Man Who Came in From the Back of Beyond. Oxford. 1992. Heinemann. 0435905872. African Writers Series. 140 pages. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - The relationship between a student and a literary teacher provides the framework for this clever novel-within-a-novel. A teacher, Maude, is enamored of a girl in a bar. He writes the story of her former boyfriend, and Maude's student is the first person to read the novel. Capturing modern Nigeria with its decaying standards, militarism, and poverty, Bandele Thomas's prose also yearns on every page for something good and worth holding onto in society.

Biyi Bandele-Thomas (born October 13, 1967, Kafanchan, Nigeria) is a Nigerian novelist and playwright generally known as Biyi Bandele. Bandele is one of the most versatile and prolific of the U.K.-based Nigerian writers, having turned his hand to theater, journalism, television, film, and radio, as well as the fiction with which he made his name. Acclaimed as both a prolific playwright and a versatile novelist, his 1997 adaptation of fellow Nigerian Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart for the British stage confirmed his place as an important voice on the post-colonial stage. He currently resides in London. Biyi Bandele was born to Yoruba parents in Kafanchan, northern Nigeria, in 1967. His father was a veteran of the Burma Campaign while Nigeria was still part of the British Empire. Bandele spent the first eighteen years of his life in the northern part of the country being most at home in the Hausa cultural tradition. Later on, he moved to Lagos then studied drama at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, and finally left for London in 1990. A precocious and intuitive playwright, his talent was recognised early on and he won the International Student Playscript competition of 1989 with an unpublished play, before claiming the 1990 British Council Lagos Award for an unpublished collection of poems. As a playwright, Bandele has worked with the Royal Court Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, as well as writing radio drama and screenplays for television. His plays are: Rain; Marching for Fausa (1993); Resurrections in the Season of the Longest Drought (1994); Two Horsemen (1994), selected as Best New Play at the 1994 London New Plays Festival; Death Catches the Hunter and Me and the Boys (published in one volume, 1995); and Oroonoko, an adaptation of Aphra Behn's seventeenth-century novel of the same name. Brixton Stories, Bandele's stage adaptation of his own novel The Street (1999), premiered in 2001 and was published in one volume with his play, Happy Birthday Mister Deka, which premiered in 1999. He was the Judith E. Wilson Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, in 2000-2001. He also acted as Royal Literary Fund Resident Playwright at the Bush Theatre from 2002 to 2003. Biyi Bandele's novels, which include The Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond (1991) and The Street (1999), are rewarding reading, capable of wild surrealism and wit as well as political engagement. His 2007 novel, Burma Boy, has been described as ‘a fine achievement' and is lauded for providing a voice for previously unheard Africans.
[ 0302 ] Hove, Chenjerai. Shadows. Oxford. 1992. Heinemann. 0435905910. African Writers Series. 111 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Dulce Tobin. Cover design by Vinston Bair. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - A PAPERBACK ORIGINAL From Chenjerai Hove, the author of Bones, winner of the 1989 Noma Award, comes a striking new work. Shadows is an evocative extended prose poem, in which the tragedy of a Zimbabwean farming family unfolds against the historical backdrop of the war for liberation. Hove writes of Shadows: 'It was born many years ago when I saw two young people, lovers, opt for death instead of life.' He has now woven this moving episode into a work of remarkable creative strength. This is a world in which the people have little control over their lives and in which they struggle to eke out a living from a barren land. As few writers have done before him, Hove captures rural life, rich in memory and tradition, but bound by colonial rules and laws, city stress and poverty. Individuals are caught in the conflicting demands of a war in which death is a brutal and arbitrary reality. 'It is a quietly powerful narrative. Here is an unforgettable saga that will resist the shadows of time.' Sunday Mail, Harare.

Chenjerai Hove (9 February 1956 - 12 July 2015) was a Zimbabwean poet, novelist and essayist who wrote in both English and Shona. Modernist in their formal construction, but making extensive use of oral conventions, Hove's novels offer an intense examination of the psychic and social costs - to the rural population, especially, of the war of liberation in Zimbabwe." He died on 12 July 2015; he was in Norway at the time and his death has been attributed to liver failure. The son of a local chief, Chenjerai Hove was born in Mazvihwa, near Zvishavane, Rhodesia. He attended school at Kutama College and Marist Brothers Dete, in the Hwange district of Zimbabwe. After studying in Gweru, he became a teacher and then took degrees at the University of South Africa and the University of Zimbabwe. He also worked as a journalist, and contributed to the anthology And Now the Poets Speak. A critic of the policies of the Mugabe government, he was living in exile at the time of his death as a fellow at the House of Culture in Stavanger, Norway, as part of the International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN). Prior to this, he held visiting positions at Lewis and Clark College and Brown University; he was also once a poet-in-residence in Miami. Chenjerai Hove's work was translated into several languages (including Japanese, German, and Dutch). He won several awards over the course of his career, including the 1989 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.
[ 0303 ] Laing, Kojo. Major Gentl and the Achimota Wars. Portsmouth. 1992. Heinemann. 0435909789. African Writers Series. 185 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Keith Pointing with Celeste Henney.

DESCRIPTION - Achimota City, 2020 AD., Major Gentl (of Africa) and Torro the Terrible (born simultaneously in Europe and South Africa) battle for control of the city in the Wars of Existence. Meanwhile, Gentl and his wife, Ama Three, fight against each other in a test of love, and their increasingly disillusioned children are forced to take sides. Gentl's favourite snakes serve as bodyguards against Torro's antics; Torro is protected by his own sadistic rats - he has two lives left, but is weakened by Gentl's patience. As these two prepare for the final conflict which will determine the fate of Achimota, the children of the land take up their own battle. In this provocative, witty, part-surreal novel, Kojo Laing's futuristic world has real possibilities. Some reviews of Kojo Laing's previous novel, Search Sweet Country - ‘Hugely ambitious, joyfully spendthrift of language and ideas' - The Listener.. ‘A novel of charm, invention and many poetic delights' - Books and Bookmen.. ‘The first truly modern novel to come out of Africa' - Literary Review. .

B. Kojo Laing or Bernard Kojo Laing (born 1 July 1946) is a Ghanaian novelist and poet, whose writing is characterised by its hybridity, whereby he uses Ghanaian Pidgin English and vernacular languages alongside standard English. His first two novels in particular - Search Sweet Country(1986) and Woman of the Aeroplanes (1988) - were praised for their linguistic originality, both books including glossaries that feature the author's neologisms as well as Ghanaian words. Laing was born in Kumasi, capital of Ghana's Ashanti region, the eldest son and fourth of the six children of George Ekyem Ferguson Laing (an Anglican priest who became the first African rector of the Anglican Theological College in Ashanti) and Darling Egan. Baptized as Bernard Ebenezer, he later stopped using his English Christian name, favouring his African identity instead. After some early education in Accra, Laing in 1957 went to continue his primary and secondary schooling in Scotland, attending Bonhill Primary School and the Vale of Leven Academy in Alexandria, Dunbartonshire. He graduated from Glasgow University in 1968 with a master's degree, before returning to Ghana and joining the civil service, remaining there until 1979. He subsequently worked for five years as an administrative secretary of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana-Legon and in 1984 became head of Saint Anthony's School in Accra. Laing emerged as a poet in the 1970s, with work ‘occasionally drawing on the techniques of surrealism', but received significant attention only with the appearance his first novel, Search Sweet Country, which was published in 1986 to critical acclaim, and won prizes including the Valco Award and the Ghana Book Award. Search Sweet Country was reissued by McSweeney's in 2012, with an Introduction by Binyavanga Wainaina. Reviewing it in The Slate Book Review, Uzodinma Iweala writes: ‘Reading Search Sweet Country is like reading a dream, and indeed at times it feels like the magical landscapes of writers like the Nigerian Ben Okri or the Mozambican Mia Couto. Each page delivers an intense blast of vivid imagery, a world in which landscapes come to life when inanimate objects receive human characterization. Laing. is a master stylist, and Search Sweet Country delivers an absorbing, if demanding, world for both its characters and the reader.' Publishers Weekly called it an ‘intricate, beautifully rambling novel. a compelling and rewarding read', while the reviewer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette observed: ‘'Search Sweet Country' can be read over and over, continually surprising with a fresh turn of phrase or nuance in character, always engaging, always beautiful. The search is worthwhile.' Laing's second novel, Woman of the Aeroplanes, was published in 1988, and has drawn comparison with the work of Ayi Kwei Armah. Laing has since published two further novels: Major Gentl and Achimota Wars (1992), which also won a Valco Award in 1993, and Big Bishop Roko and the Altar Gangsters (2006). His poetry collection, Godhorse was published in 1989. Laing has also written short stories, one of which - ‘Vacancy for the Post of Jesus Christ' - was included in The Heinemann Book of Contemporary African Stories (1992), edited by Chinua Achebe and C. L. Innes. Laing lives in Accra and since 2005 has devoted himself full-time to writing.
[ 0304 ] Osundare, Niyi. Selected Poems. Oxford. 1992. Heinemann. 0435911953. African Writers Series. 116 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Vinston Bair.

DESCRIPTION - A PAPERBACK ORIGINAL. ‘Assured, varied, passionate, witty, utterly serious but never boring'. This was how the Noma Award Jury described Osundare's prize-winning poetry in 1991. Other awards include The Commonwealth Poetry Prize (1986) and the Cadbury Poetry Prize (1989). This volume brings together Osundare's finest poetry. Its pages reveal his deep concern for his people, and unquenchable optimism in the face of all that threatens their future. To Osundare, poetry is for the people, and his tremendous popularity vindicates this deeply-held conviction. Whether read in solitude or performed with song, drum and dance, these poems have a vibrant lyrical quality. Ranging from the humorous to the poignant, the personal to the universal, this anthology demonstrates the versatility and craftsmanship of a major African poet.

Niyi Osundare (born in 1947 in Ikere-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria) is a prolific poet, dramatist and literary critic. He gained degrees at the University of Ibadan (BA), the University of Leeds (MA) and York University, Canada (PhD, 1979). Previously professor (from 1989) and Head of English (1993–97) at the University of Ibadan, he became professor of English at the University of New Orleans in 1997. Niyi has a wife, Kemi, and three children, two girls and a son who still lives in Nigeria. His deaf daughter is the real reason Niyi settled in the United States. She could not go to school in Nigeria so they found a school in the U.S. for her. They moved with her so Niyi and Kemi could be closer to her. He has always been a vehement champion of the right to free speech and is a strong believer in the power of words, saying, "to utter is to alter". Osundare is renowned for his commitment to socially relevant art and artistic activism and has written several open letters to the former President of Nigeria (Olusegun Obasanjo), whom Osundare has often publicly criticised.
[ 0305 ] Ousmane, Sembene. Niiwam and Taaw: Two Novellas. Oxford. 1992. Heinemann. 0435906712. Translated from the French by David Philip. African Writers Series. 110 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Fraser Taylor. Author photograph by George Hallett..

DESCRIPTION - From the author of such acclaimed novels as GOD'S BITS OF WOOD and BLACK DOCKER, these two novellas deal with harsh realities. In Niiwam, an agonised father carries the corpse of his son on a bus from one side of Dakar to the other - there is a meeting of the living and the dead, the contemporary and the traditional. And in Taaw, a poverty-stricken family rise up against a tyrannical father. ‘(In Niiwam and Taaw) Ousmane, a praised filmmaker, succeeds in turning his prose into something most visual. Each new event is written as another frame might be filmed, the author's eye like a camera - focusing in on different characters- with special intensity.' Pretoria News ‘.. the novellas, while dealing with sombre, almost brutal themes, have a wealth of character, detail and humour which underlie serious matters.' - The New African.

Ousmane Sembene, who was born into a Senegalese fishing family in 1923, worked at a diversity of jobs before writing his first book, THE BLACK DOCKER, in 1956. Since then he has written several novels and short story collections, through which he tells the saga of his land and its people. He has also gained a reputation for his films, particularly BLACK GIRL and THE MONEY ORDER, which were well received both in the U.S. and abroad.
[ 0306 ] Zeleza, Tiyambe. Smouldering Charcoal. Oxford. 1992. Heinemann. 043590583x. African Writers Series. 183 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Keith Pointing & Celeste Henney.

DESCRIPTION - This powerful first novel chronicles the lives of two families: the first, poor, working-class and ill-educated, is compared to a young politically aware college student and her journalist fiance. The exhilaration of newly independent nations and the agonies of failed dreams form the background to this powerful African novel. Zeleza chronicles the story of two families from different social classes, drawn together by a strike which proves to have a profound effect on their relationships, identities and politics. This is a compelling story which lays bare the corruption and tyranny which bedevil many African countries, yet celebrates the forces of renewal that are germinating in the teeming urban slums and rural hinterlands.

Paul Tiyambe Zeleza (born 1955 in Harare) is a Malawian historian, literary critic, novelist, short-story writer and blogger at The Zeleza Post - He was (2009) president of the African Studies Association. He is the current Vice-President for Academic Affairs at Quinnipiac University, and was most recently named Vice Chancellor of the United States International University- Africa, located in Nairobi, Kenya. Zeleza was born in Salisbury, Rhodesia, now Harare, Zimbabwe, in May 1955, of Malawian parents. His parents returned to Malawi in 1956 before returning to Zimbabwe in 1972. Zeleza attended primary school (1961–1968) and secondary school (1968–1972) in the cities of Lilongwe and Blantyre in Malawi. He attended college at the University of Malawi (1972–1976) where he received his BA with Distinction, majoring in History and English. He served as a Staff Associate at the University of Malawi's Chancellor College from 1976–1977 before he proceeded to Britain for his graduate studies. He earned an MA in African History and International Relations at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies and the London School of Economics and Political Science (1977–1978), then a PhD in economic history at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (1978–1982). Upon completing his PhD in 1982, Zeleza took up an appointment as a Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Kingston, Jamaica where he spent two years. He relocated to Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya in August 1984, the country on which he had done his PhD dissertation and where he had spent a year between 1979–1980 conducted research. At Kenyatta he taught African economic history and began his extensive research on the subject that would eventually result in his award winning book, A Modern Economic History of Africa (Dakar: Codseria Book Series, 1993), which was partly financed by a Rockefeller Foundation ‘Reflections on Development Fellowship' administered by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research (CODESRIA). He was promoted from the position of Lecturer to Senior Lecturer in 1987. In January 1990 he left Kenyatta University to work on his African economic history research project, which took him to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa inAddis Ababa, Ethiopia, and his alma mater, Dalhousie University in Canada, where he spent the next six months conducting research. In July 1990 he relocated to Trent University, Ontario, Canada, where he was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of History. A year later he received tenure and was promoted to Associate Professor, and three years later to Full Professor. In 1994 he was also appointed Principal of Lady Eaton College, one of the five constituent colleges of Trent University, as well as Acting Director of the Trent International Program. In August 1995 he was recruited to become the Director of the Center for African Studies and Professor of History and African Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in the United States, where he spent the next eight years and where he produced some of his most important academic work. In August 2003, he relocated to the Pennsylvania State University where he was appointed Professor of African Studies and History in the Departments of History and African and African American Studies. Since 1 January 2007 he has been Professor and Head, Department of African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. On 1 August 2009 he assumed his new role as Dean of the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. On 22 July 2013, Zeleza was appointed as the Vice-President for Academic Affairs at Quinnipiac University. On 16 September 2015, Zeleza was appointed as the Vice-Chancellor of the United States International University Africa in Kenya with effect on 1 January 2016. Zeleza is also a renowned writer of fiction. He is the author of three books, two collections of short stories, Night of Darkness and Other Stories (Montfort Press, Limbe, 1976), and The Joys of Exile: Stories (Anansi: Toronto, 1994), and a novel, Smouldering Charcoal (Oxford: Heienemann, 1992). He has also published critical essays on African literature and postcolonial criticism. Among the authors whose works he has examined are Edward Said and Yvonne Vera.
[ 0307 ] Mwangi, Meja. Striving for the Wind. Oxford. 1992. Heinemann. 0435909797. African Writers Series. 192 pages. paperback. AWS unnumbered..

DESCRIPTION - Set in Kenya, this novel is a hilarious, yet subtly disturbing, portrayal of post-colonial decadence. Newly wealthy black landowner, Baba Pesa, constantly boasts he is "the Father of Money." He is brutish and ruthless. He clashes with his family, friends and neighbors as he craves financial dominance in the region.

Meja Mwangi (born 27 December 1948) is a Kenyan writer. He has worked in the film industry, including in screenwriting, assistant directing, and casting. Mwangi was born David Dominic Mwangi in Nanyuki, Kenya, and was educated at Nanyuki Secondary School, Kenyatta College, and briefly at the University of Leeds. He then worked for the French Broadcasting Corporation doing odd jobs and the British Council in Nairobi as Visual Aids Officer, before turning to writing full-time. He was Fellow in Writing at the University of Iowa (1975–76). After a prolonged period on the Kenyan and African publishing scene, Mwangi moved to the US after gaining international recognition and winning several awards.His best-known early work includes the novels Kill Me Quick (1973), Going Down River Road (1976), and The Cockroach Dance (1979), which illustrate the urban landscapes of Kenya, the struggle against poverty, and the AIDS epidemic.
[ 0308 ] Bandele-Thomas, Biyi. The Sympathetic Undertaker and Other Dreams. Portsmouth. 1993. Heinemann. 0435905929. African Writers Series. 200 pages. paperback. Cover design by Touchpaper. Cover illustration by Colin Williams. Author photograph by Paul Freestone.

DESCRIPTION - When his brilliant younger brother is discovered wandering naked in the market, stark, raving mad, the nameless storyteller looks back on Rayo's life - a life of questioning and absurdity. Wilfully impetuous and with the resourcefulness of his youth, Rayo challenges the corrupt systems that control the lives of his fellow countrymen. He starts with a grotesque school bully and works his way up to an eventual headlong collision with the centre of political power. ‘A deft mixture of satire and poetic fantasy' - TIME OUT.. ‘Writes like fury' - THE OBSERVER. ‘Biyi Bandele-Thomas is the Nigerian author of THE MAN WHO CAME IN FROM THE BACK OF BEYOND.

Biyi Bandele-Thomas (born 1967) is a Nigerian novelist and playwright generally known as Biyi Bandele. Bandele is one of the most versatile and prolific of the U.K.-based Nigerian writers, having turned his hand to theater, journalism, television, film, and radio, as well as the fiction with which he made his name. Acclaimed as both a prolific playwright and a versatile novelist, his 1997 adaptation of fellow Nigerian Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart for the British stage confirmed his place as an important voice on the post-colonial stage. He currently resides in London. Biyi Bandele was born to Yoruba parents in Kafanchan, northern Nigeria, in 1967. His father was a veteran of the Burma Campaign while Nigeria was still part of the British Empire. Bandele spent the first eighteen years of his life in the northern part of the country being most at home in the Hausa cultural tradition. Later on, he moved to Lagos then studied drama at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, and finally left for London in 1990. A precocious and intuitive playwright, his talent was recognised early on and he won the International Student Playscript competition of 1989 with an unpublished play, before claiming the 1990 British Council Lagos Award for an unpublished collection of poems. As a playwright, Bandele has worked with the Royal Court Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, as well as writing radio drama and screenplays for television. His plays are: Rain; Marching for Fausa (1993); Resurrections in the Season of the Longest Drought (1994); Two Horsemen (1994), selected as Best New Play at the 1994 London New Plays Festival; Death Catches the Hunter and Me and the Boys (published in one volume, 1995); and Oroonoko, an adaptation of Aphra Behn's seventeenth-century novel of the same name. Brixton Stories, Bandele's stage adaptation of his own novel The Street (1999), premiered in 2001 and was published in one volume with his play, Happy Birthday Mister Deka, which premiered in 1999. He was the Judith E. Wilson Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, in 2000-2001. He also acted as Royal Literary Fund Resident Playwright at the Bush Theatre from 2002 to 2003. Biyi Bandele's novels, which include The Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond (1991) and The Street (1999), are rewarding reading, capable of wild surrealism and wit as well as political engagement. His 2007 novel, Burma Boy, has been described as ‘a fine achievement' and is lauded for providing a voice for previously unheard Africans.
[ 0309 ] Botha, W. P. B. The Reluctant Playwright. London. 1993. Heinemann. 0435905899. African Writers Series. 233 pages. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - This is a novel that captures life in South Africa -fragmented, confused, violent-yet challenges the idea that power lies only with the forces of oppression. It's the story of Seamus Doyle, who rejects his Irish Catholic past and resettles in a remote Transkei village. A bruised cynic, he attempts to detach himself from the drama in South Africa. But for how long?

W.P.B. Botha is the South African author of The Reluctant Playwright, A Duty of Memory and Wantok.
[ 0310 ] Bruner, Charlotte (editor). The Heinemann Book of African Women's Writing. Portsmouth. 1993. Heinemann. 0435906739. African Writers Series.. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - A contemporary selection of 22 African women's shortstories that vividly portray the everyday concerns of women's lives. The stories, divided into sections from north, south, east and west, cover such themes as the exploitation of serving girls, the experience of women behind veils, enduring friendships, the achievement of social power, independence of thought, and the affirmation of personal identity. These are new writers recording the new Africa with a fresh perspective. Authors whose stories are included in this landmark collection are: (Northern Africa) -- Nawal El Saadawi, Assia Djebar, Gisele Halimi, Leila Sebbar, Andree Chedid; (Southern Africa) --Tsitsi Dangarembga, Bessie Head, Jean Marquard, Zoe Wicomb, Sheila Fugard, Farida Karodia; (Eastern Africa) -- Evelyn Awuor Ayodo, Violet Dias Lannoy, Daisy Kabaragama, Lina Magaia; (Western Africa) -- Catherine Obianuju Acholonu, Ifeoma Okoye, Zaynab Alkali, Orlanda Amarilis, Aminata Maiga Ka.

Charlotte H. Bruner (1917–1999) was an American scholar who was one of the first in the United States to write extensively about, and translate the work of, African women writers.
[ 0311 ] Jacobs, Steve. Under the Lion. London. 1993. Heinemann. 0435905880. African Writers Series. 240 pages. paperback.. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - Under the Lion depicts the struggle for a just society in which the security forces of an oppressive state are locked in violent conflict with the people. Lawyer Joseph S. seeks salvation from the injustices done by the state in his name as one of the ruling classes. He agrees to defend the assassin of the head of the state and finds himself alone, abandoned by family and friends. The book confronts the liberal dilemma: 'Where do I stand in the struggle?' This is a powerful and angry work about South Africa in the '80s, and it is particularly relevant in the shadow of the Los Angeles riots.

Steve Jacobs was born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in 1955. He studied Law at the University of Cape Town, and after a year spent working on a kibbutz in Israel he worked as an Advocate in Johannesburg. He left the legal profession to concentrate on his writing. A collection of his short stories, Light in a Stark Age, was published in 1984 (Ravan Press). This was followed by two novellas, published as Diary of an Exile (Ad. Donker, 1986).He has had a number of jobs since leaving the legal profession, including being a freelance reporter and a property administrator. He is currently Sub-Editor of The Argus, a Cape Town daily newspaper.He is an active campaigner for human and animal rights, and has been a Trustee of Beauty without Cruelty, worked with squatters at the Crossroads township, and been a member of Koeburg Alert, an organisation opposing a nuclear power station.
[ 0312 ] Karodia, Farida. A Shattering of Silence. Portsmouth. 1993. Heinemann. 0435905937. African Writers Series. 288 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Paul Catherall. Cover design by Touchpaper. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - Eight-year-old Faith's life is shattered when she witnesses a massacre in her village in rural Mozambique. She escapes, but loses everything - her parents, her home, her identity - and her voice. A Shattering of Silence charts Faith's quest to find a place for herself in war-torn Mozambique, where she is caught between the white colonials and the local resistance. Karodia's fast-moving novel undermines traditional views of the role of women and the nature of resistance. It is a spirited response to the brutalising effects of war.

Farida Karodia (born 1942) is a South African novelist and short-story writer. Farida Karoida was born in the eastern Cape province, a location that inspired the setting for her first novel, Daughters of Twilight (1986). She taught in Johannesburg, South Africa, Zambia, Swaziland. In 1968 the government of South Africa withdrew her passport. Facing forced interment in South Africa, she emigrated to Canada. She remained there, where she published her first novel and wrote in multiple mediums, including film, television, and CBC radio dramas. She returned to South Africa in 1994. She now works as a free-lance writer and divides her time between Canada and South Africa. Her first novel was Daughters of the Twilight was published in 1986, and was a runner up for the Fawcett Literature Prize. Although she was living in Canada at the time, the book concerns what difficulties non-whites faced in getting an education under apartheid. However by 1990 she had also written about Canada. Further during time spent in India in 1991 she wrote and filmed Midnight Embers. Her novel A Shattering of Silence (1993), set during the Mozambique civil war, follows Faith, the daughter of Canadian missionaries, after the murder of her parents. Against an African Sky and Other Stories (1994) was one of her first works after she returned to South Africa.In 2000, her novel Other Secretswas nominated for an IMPAC Dublin Award. Nor have her novels set in Africa focused only on South Africa. Boundaries (2003)focuses on the return of three women to a small South African town, Vlenterhoek. In Mythologies of Migration, Vocabularies of Indenture: Novels of the South Asian Diaspora in Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia-Pacific (2009), Mariam Pirbhal points out that Karodia's work has received more acclaim outside of both her home countries of Canada and South Africa. Daughters of Twilight, for instance, ‘did not receive the critical attention or acclaim it derives in Canada' while ‘it was nominated for the Fawcett Literature Prize in Great Britain' (78), and after ‘reworking [that novel] ‘as the first part of a three-part multigenerational saga entitled Other Secrets published by Penguin in 2000, [this] also received a prestigious nomination, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, though it did not enjoy a long shelf-life in print' (78). Pirbhal points to both the difficulty of categorising Karodia and her work into neat racial and national categories as one the strengths of her work, as well as a potential reason for the lack of popular and critical attention both receive in non-diasporic contexts. Karodia, she contends, is one of the ‘unique voices in African literature.. [that] do not fully belong to a small minority of writers of European origin who speak from the historical centre [sic] of institutionalized power nor do they belong to the vast majority of indigenous African withers who speak form the cultural and political centre [sic] of the post-colonial condition.. .What the in-between, or to use Karoida's titular phrase, 'twilight' atmosphere of these texts undermines is the diasporic community's sense of volatility in Africa as a twice-displaced people, that is, both in their historical displacement from the Indian subcontinent and in their status as a political and rival minority in the new land' (79). Similarly, Ronit Frenkel in Reconsiderations: South African Indian Fiction and the Making of Race in Postcolonial Culture (2010) positions Karodia's work, in particular Other Secrets, as part of small group of South African literature offering ‘alternative narratives to the TRC [ Truth and Reconciliation Commission ], which reveal the 'ordinary' impact of apartheid in a way that the Commission did not' (112). For Frenkel, the story of the Mohammed family reveals ‘one of the 'secrets' that apartheid attempted to conceal.. the number of people who fell between its systems of classification on one level or another. This precarious geographical existence reflects the racial make-up of the family itself, in which Meena, Yasmin, and their father, Abdul, are classified as India, while their mother, Delia, and grandmother, Nana, are classified as coloured. Apartheid history is filled with stories of families split apart by their differing racial classification' (114). Devarakshanam Govinden, too, lists Karodia as one of the ‘South African Indian women [who] have been part of this large company of South African writers engaging in a 'refusal of amnesia'. .[by] undertaking the process of 'self-narration' that foregrounds some of those 'blanked-out areas' of South Africa's identity as a nation.'
[ 0313 ] Mapanje, Jack. The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prison. Portsmouth. 1993. Heinemann. 0435911988. African Writers Series. 99 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Janie Coath.

DESCRIPTION - Only now, with freedom, can Jack Mapanje speak of his harrowing ordeal in Mikuyu Prison, where ‘desperate voices of fractured souls' clamour to be heard. In poems of uncommon power and unflinching description Mapanje condemns a Yet in these poems Mapanje also affirms the enduring love of family and friends and the spirit of his fellow detainees. Today, living in England, he celebrates the hope kept alive by those who fight for human rights. `Protest can take many forms, and in Jack Mapanje's pen it can even take on the form of beauty.' - KUNAPIPI.

Jack Mapanje is a poet, linguist, editor and human rights activist. He received the 1988 Rotterdam Poetry International Award for his first book of poems, Of Chameleons and Gods (1981) and the USA's Fonlon-Nichols Award for his contribution to poetry and human rights. He was head of the Department of English at the University of Malawi where the Malawi authorities arrested him in 1987 after his first book of poems had been banned, and he was released in 1991 after spending three years, seven months and sixteen days in prison, following an international outcry against his incarceration. He has since published five poetry books, The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prison (1993) from Heinemann, and Skipping Without Ropes (1998), The Last of the Sweet Bananas: New & Selected Poems (2004), Beasts of Nalunga (2007) and Greetings from Grandpa (2016) from Bloodaxe, as well as his prison memoir And Crocodiles Are Hungry at Night (Ayebia Clarke Publishing, 2011); he co-edited three anthologies, Oral Poetry from Africa (1983), Summer Fires: New Poetry of Africa (1983) and The African Writers' Handbook (1999); and edited the acclaimed Gathering Seaweed: African Prison Writing (2002). Beasts of Nalunga was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2007. Mapanje has held residences in the Netherlands, the Republic of Ireland and throughout Britain, including two years with the Wordsworth Trust at Dove Cottage in Cumbria. He lives in exile in York with his family, and is a visiting professor in the faculty of art at York St John University. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Bedfordshire in 2015.
[ 0314 ] Mapanje, Jack. The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prison. Portsmouth. 1993. Heinemann. 0435911988. African Writers Series. 99 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Janie Coath.

DESCRIPTION - Only now, with freedom, can Jack Mapanje speak of his harrowing ordeal in Mikuyu Prison, where ‘desperate voices of fractured souls' clamour to be heard. In poems of uncommon power and unflinching description Mapanje condemns a Yet in these poems Mapanje also affirms the enduring love of family and friends and the spirit of his fellow detainees. Today, living in England, he celebrates the hope kept alive by those who fight for human rights. `Protest can take many forms, and in Jack Mapanje's pen it can even take on the form of beauty.' - KUNAPIPI.

Jack Mapanje is a poet, linguist, editor and human rights activist. He received the 1988 Rotterdam Poetry International Award for his first book of poems, Of Chameleons and Gods (1981) and the USA's Fonlon-Nichols Award for his contribution to poetry and human rights. He was head of the Department of English at the University of Malawi where the Malawi authorities arrested him in 1987 after his first book of poems had been banned, and he was released in 1991 after spending three years, seven months and sixteen days in prison, following an international outcry against his incarceration. He has since published five poetry books, The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prison (1993) from Heinemann, and Skipping Without Ropes (1998), The Last of the Sweet Bananas: New & Selected Poems (2004), Beasts of Nalunga (2007) and Greetings from Grandpa (2016) from Bloodaxe, as well as his prison memoir And Crocodiles Are Hungry at Night (Ayebia Clarke Publishing, 2011); he co-edited three anthologies, Oral Poetry from Africa (1983), Summer Fires: New Poetry of Africa (1983) and The African Writers' Handbook (1999); and edited the acclaimed Gathering Seaweed: African Prison Writing (2002). Beasts of Nalunga was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2007. Mapanje has held residences in the Netherlands, the Republic of Ireland and throughout Britain, including two years with the Wordsworth Trust at Dove Cottage in Cumbria. He lives in exile in York with his family, and is a visiting professor in the faculty of art at York St John University. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Bedfordshire in 2015.
[ 0315 ] Tuma, Hama. The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and Other Stories. Portsmouth. 1993. Heinemann. 0435905902. African Writers Series. 192 pages. paperback. Cover design by Touchpaper. Cover illustration by Greg Becker.

DESCRIPTION - The repressive regime in Ethiopia places innocent people in the dock. In 'The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor' and related stories Hama Tuma puts the regime itself on trial. Other stories take place outside the courtroom - in bars, brothels, guerilla hideouts and village huts - where life is equally full of vengeance and betrayal. These are terrible tales, their darkness shot through with brilliant flashes of satire and irony.

Hama Tuma (born 1949) is an Ethiopian poet and writer in the Amharic and English languages. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Tuma studied Law in Addis Ababa University. He became an advocate for democracy and justice. This has caused him to be banned by three different Ethiopian governments. This situation sharpened his use of satire and he is known as one of Ethiopia's greatest satirists. He has travelled widely but currently lives in Paris with his wife and daughter. His books have been translated into English, Italian, French, and Hebrew.
[ 0316 ] Vassanji, M. G. Uhuru Street. Oxford. 1991. Heinemann. 0435905856. African Writers Series. 144 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Keith Pointing.

DESCRIPTION - With delicate strokes, M.G. Vassanji brings alive the characters who live and work in the shops and tenements of Uhuru Street: Roshan Mattress, so called because of her free and easy ways; baby, the blubbery-fat daughter of a grocer, indulged but amiable; Ahmed, the street-wise orphan fighting for survival though like most bullies ‘an expert at marbles'. Even the street itself breathes life and symbolises the comradeship of this immigrant community. The stories take us from the late colonial days of sheltered innocence in the 1950s through to the 1980s when many of the characters have moved away from the confines of their community only to find that hopes and aspirations are displaced by harsh realities, and the spirit that was Uhuru Street is no more than a nostalgic dream. In this unique collection of short stories from the Commonwealth prize-winning author of The Gunny Sack and No New Land, the curtain is drawn back to reveal life in the Asian community in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania - its customs, traditions and prejuduces.

M.G. Vassanji is the author of six acclaimed novels: THE GUNNY SACK, which won the regional Commonwealth Prize; NO NEW LAND; THE BOOK OF SECRETS, which won the very first Giller Prize; AMRIIKA; THE IN-BETWEEN WORLD OF VIKRAM LALL, which also won the Giller Prize, and THE ASSASSIN'S SONG, which was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award for Fiction. He is also the author of two collections of short fiction, UHURU STREET and WHEN SHE WAS QUEEN, and a work of non-fiction, A PLACE WITHIN: REDISCOVERING INDIA. He lives in Toronto with his wife and two sons.
[ 0317 ] Chimombo, Steve. Napolo and the Python. Portsmouth. 1994. Heinemann. 0435911996. African Writers Series. 182 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Michaela Blunden.

DESCRIPTION - Chimombo explores ancient myth and legend to create poetry which speaks to a modern audience. This selection of his poetry brings together two of his previously published collections, NAPOLO POEMS and PYTHON! PYTHON! The Napolo of the first collection is the ‘mythical subterranean serpent' which resides under mountains and is responsible for natural disasters; the python of the second collection is the legendary guardian spirit of the Mang'anja of southern Malawi. The poems can be read as a commentary on aspects of African public life which are no less violent or uncertain than the ancient legends. Steve Chimombo is Professor of English at the University of Malawi

Steve Bernard Miles Chimombo (born 4 September 1945 Zomba) is a Malawian writer, poet, editor and teacher. He was educated at Zomba Catholic Secondary School, then at the University of Malawi where he earned a B.A. At the University of Wales, he took a teaching diploma in English as a Second Language. At Columbia University in the United States, he was awarded his M.A. and Ph.D. in teaching. After studying at Leeds, England, Chimombo returned to Malawi to edit the literary bulletin Outlook-lookout. He is a professor of English at Chancellor College in Malawi and is considered one of the nation's leading writers. In 1988 his Napolo Poems gained him honorable mention for the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. He is married to Moira Chimombo.
[ 0318 ] Couto, Mia. Every Man Is a Race. Portsmouth. 1994. Heinemann. 0435909827. Translated from the Portuguese by David Brookshaw. African Writers Series. 118 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Linda Dacey.

DESCRIPTION - ‘A man's story is always badly told. That's because a person never stops being born. Nobody leads one sole life, we are all multiplied into different and ever-changeable men.' So it is with all the stories in this collection, which never make a definitive judgement on the individual life, but only suggest its possibilities. Set in Mozambique, the stories reflect the legacy of Portuguese colonialism and the tragedy of the subsequent civil war. Mia Couto's first collection, Voices Made Night, was described as ‘lyrical', ‘magical' and ‘compassionate' by the reviewers, who were unanimous in identifying a significant new talent from the continent. This volume confirms that judgement.

Antonio Emílio Leite Couto (born July 5, 1955), better known as Mia Couto, is a world-renowned Mozambican writer. Couto was born in the city of Beira, Mozambique's second largest city, where he was also raised and schooled. He is the son of Portuguese emigrants who moved to the former Portuguese colony in the 1950s. At the age of fourteen, some of his poetry was published in a local newspaper, Notícias da Beira. Three years later, in 1971, he moved to the capital Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) and began to study medicine at the University of Lourenço Marques. During this time, the anti-colonial guerrilla and political movement FRELIMO was struggling to overthrow the Portuguese colonial rule in Mozambique. In April 1974, after the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon and the overthrow of the Estado Novo regime, Mozambique was about to become an independent republic. In 1974, FRELIMO asked Couto to suspend his studies for a year to work as a journalist for Tribuna until September 1975 and then as the director of the newly-created Mozambique Information Agency (AIM). Later, he ran the Tempo magazine until 1981. His first book of poems, Raiz de Orvalho, was published in 1983; it included texts aimed against the dominance of Marxist militant propaganda. Couto continued working for the newspaper Notícias until 1985 when he resigned to finish his course of study in biology. Not only is Mia Couto considered one of the most important writers in Mozambique, but many of his works have been published in more than 20 countries and in various languages, including Portuguese, English, French, German, Italian, Serbian and Catalan. In many of his texts, he undertakes to recreate the Portuguese language by infusing it with regional vocabulary and structures from Mozambique, thus producing a new model for the African narrative. Stylistically, his writing is influenced by magical realism, a style popular in modern Latin American literatures, and his use of language is reminiscent of the Brazilian writer Guimarães Rosa, but also deeply influenced by the baiano writer Jorge Amado. He has been noted for creating proverbs, sometimes known as ‘improverbs', in his fiction, as well as riddles, legends, metaphors, giving his work a poetical dimension. An international jury at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair named his first novel, Terra Sonâmbula (Sleepwalking Land), one of the best 12 African books of the 20th century. In 2007, he became the first African author to win the prestigious Latin Union literary prize, which has been awarded annually in Italy since 1990. Mia Couto became only the fourth writer in the Portuguese language to take home this prestigious award, having competed against authors from Portugal, France, Colombia, Spain, Italy, and Senegal. Currently, he is a biologist employed by the Limpopo Transfrontier Park while continuing his work on other writing projects.
[ 0319 ] Emecheta, Buchi. Kehinde. Portsmouth. 1994. Heinemann. 0435909851. African Writers Series. 144 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Synthia Saint James.

DESCRIPTION - Kehinde and her husband Albert had always intended to return to Nigeria. When the opportunity arises, Kehinde realizes she is reluctant to leave London and the independence she has enjoyed there. Albert, longing for the prosperity and status that will be his in Nigeria, is determined not to be thwarted in his plans. He thinks that it is his wife's duty to obey him, and forces her to make terrible choices. Kehinde, plagued with guilt, is led on an unexpected path by the spirit of her dead twin.

Buchi Emecheta (born 21 July 1944, in Lagos) is a Nigerian novelist who has published over 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education have won her considerable critical acclaim and honours, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005. Emecheta once described her stories as ‘stories of the world…[where]… women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical.'
[ 0320 ] Emecheta, Buchi. Head Above Water: An Autobiography. Oxford. 1994. Heinemann. 0435909932. African Writers Series. 229 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Synthia Saint James. Cover design by Touchpaper.

DESCRIPTION - 'As for my survival for the past twenty years in England, from when I was a little over twenty, dragging four cold and dripping babies with me and pregnant with the fifth one - that is a miracle. And if for any reason you do not believe in miracles, please start believing, because keeping my head above water in this indifferent society. is a miracle.' Buchi Emecheta's autobiography spans the transition from a tribal childhood in the African bush to life in North London as an internationally acclaimed writer.

Buchi Emecheta (born 21 July 1944, in Lagos) is a Nigerian novelist who has published over 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education have won her considerable critical acclaim and honours, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005. Emecheta once described her stories as ‘stories of the world…[where]… women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical.'
[ 0321 ] Emecheta, Buchi. Destination Biafra. Portsmouth. 1994. Heinemann. 0435909924. African Writers Series.. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - This novel dramatizes the painful birth of the republic of Biafra in the late 1960s.

Buchi Emecheta (born 21 July 1944, in Lagos) is a Nigerian novelist who has published over 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education have won her considerable critical acclaim and honours, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005. Emecheta once described her stories as ‘stories of the world…[where]… women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical.'
[ 0322 ] Emecheta, Buchi. Gwendolen. Portsmouth. 1994. Heinemann. 0435909738. African Writers Series. 202 pages. paperback. Cover design by Touchpaper. Cover illustration by Synthia Saint James.

DESCRIPTION - Buchi Emecheta was born in Nigeria and came to England in 1962: Her novels include In the Ditch, The Joys of Motherhood and Destination Biafra. Gwendolen is a lively, affectionate little girl growing up in a Jamaican shanty town. When her parents emigrate to England they leave their daughter in the care of her poverty-stricken grandmother. At the age of nine she is raped by a 'family friend', and by the time she joins her parents in London she has lost both her innocence and her sense of self-worth. 'Miss Emecheta's prose has a shimmer of originality. Issues of survival lie inherent in her material and give her tales weight.' - John Updike, The New Yorker.

Buchi Emecheta (born 21 July 1944, in Lagos) is a Nigerian novelist who has published over 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education have won her considerable critical acclaim and honours, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005. Emecheta once described her stories as ‘stories of the world…[where]… women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical.'
[ 0323 ] Emecheta, Buchi. In the Ditch. Portsmouth. 1994. Heinemann. 0435909940. African Writers Series.. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - A social documentary set in London in the late 1960s that tells of a young, lone Nigerian mother's determination to carve a place for herself against the odds.

Buchi Emecheta (born 21 July 1944, in Lagos) is a Nigerian novelist who has published over 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education have won her considerable critical acclaim and honours, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005. Emecheta once described her stories as ‘stories of the world…[where]… women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical.'
[ 0324 ] Emecheta, Buchi. Second Class Citizen. Portsmouth. 1994. Heinemann. 0435909916. African Writers Series. 192 pages. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - The poignant story of a resourceful Nigerian woman who overcomes strict tribal domination of women and countless setbacks to achieve and independent life for her and her children. Alice Walker called it, ‘One of the most informative books about contemporary African life that I have read.'

Buchi Emecheta (born 21 July 1944, in Lagos) is a Nigerian novelist who has published over 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education have won her considerable critical acclaim and honours, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005. Emecheta once described her stories as ‘stories of the world…[where]… women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical.'
[ 0325 ] Hirson, Denis (with Martin Trump). The Heinemann Book of South African Short Stories: From 1945 to the Present. Portsmouth. 1994. Heinemann. 0435906720. African Writers Series. 256 pages. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - A PAPERBACK ORIGINAL. Encompassing the period of apartheid, from the triumph of the National Party in the 1940s to the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990, this anthology contains twenty-one of the most compelling South African short stories. As one would expect, the ugly reality of apartheid is the dominant theme, but what is remarkable is the sheer range of approaches represented here, from the brutal realism of Can Themba to the suggestive lyricism of Bessie Head and Nadine Gordimer. Above all, this anthology bears witness to the triumph of the storyteller's art in the face of tyranny.

DENIS HIRSON, born in 1951, left South Africa with his family in 1973 when his father, who had been a political prisoner for nine years, was released and went into exile. He has lived in France since 1975, working as an actor, and as an English teacher with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Hirson's first novel, The House Next Door to Africa, was published in 1986 and subsequently translated into French and Italian. He has also translated a selection of Breyten Breytenbach's poetry, In Africa Even the Flies are Happy, published in 1977. MARTIN TRUMP lived until recently in Johannesburg his wife and two children. He worked in the English Department at the University of South Africa, teaching and publishing in the field of South African literary studies. He held degrees in English and Comparative Literature from the Universities of Witwatersrand, East Anglia and London. He was the editor of Armed Vision: Afrikaans Writers in English, an anthology of Afrikaans stories (Ad. Donker, 1987) and Rendering Things Visible, a collection of essays on South African literary culture (Ravan Press/Ohio University Press, 1990). He also taught at universities in North America and Israel. After a prolonged illness, he died of cancer in December 1993.
[ 0326 ] Mahjoub, Jamal. Wings of Dust. Portsmouth. 1994. Heinemann. 0435909843. African Writers Series. 218 pages. paperback. Cover painting by Hussein Shariffe.

DESCRIPTION - Exiled in a delapidated hotel in South-West France, Sharif, the narrator, looks back on his life. Memories of a bohemian existence in England and France, a time of lots affairs and Dissipation, are set against the changing political situation of his North African homeland. The experience of his own nation, with its promise of freedom, is echoed in Sharif's life. With sardonic humour Sharif describes the wealth of characters who have passed through his life. Yet how can he make sense of this life as everything he believes in begins to crumble?

Jamal Mahjoub (born London 1966) is a mixed-race writer of British and Sudanese parents. He writes in English and has published seven novels under his own name. In 2012, Mahjoub began writing a series of crime fiction novels under the pseudonym Parker Bilal. Writing in The Observer, Zoe Heller described Mahjoub's first novel, Navigation of a Rainmaker as providing "a rich picture, both of Africa's vast, seemingly insuperable problems - and of the moral dilemmas faced by a well-meaning, ineffectual stranger". Wings of Dust, Mahjoub's second novel explores the legacy of the first generation of Northern Sudanese who were educated in the West in the 1950s and inherited the task of creating the newly independent nation. In the Hour of Signs recounts the story of the Mahdi who led a revolt in 19th-century Turko-Egyptian Sudan, expelling the Khedive Ismail's troops. According to the TLS the novel conveys "A profound awareness that man refuses to learn from history, because he is blind to the guises in which it repeats itself.". In the process General Gordon was killed which led to the British Reconquest and the formation of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1898. "Mahjoub's first three novels can be loosely read as a trilogy of political events in Sudan. Emulating the turmoil and uncertaintly of the sudan, his writing distinguishes itself by its dynamism" The Carrier (1998) is split between the early 17th century and present-day Denmark, where an archaeological find reveals a link to a visitor from the Arab world in medieval times. The novel's astronomical theme touches on the discovery of Heliocentricity and the work of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. Travelling with Djinns tells the story of Yasin, a man with a similar background to the author, who absconds with his young son Leo and travels through Europe in a Peugeot 504. In The Drift Latitudes, Rachel, following the death of her son, becomes aware of the existence of a half-sister, Jade; the product of a relationship her father had late in life. The novel depicts life around a jazz club in Liverpool frequented by African sailors in the 1960s. Nubian Indigo addresses the author's Nubian heritage on his father's side. The novel uses a mixture of fable and multiple characters to describe events around the evacuation of Nubian villages as a consequence of the raising of the Aswan High Dam. The novel was first published in French in 2006. Mahjoub's work has been broadly acclaimed and translated. In 1993, The Cartographer's Angel won a one-off short story prize organised by The Guardian newspaper in conjunction with the publisher Heinemann Books. In the 2000s his work received much attention in Europe. In 2001 in Italy he was a finalist for the La cultura del mare prize started by Alberto Moravia. In 2004 in France The Carrier (French:Le TElescope de Rachid) won the Prix de L'Astrolabe, an award given annually at the Etonnants Voyageurs festival in St Malo. In 2005, "The Obituary Tango" was shortlisted for the Caine Prize. In 2006 a short story, "Carrer Princessa", won the NH Hotels Mario Vargas Llosa prize for short stories. In 2012 Mahjoub began publishing crime fiction under the pseudonym "Parker Bilal". The Golden Scales is the first of a projected series set in Cairo featuring the exiled Sudanese detective Makana. The second book in the series, Dogstar Rising, appeared in February 2013. The third book in the series is "The Ghost Runner, published in 2014.
[ 0327 ] Sam, Agnes. Jesus Is Indian and Other Short Stories. Portsmouth. 1994. Heinemann. 0435909215. African Writers Series. 134 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Amanda Ward.

DESCRIPTION - The Indian community in South Africa has largely been ignored by writers and historians. In these stories Agnes Sam has given life to that ‘hidden history.' She explores the struggle with vastly-differing cultures - African, Indian and European - frequently focusing on the experience of women struggling with a male-dominated society. JESUS IS INDIAN evokes both the pain of exile and the vitality that is needed to survive it.

Agnes Sam was born in South Africa in 1942. She left the country in 1960 when the South African government introduced the Separate Education Bill - legislation designed to further enforce racial segregation under the apartheid regime. She continued her studies in Lesotho and Zimbabwe, where upon graduating, was recruited by the United Nations to work in Zambia during its transfer to independence. There she began writing children's fiction for the Sunday Times of Zambia under the pen name ‘Dominique' before emigrating to England in 1973. After reading English at the University of York, she began writing an experimental novel entitled ‘What Passing Bells?'. This was followed by a series of short stories that were first published in the commonwealth journal ‘Kunapipi' in Denmark and subsequently collected under the title ‘Jesus is Indian and other South African Stories' and published by The Women's Press (1989) and Heinemann (1994). Agnes Sam has also written several radio plays, two of which were commissioned and broadcast by BBC Radio 4, the UK's leading national radio network - ‘Dora' (BBC R4, 1991) and ‘The Tyranny of Karma' (BBC R4, 1994). Both have since been syndicated internationally and re-broadcast on other European radio networks including Belgium and the Republic of Ireland. Throughout her career, she has contributed to numerous anthologies published in England, Germany, Denmark and South Africa including ‘Charting the Journey' (Sheba, London 1986), ‘The Story Must Be Told' (Stummer et al, Germany 1986), ‘Let it Be Told' (Virago Press, London 1988) and ‘The Penguin Book of South African Short Stories' (Penguin Books, Johannesburg 1994) amongst others. Culture, tradition and religion, and how they combine to shape peoples lives and relationships, are important themes that influence much of Agnes Sam's writing, and she continues to explore this in her latest novel ‘The Pragashini-Smuts Affair'. Her writing and research is informed by extensive travel throughout South Africa, including time spent working in one of the country's Provincial Legislatures, where she became heavily involved in South Africa's emerging trade union movement, and had the privilege of meeting the former President Nelson Mandela, ex- Robben Islander Govan Mbeki (father of Mandela's successor) and Archbishop Desmond Tutu amongst others. In researching her family history, she undertook a comprehensive study of the genealogy of South Africa's Indian population, and the practice of indentured labour, and aspects of this can be found in her celebrated collection of short stories ‘Jesus is Indian'. She also has a long-standing interest in African literature and follows the works of British Black & Asian writers.
[ 0328 ] Beyala, Calixthe. Loukoum: The 'Little Prince' of Belleville. Portsmouth. 1995. Heinemann. 0435909681. Translated from the French by Marjolijn de Jager. African Writers Series. 177 pages. paperback. Jacket illustration by Jane Human.

DESCRIPTION - Seven-year-old Loukoum, the ‘Little Prince' of Belleville, innocently chronicles the daily life of the African immigrant population he belongs to in Paris. As he becomes more aware of what is happening around him, so the conflicts of cultures, the spectre of racism, and the deception of adult behaviour emerge. Calixthe Beyala sensitively examines immigrant society through comedy in this highly readable and entertaining novel. Calixthe Beyala, born in Cameroon, is the author of several novels published in French.

Calixthe Beyala was born in Cameroon in 1961. She spent her childhood in Douala with one of her sisters, four years older than herself. Calixthe Beyala left Cameroon aged seventeen and arrived in France where she studied, married, had two children and published numerous novels. In 1996 she was awarded the Grand Prix du Roman de l'AcadEmie Française. She now (2011) lives in France.
[ 0329 ] Botha, W. P. B. Wantok. Portsmouth. 1995. Heinemann. 043590969x. African Writers Series.. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - 'You will become part of village life, which mean they will become responsible for you, but also that you will be responsible for them. That is what we understand by the word wantok.' Working in the development program in the Pacific region, Richard Green finds himself increasingly embroiled in local feuds. His idealistic notion of helping the islanders disintegrates as his neo-colonial role becomes apparent. Instead, he is taken back to memories of his early-and devastating-years in colonial Kenya, bringing a dawning realization that he can never truly be wantok.

W.P.B. Botha is the South African author of The Reluctant Playwright, A Duty of Memory and Wantok.
[ 0330 ] Chipasula, Stella and Frank Chipasula (editors). The Heinemann Book of African Women's Poetry. Portsmouth. 1995. Heinemann. 0435906801. African Writers Series.. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - This first major anthology of African women's poetry offers an extensive selection of poetry by women all over the African continent. The poems address wide-ranging human concerns such as love, motherhood, death, colonial domination, and human dignity. They employ a variety of styles from the conversational to the didactic. Contributors include Ama Ata Aidoo, Noemia de Sousa, Queen Hatshepsut, Micere Githae Mugo, and Zindzi Mandela.

Originally from Malawi, Stella and Frank Chipasula now live in the United States.
[ 0331 ] Collen, Lindsey. The Rape of Sita. Portsmouth. 1995. Heinemann. 0435909584. African Writers Series.. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - Sita is a strong woman, champion of the repressed, inspiration to the weak, a living legend in Mauritian society. She has also buried a secret that threatens to overwhelm her very self. Told in lyrical tones by Iqbal the Umpire, Sita's story echoes ancient myths, folk tales and religious prophesies. Yet in the modern landscape of the 1980s, Sita must struggle to remember her own history and her own rape which comes to symbolise all rapes, all violations, all colonisations.

Lindsey Collen, Mauritian writer and political activist, faced censure and threats of death, public rape, and acid attacks -- all in response to the publication of The Rape of Sita. Born in 1948 in the Transkei in South Africa, she has lived in Mauritius since 1974 and is the author of four other novels.
[ 0332 ] Darko, Amma. Beyond the Horizon. Portsmouth. 1995. Heinemann. 0435909908. African Writers Series. 140 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Alan Bond. Cover design by Touchpaper.

DESCRIPTION - Gazing at her naked body in the mirror, Mara reflects on her transformation from naive Ghanaian village girl into a prostitute in a German brothel. Mara has been deceived by her husband, Akobi, into coming to Europe to find a ‘paradise', but as the truth about Akobi and her new life unfolds she realises she is trapped. The expectations of her family in Africa force her to remain, living a lie. BEYOND THE HORIZON is a gripping and provocative story of the plight of African women in Europe, and the false hopes of those they leave behind.

Amma Darko (born 1956) is a Ghanian novelist. She was born in Koforidua, Ghana, and grew up in Accra. She studied in Kumasi, where she received her diploma in 1980. Then she worked for the Science and Technology Center in Kumasi. During the 1980s, she lived and worked for some time in Germany. She has since returned to Accra. Her novels illustrate everyday life in Ghana. Her first novel, Beyond the Horizon, was originally published in German. Her most recent novels, Faceless and Not without flowers, were published in Ghana. Her work has been discussed in Vincent O. Odamtten's book Broadening the Horizon: Critical Introductions to Amma Darko, in the 2001 doctoral thesis by Louise Allen Zak "Writing her way: a study of Ghanaian novelist Amma Darko", and in several academic journals. Darko's first novel is influenced by her impressions of Germany, observing the interaction between Germans and Ghanaian immigrants.
[ 0333 ] Emecheta, Buchi. The Slave Girl. Portsmouth. 1995. Heinemann. 0435909975. African Writers Series.. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - On the death of her parents, an young Ibo girl's greedy brother sells her to a wealthy relative and she must learn to live the life of a slave. She clings to her sense of identity, determined to be free one day. This novel, by a Nigerian-born author, won the Jock Campbell 'New Statesman' Award.

Buchi Emecheta (born 21 July 1944, in Lagos) is a Nigerian novelist who has published over 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education have won her considerable critical acclaim and honours, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005. Emecheta once described her stories as ‘stories of the world…[where]… women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical.'
[ 0334 ] Head, Bessie. The Cardinals With Meditations and Short Stories. Portsmouth. 1995. Heinemann. 0435909673. African Writers Series. 141 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Alan Bond.

DESCRIPTION - This is the first time THE CARDINALS is available outside South Africa. It is the 1960s in South Africa. Blacks and whites are segregated, in life and love. This is Mouse's world, but she is blind to it, living only for her books. A job as a reporter on African Beat forces her to open her eyes. Newsroom sexism combines with everyday stories of racial repression, and political muck-raking to radically alter Mouse's perceptions. But it is her relationship with the cynical newshound Johnny that is the greatest challenge to her loveless solitude. THE CARDINALS was one of Bessie Head's earliest works. Like the other short pieces in this collection it is a passionate exploration of the effects of apartheid. Bessie Head was born in South Africa in 1937 and died in exile in 1986. Her works include - WHEN RAIN CLOUDS GATHER, MARU, and A QUESTION OF POWER.

Bessie Emery Head (6 July 1937 - 17 April 1986) is usually considered Botswana's most influential writer. Bessie Emery Head was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, the child of a wealthy white South African woman and a black servant when interracial relationships were illegal in South Africa. It was claimed that her mother was mentally ill so that she could be sent to a quiet location to then give birth to Bessie without the neighbors knowing. However, the exact circumstances are disputed, and some of Bessie Head's comments, though often quoted as straight autobiography, are in fact from fictionalized settings. In the 1950s and '60s she was a teacher, then a journalist for the South African magazine Drum. In 1964 she moved to Botswana (then still the Bechuanaland Protectorate) as a refugee, having been peripherally involved with Pan-African politics. It would take 15 years for Head to obtain Botswana citizenship. Head settled in Serowe, the largest of Botswana's ‘villages' (i.e. traditional settlements as opposed to settler towns). Serowe was famous both for its historical importance, as capital of the Bamangwato people, and for the experimental Swaneng school of Patrick van Rensburg. The deposed chief of the Bamangwato, Seretse Khama, was soon to become the first President of independent Botswana. Her early death in 1986 (aged 48) from hepatitis came just at the point where she was starting to achieve recognition as a writer and was no longer so desperately poor. Most of Bessie Head's important works are set in Serowe, in particular the three novels When Rain Clouds Gather, Maru, and A Question of Power. One of her best works is When Rain Clouds Gather, in which she writes about a troubled young man called Makhaya who runs away from his birthplace, South Africa, to become a refugee in a little village called Golema Mmidi, in the heart of Botswana. Here he is faced with many challenges, one of which is the fact that Chief Matenge does not allow his presence in the village. He meets a white man named Gilbert and starts a whole new journey into the unknown. Head also published a number of short stories, including the collection The Collector of Treasures. She published a book on the history of Serowe, the village she settled in, called Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind. Her last novel, A Bewitched Crossroad, is historical, set in nineteenth-century Botswana. She had also written a story of two prophets, one wealthy and one who lived poorly called ‘Jacob: The Faith-Healing Priest'. Head's work, which emphasised the value of ordinary life and humble people, was more in touch with an earlier trend in African writing than many recent writers, who have made overtly political comments. Her writing has endured nonetheless. Religious ideas feature prominently at times, as in the work A Question of Power. It is interesting to note that Head was initially brought up as a Christian; however, she was later influenced by Hinduism (to which she was exposed through South Africa's Indian community). Most of her writing took place while she was in exile in Botswana. An exception is the early novel The Cardinals (published posthumously), written before she left South Africa. In some ways Bessie Head remained an outsider in her adopted country, and some discern she had something of a love-hate relationship with it. At times she suffered mental health problems and on one occasion put up a public notice making bizarre and shocking allegations about then President Sir Seretse Khama, which led to a period in Lobatse Mental Hospital. A Question of Power is based partly on those experiences. In 2007 the Bessie Head Heritage Trust was established, along with the Bessie Head Literature Awards. In July 2007 the library in Pietermaritzburg was renamed the Bessie Head library in her honor. In 2003 she was awarded the South African ‘Order of Ikhamanga in Gold' for her ‘exceptional contribution to literature and the struggle for social change, freedom and peace.'
[ 0335 ] Jacobs, Steve. The Enemy Within. Portsmouth. 1995. Heinemann. 0435909983. African Writers Series. 185 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by David Axtell. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - A black man, brutalised by apartheid, murders his wife. His fate is in the hands of a young Jewish lawyer, Jeremy Spielman. As Jeremy prepares to defend his client, he discovers uncomfortable facts about his own life: the racism of his girlfriend, the injustice of the legal system and his own weakness in the face of his country's enemies. Steve Jacobs is the South African author of several novels and short stories including UNDER THE LION, LIGHT IN A STARK AGE and DIARY OF AN EXILE.

Steve Jacobs was born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in 1955. He studied Law at the University of Cape Town, and after a year spent working on a kibbutz in Israel he worked as an Advocate in Johannesburg. He left the legal profession to concentrate on his writing. A collection of his short stories, Light in a Stark Age, was published in 1984 (Ravan Press). This was followed by two novellas, published as Diary of an Exile (Ad. Donker, 1986).He has had a number of jobs since leaving the legal profession, including being a freelance reporter and a property administrator. He is currently Sub-Editor of The Argus, a Cape Town daily newspaper.He is an active campaigner for human and animal rights, and has been a Trustee of Beauty without Cruelty, worked with squatters at the Crossroads township, and been a member of Koeburg Alert, an organisation opposing a nuclear power station.
[ 0336 ] Sobott-Mogwe, Gaele. Colour Me Blue: Short Stories. Portsmouth. 1995. Heinemann. 0435909711. African Writers Series. 121 pages. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - Gaele Sobott-Mogwe's stories tell of everyday life in Southern Africa. She captures the casual or determined oppression of men and women, the delightful tenderness of human affection, the powerful rhythm of African myth. The politics of personal relationships are explored against a background of social injustice and material hardship. Yet we never lose sight of the individual human experience, the moment of insight, the sensation of pain or pleasure.

Gaele Sobott (born 1956) is an Australian author of short stories, non-fiction and children's books. Gaele was born in Yallourn, Victoria, and lived in Botswana as a citizen for a large part of her life. She taught in the English Department at the University of Botswana. She also lived in France, and England where she completed a Ph.D. on South African women writers. She now lives in Sydney, Australia. Colour Me Blue is a haunting collection of stories, published by Heinemann African Writers Series. It blends fantasy and reality, melding African history and tradition with the grittiness of everyday life. The stories capture the casual or determined oppression of men and women, the tenderness of human affection and the powerful rhythm of African myth. The politics of personal relationships are explored against a background of social injustice and material hardship. Gaele's writing is characterised by a 'mixture of traditional story telling and modern day-to-day struggles'. Her children's fiction includes: The Magic Pool - some children decide to go and find out if stories about the python at the waterhole are true, Tickles about Moabi and Sonti who are helping on a game reserve when an orphaned baby elephant is brought in by the rangers, Weird Wambo lives alone in a baobab tree and children of the village laugh at her until one day they need her help, and Thara Meets the Cassipoohka Man, which addresses global warming and received the Zimbabwe Award for Children's Literature. She has written on gender relations in Botswana during the Second World War. How the British government sought to increase the food production of the then Bechuanaland Protectorate for export purposes. With so many Batswana men away in the army and the South African mines, this required the intensified use of women's labour. In another essay entitled 'Humans Being', she points to the importance of viewing the being in human being as a verb. Being means we may close down and/or open up human relating, human communicating, human solidarity. writing and sharing stories is an integral part of this being'. Gaele's more recent work includes the biography, My Longest Round: the life story of Wally Carr. Wally ‘Wait-a-While' Carr is an Australian Aboriginal ex-champion boxer who held twelve titles in six divisions. From featherweight to heavyweight, one of the last of the fifteen-rounders, he fought an astonishing 101 professional bouts in his 15-year boxing career. My Longest Round provides an Aboriginal man's perspective on inner-city Sydney; the two-up games, the gangsters, and the way working-class neighbourhoods looked out for each other. From hunting goannas, Jimmy Sharman's boxing tents, rugby league, professional boxing and the first Aboriginal Tent Embassy, to present-day struggles and lifestyles, this story offers a vital snapshot of Aboriginal and Australian history. Gaele worked very closely with Wally to render a vivid account of his tumultuous life. She is also editor of Young Days: Bankstown Aboriginal Elders Oral History Project, published in 2013. Gaele Sobott's work appears in anthologies and collections, and has been translated into various languages.
[ 0337 ] Tansi, Sony Labou. The Seven Solitudes of Lorsa Lopez. Portsmouth. 1995. Heinemann. 0435905945. African Writers Series. Translated from the French by Clive Wake. 129 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Graham Baker Smith.

DESCRIPTION - ‘At the time of night when dew begins to form on objects left outside, and while Fartamio Andra's insomniac cocks crowed, we heard a cry from the town square: ‘Help me! He's killed me!'.. History has been silenced in this modern African state: only the voices of the dead cry out for justice. It is a cry answered by Estina Bronzario, the Woman of Bronze, determined to act against the political and moral corruption of male-dominated society. Murders escalate, crowds ebb and flow, and the years roll by. But the police never come. Sony Labou Tansi's surreal portrait of a despised and incompetent regime is a biting, burlesque fable, incisive in its description of post-colonial colour and chaos.

Sony Lab'ou Tansi (5 July 1947 - 14 June 1995), born Marcel Ntsoni, was a Congolese novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and poet. Though he was only 47 when he died, Tansi remains one of the most prolific African writers and the most internationally renowned practitioner of the "New African Writing." His novel The Antipeople won the Grand Prix LittEraire d'Afrique Noire. In his later years, he ran a theatrical company in Brazzaville in the Republic of the Congo. The oldest of seven children, Tansi was born in the former Belgian Congo, in the village of Kimwaanza, just south of the city now known as Kinshasa in the modern day Democratic Republic of the Congo. He was initially educated in the local language, Kikongo, and only began speaking French at the age of twelve, when his family moved to Congo-Brazzaville, today known as the Republic of the Congo. He attended the Ecole Normale SupErieure d'Afrique Centrale in Brazzaville where he studied literature, and upon completing his education in 1971, he became a French and English teacher in Kindauba. When the young teacher began writing for the theatre later that year, he adopted the pen name "Sony La'bou Tansi" as a tribute to Tchicaya U Tam'si, a fellow Congolese writer who wrote politically charged poetry about oppressive nature of the state. In the early part of his career, Tansi continued to support himself through teaching and he worked as an English instructor at the Collège Tchicaya-Pierre in Pointe Noire while working on his first two novels and several plays. In 1979 he founded the Rocado Zulu Theatre, which would go on performed his plays in Africa, Europe, and the United States in addition to appearing regularly at the Festival International des Francophonies in Limoges. After teaching for many years, Tansi moved on to government work, serving as an administrator in several ministries in Brazzaville. In the late 1980s he allied with opposition leader Bernard KolElas to found the Congolese Movement for Democracy and Integral Development (MCDDI), a political party acting against the communist regime of President Denis Sassou Nguesso and his Congolese Labour Party. Left-wing forces succeeded in pushing President Sassou toward democracy, and former Prime Minister Pascal Lissouba returned from an extended exile and was elected President in the August 1992 elections. In that same year, Tansi was elected to parliament as a deputy for the MakElEkElE arrondissement of Brazzaville, but his participation in opposition politics angered President Lissouba, and his passport was withdrawn in 1994. Tansi soon discovered that he had contracted the AIDS virus, but Lissouba's travel restrictions prevented him from going abroad to seek treatment for himself and his wife. Tansi's partner, Pierrette, died from the disease on 31 May 1995 and Tansi followed 14 days later.
[ 0338 ] Emecheta, Buchi. The Bride Price. Oxford. 1995. Heinemann. 0435909991. African Writers Series. 192 pages. paperback. AWS unnumbered..

DESCRIPTION - A Nigerian girl is allowed to finish her education because a diploma will enhance her bride price, but she then rebels against traditional marriage customs.

Buchi Emecheta (born 21 July 1944, in Lagos) is a Nigerian novelist who has published over 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education have won her considerable critical acclaim and honours, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005. Emecheta once described her stories as ‘stories of the world…[where]… women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical.'
[ 0339 ] Accad, Evelyne. Wounding Words: A Woman 's Journal. Portsmouth. 1996. Heinemann. 0435905236. African Writers Series. Translated from the French by Cynthia Hahn. 183 pages. paperback. AWS unnumbered..

DESCRIPTION - Poetical and powerful, Wounding Words is a vivid autobiographical exploration of women's issues in the political turmoil of contemporary Tunisia.

Evelyne Accad is an American/Lebanese Feminist Writer. She was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. Her publications include Blessures des Mots (1993); Sexuality and War (1990); Veil of Shame (1978), L'Excisee (novel), 1982,and she is a contributor to Radically Speaking and September 11, 2001: Feminist Perspectives. She is a songwriter and interpreter of both music and lyrics. Her book, The Wounded Breast, has been published in French and Arabic. Her Career life: Anderson College, instructor in French, 1967-68; International College, Beirut, Lebanon, teacher and girls counselor, 1968-70; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, assistant professor, 1974-79, associate professor, 1979-88, professor of French comparative literature and member of core faculty at African Center, Women's Studies Center, and Center for Asian Studies, 1988-; Northwestern University, visiting professor, 1991.
[ 0340 ] Beyala, Calixthe. The Sun Hath Looked Upon Me. Portsmouth. 1996. Heinemann. 0435909517. Translated from the French by Marjolijn de Jager. African Writers Series. 120 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Jane Human.

DESCRIPTION - Nineteen-year-old Ateba lives in a slum neighbourhood in the African city of Awu. Abandoned by her prostitute mother, Ateba lodges with her aunt. Caught between the expectations of her aunt, who seeks a high bride-price for her, and the violent threats of her suitor, Ateba begins to lose her fragile hold on sanity. This shocking novel deconstructs the illusions about African women which negritude literature has produced. Beyala gives a voice to those who have learnt the emotional and psychological effects of life in the African ghetto. Calixthe Beyala, born in Cameroon, is the author of LOUKOUM and YOUR NAME SHALL BE TANGA.

Calixthe Beyala was born in Cameroon in 1961. She spent her childhood in Douala with one of her sisters, four years older than herself. Calixthe Beyala left Cameroon aged seventeen and arrived in France where she studied, married, had two children and published numerous novels. In 1996 she was awarded the Grand Prix du Roman de l'AcadEmie Française. She now (2011) lives in France.
[ 0341 ] Beyala, Calixthe. Your Name Shall Be Tanga. Portsmouth. 1996. Heinemann. 0435909509. Translated from the French by Marjolijn de Jager. African Writers Series. 137 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Jane Human.

DESCRIPTION - In a West-African prison cell a young woman, Tanga, is dying. Her only companion is Anna-Claude, a foreigner on the brink of madness. Reluctantly, Tanga begins to confide her life story to this stranger. A grim talc of incest, prostitution, bereavement and crime unfolds. Tanga's anguished mind searches for the words to express such suffering. Yet as she does so, the bond between her and the white stranger begins to grow. In passing on her story, she is fusing her identity with the woman who will live after her death. `Your name shall be Tanga', she insists. In this disturbing novel about sexual abuse and violence, Calixthe Beyala voices the solidarity that unites women across racial, religious and class barriers.

Calixthe Beyala was born in Cameroon in 1961. She spent her childhood in Douala with one of her sisters, four years older than herself. Calixthe Beyala left Cameroon aged seventeen and arrived in France where she studied, married, had two children and published numerous novels. In 1996 she was awarded the Grand Prix du Roman de l'AcadEmie Française. She now (2011) lives in France.
[ 0342 ] Jacobs, Rayda. Eyes of the Sky. Portsmouth. 1996. Heinemann. 043591006x. African Writers Series.. paperback.. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - Set in the late eighteenth century, Eyes of the Sky is about identity, betrayal, forbidden love and the merger of diverse cultures.

RAYDA JACOBS is the South African author of The Middle Children, a collection of interrelated short stories.
[ 0343 ] Mahjoub, Jamal. In the Hour of Signs. Portsmouth. 1996. Heinemann. 0435909223. African Writers Series.. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - Nineteenth-century Sudan, wracked by religious, cultural, and political differences, is brilliantly evoked in the most ambitious book yet by this talented novelist.

Jamal Mahjoub (born London 1966) is a mixed-race writer of British and Sudanese parents. He writes in English and has published seven novels under his own name. In 2012, Mahjoub began writing a series of crime fiction novels under the pseudonym Parker Bilal. Writing in The Observer, Zoe Heller described Mahjoub's first novel, Navigation of a Rainmaker as providing 'a rich picture, both of Africa's vast, seemingly insuperable problems - and of the moral dilemmas faced by a well-meaning, ineffectual stranger'. Wings of Dust, Mahjoub's second novel explores the legacy of the first generation of Northern Sudanese who were educated in the West in the 1950s and inherited the task of creating the newly independent nation. In the Hour of Signs recounts the story of the Mahdi who led a revolt in 19th-century Turko-Egyptian Sudan, expelling the Khedive Ismail's troops. According to the TLS the novel conveys 'A profound awareness that man refuses to learn from history, because he is blind to the guises in which it repeats itself.'. In the process General Gordon was killed which led to the British Reconquest and the formation of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1898. 'Mahjoub's first three novels can be loosely read as a trilogy of political events in Sudan. Emulating the turmoil and uncertaintly of the sudan, his writing distinguishes itself by its dynamism' The Carrier (1998) is split between the early 17th century and present-day Denmark, where an archaeological find reveals a link to a visitor from the Arab world in medieval times. The novel's astronomical theme touches on the discovery of Heliocentricity and the work of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. Travelling with Djinns tells the story of Yasin, a man with a similar background to the author, who absconds with his young son Leo and travels through Europe in a Peugeot 504. In The Drift Latitudes, Rachel, following the death of her son, becomes aware of the existence of a half-sister, Jade; the product of a relationship her father had late in life. The novel depicts life around a jazz club in Liverpool frequented by African sailors in the 1960s. Nubian Indigo addresses the author's Nubian heritage on his father's side. The novel uses a mixture of fable and multiple characters to describe events around the evacuation of Nubian villages as a consequence of the raising of the Aswan High Dam. The novel was first published in French in 2006. Mahjoub's work has been broadly acclaimed and translated. In 1993, The Cartographer's Angel won a one-off short story prize organised by The Guardian newspaper in conjunction with the publisher Heinemann Books. In the 2000s his work received much attention in Europe. In 2001 in Italy he was a finalist for the La cultura del mare prize started by Alberto Moravia. In 2004 in France The Carrier (French:Le TElescope de Rachid) won the Prix de L'Astrolabe, an award given annually at the Etonnants Voyageurs festival in St Malo. In 2005, 'The Obituary Tango' was shortlisted for the Caine Prize. In 2006 a short story, 'Carrer Princessa', won the NH Hotels Mario Vargas Llosa prize for short stories. In 2012 Mahjoub began publishing crime fiction under the pseudonym 'Parker Bilal'. The Golden Scales is the first of a projected series set in Cairo featuring the exiled Sudanese detective Makana. The second book in the series, Dogstar Rising, appeared in February 2013. The third book in the series is 'The Ghost Runner, published in 2014.
[ 0344 ] Pepetela. Yaka. Oxford. 1996. Heinemann. 0435909622. African Writers Series. Translated from the Portuguese by Marga Holness. 307 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Nick Higgins.

DESCRIPTION - The white community in Benguela in 1890 was an explosive mixture of ex-convicts, political exiles, republicans, anarchists and colonial officials. Most were united only in their fear of uprisings and a desire to get rich quick. Through the saga of the Semedo family, Yaka gives a panoramic view of events that shaped Angola over the following century. From the nineteenth century penal colony, through slavery, African uprisings and land expropriation, Yaka charts the formation of a nation. The enigmatic Yaka statue owned by the Semedo family provides an unexpected commentary. Pepetela is the Angolan author of Mawmbe.

Artur Carlos Maurício Pestana dos Santos (born 1941) is a major Angolan writer of fiction. He writes under the name Pepetela. A white Angolan, Pepetela was born in Benguela, Portuguese Angola, and fought as a member of the MPLA in the long guerrilla war for Angola's independence. Much of his writing deals with Angola's political history in the 20th century. Mayombe, for example, is a novel that portrays the lives of a group of MPLA guerrillas who are involved in the anti-colonial struggle in Cabinda, Yaka follows the lives of members of a white settler family in the coastal town of Benguela, and A Geração da Utopia reveals the disillusionment of young Angolans during the post-independence period. Pepetela has also written about Angola's earlier history in A Gloriosa Família and Lueji, and has expanded into satire with his series of Jaime Bunda novels. His most recent works include Predadores, a scathing critique of Angola's ruling classes, O Quase Fim do Mundo, a post-apocalyptic allegory, and O Planalto e a Estepe, a look at Angola's history and connections with other former communist nations. Pepetela won the Camões Prize, the world's highest honour for Lusophone literature, in 1997. "Pepetela" is a Kimbundu word that means "eyelash," which is a translation of his Portuguese surname, "Pestana". The author received this nom de guerre during his time as an MPLA combatant.
[ 0345 ] Botha, W. P. B. A Duty of Memory. Portsmouth. 1997. Heinemann. 0435910078. African Writers Series.. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - This is the story of an Afrikaner-English brother and sister separated as children and the consequences of their violent background. Eben was raised on the family farm and Jo was sent to live in England. While Eben becomes a member of a clandestine hit-squad that perpetrates violence against blacks, homosexuals, and Communists, Jo lives and unsettled life, frequently changing jobs and lovers. After Eben's death, Jo returns to the family farm to find out the truth of what has happened to her family. In this gripping and honest story Botha examines violence within the family as well as the country. It is particularly appropriate in the current South African climate of learning about the past and coming to terms with the truth.

W.P.B. Botha is the South African author of The Reluctant Playwright, A Duty of Memory and Wantok.
[ 0346 ] Darko, Amma. The Housemaid. Portsmouth. 1998. Heinemann. 0435910086. African Writers Series.. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - A dead baby and bloodstained clothes are discovered near a small village. Everyone is ready to comment on the likely story behind the abandoned infant. The men have one opinion, the women another. As the story rapidly unfolds it becomes clear that seven different women played their part in the drama. All of them are caught in a web of superstition, ignorance, greed and corruption.

Amma Darko is the Ghanaian author of Beyond the Horizon.
[ 0347 ] Kanengoni, Alexander. Echoing Silences. Portsmouth. 1998. Heinemann. 0435910094. African Writers Series. 136 pages. paperback.. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - In this short poetic novel Alexander Kanengoni relates the traumatic history of those who fought to create the modern Zimbabwe. He portrays a war so violent and chaotic that it had a dehumanising effect on all those who took part. Can the damage to the psyche caused by such a war ever be fully repaired? Or is Zimbabwe to descend into a silence that denies the past? In this novel Kanengoni weaves together incidents in the life of Munashe, a young man who joined the guerrillas with high ideals, to express the insanity which can engulf a nation.

Alexander Kanengoni is the Zimbabwean author of Vicious Circle, When the Rainbird Cries and Effortless Tears.
[ 0348 ] King-Aribisala, Karen. Kicking Tongues. Portsmouth. 1988. Heinemann. 0435912003. African Writers Series. 244 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Ademola Akintola. AWS original.

DESCRIPTION - KICKING TONGUES brilliantly transposes Chaucer's CANTERBURY TALES to modern-day Nigeria. Forty travellers gather at the Eko Holiday Inn, Lagos, intending to journey to Abuja, the new federal capital. Selected by their ‘melancholy hostess', they range from a wealthy tribal chief to a humble petrol pump attendant, from a rain maker to a woman in purdah. They are united only by their dissatisfaction with Nigeria's chaotic and corrupt regime, a concern which is reflected in the widely differing stories they tell on the journey - bawdy tales, sharp satires, poignant narratives and moral fables. Blending poetry and prose, rich visual images and witty puns, Karen King-Aribisala succeeds in transforming a fourteenth-century English classic into an exuberant and distinctively African work.

Karen King-Aribisala lectures in English at the University of Lagos. She is the author of OUR WIFE AND OTHER STORIES, which won the 1990/91 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (African Region).
[ 0349 ] Kwakye, Benjamin. The Clothes of Nakedness. Oxford. 1998. Heinemann. 0435912011. African Writers Series. 216 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Alan Bond.

DESCRIPTION - Gabriel Bukari is an out-of-work taxi driver living from hand to mouth in a poor suburb of Accra: honest, kind-hearted, and faithful to his wife. When he meets Mystique Mysterious, the 'big man' who can get him a job, he is exposed to temptations he has never faced before. In this lively portrait of relations between rich and poor in urban Ghana, Benjamin Kwakye explores the seductive power of corruption and shows how ordinary people can be manipulated to make choices which threaten their community life.

Benjamin Kwakye (born 7 January 1967) is a Ghanaian novelist. His first novel, The Clothes of Nakedness, won the 1999 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, best first book, Africa. His novel The Sun by Night won the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Best Book Africa. His novel The Other Crucifix won the 2011 IPPY award. Kwakye was born in Accra, Ghana. He graduated from Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School. He practises law around Chicago, and is a director of the African Education Initiative.
[ 0350 ] Vera, Yvonne (editor). Opening Spaces: An Anthology of Contemporary African Women’s Writing. Portsmouth. 1999. Heinemann. 0435910108. African Writers Series.. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - African women are seldom given the space to express their concerns, their ideas and their reflections about the societies in which they live. In situations where a good woman is expected to remain silent, literature can provide an important medium for the expression of deeply-felt and sometimes shocking views. In this anthology the award-winning author Yvonne Vera brings together the stories of many talented writers from different parts of Africa. The act as witnesses to the dramas of private and public life. Their stories challenge contemporary attitudes and behaviour, leaving no room for complacency.

Yvonne Vera was born and raised in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, gained her Ph.D. from York University in Canada, and was the Director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo. Yvonne Vera died at age 40 in 2005 Yvonne Vera's Without a Name and Under the Tongue both won first prize in the Zimbabwe Publishers Literary Awards of 1995 and 1997 respectively. Under the Tongue won the 1997 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region). Yvonne Vera won the Swedish literary award The Voice of Africa 1999.
[ 0351 ] Sinyangwe, Binwell. A Cowrie of Hope. Portsmouth. 2000. Heinemann. 043591202x. African Writers Series. 152 pages. paperback. AWSunnumbered. Cover illustration by Voti Thebe.

DESCRIPTION - ‘These were the nineties,' reflects the narrator of A COWRIE OF HOPE, and for the young widow Nasula they are years of relentless economic hardship and privation. She dreams of a better life for her beautiful daughter, Sula, free from poverty and independent of marriage. But when Nasula finds herself unable to pay for Sula's education, her hopes seem to have been extinguished - until a friend advises her to go to Lusaka and sell her last sack of highly sought-after Mbala beans. Nasula makes the journey, but in the city she finds herself exposed to new, and predatory, dangers. In A COWRIE OF HOPE Binwell Sinyangwe captures the rhythms of a people whose poverty has not diminished their dignity, where hope can only be accompanied by small acts of courage, and where friendship has not lost its value.

Binwell Sinyangwe is from Zambia. This is his second novel.
[ 0352 ] Oguine, Ike. A Squatter's Tale. Portsmouth. 2000. Heinemann. 0435906550. African Writers Series. 201 pages. paperback. AWSunnumbered. Cover illustration by Joanna Clinton.

DESCRIPTION - A SQUATTER'S TALE is Ike Oguine's first novel. Young financier Obi enjoys life in the fast lane in 1990's Lagos. He walks tall in designer suits with his girlfriend at his side, enjoying the envy of those with empty purses. When his finance company collapses, Obi's decadent lifestyle comes to an abrupt end, and he is forced to flee to the United States. There he has to live on the margins of society. Obi wants money, he wants a woman, and he wants to live the good life. This fast-paced novel, by turns comic and moving, reveals what success and failure mean for the young Nigerian at home and in exile. Ike Oguine explores the alienation experienced by today's economic refugees under the cover of light-hearted comedy.

Ike Oguine is a writer and lawyer from Nigeria. Oguine has been described as part of the third generation of Nigerian literature. As a commentator, he has written several opinion pieces for the New Internationalist, West Africa and Times Literary Supplement, and has written several short stories. His first novel, A Squatter's Tale, was first published in 1997 and later republished as part of the Heinemann African Writers Series in 2000. Oguine's professional career is as a lawyer. First he worked for Chevron as the lead counsel on the West African Gas Pipeline, the Escravos GTL, the Brass LNG Project and the ONLNG project. From April 2014 to May 2015, he served as General Counsel to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, under an appointment made by President Goodluck Jonathan.
[ 0353 ] Emecheta, Buchi. The New Tribe. Portsmouth. 2000. Heinemann. 9780435912048. African Writers Series. 154 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Synthia St. James.

DESCRIPTION - When a baby girl is abandoned at birth, Reverend Arlington and his wife Ginny are only too happy to adopt her. The media cover this moving story, and a Nigerian woman living in England takes more than a passing interest in the Arlingtons. She decides that they world provide the right Christian home for her own baby, Chester. Shortly afterwards, Chester is delivered to social services with a letter explaining that the Arlingtons should be his new parents. So young Chester enters the vicarage of the sleepy seaside village of St Simon. He is the only black child for miles around. The New Tribe tells the story of Chester's long search for his true identity, and the challenges he faces as a black child in a white family.

Buchi Emecheta (born 21 July 1944, in Lagos) is a Nigerian novelist who has published over 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education have won her considerable critical acclaim and honours, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005. Emecheta once described her stories as ‘stories of the world…[where]… women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical.'
[ 0354 ] Ndibe, Okey. Arrows of Rain. Portsmouth. 2000. Heinemann. 0435906577. African Writers Series. 248 pages. paperback. Cover illustation by Fletcher Sibthorp.

DESCRIPTION - A young woman runs into the sea and drowns. The last man who spoke to her, the curious individual known as Bukuru, is asked to account for the suicide. His shocking revelations land him in court. Alone and undefended, Bukuru has to calculate the cost of silence in the face of stories which must be told. Both humorous and poignant. ARROWS OF RAIN dramatizes the relationship between an individual and the modern African state. Okey Ndibe examines the erosion of moral insight in both public and private life, drawing out the complex factors behind the near-collapse of a nation. ‘An ambitious and brave first novel, ARROWS OF RAIN could well jump start the moral political mission of serious African literature begun so well by Ousmane, Ngugi, and the immortal Achebe.' - Ekwueme Mike Thelwell.

Okey Ndibe (born 1960) is a novelist, political columnist, and essayist. Of Igbo ethnicity, Ndibe was born in Yola, Nigeria. He is the author of Arrows of Rain, a critically acclaimed novel published in 2000
[ 0355 ] Aboulela, Leila. The Translator. Portsmouth. 2001. Heinemann. 0435912070. African Writers Series. 204 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Hassan Aliyu.

DESCRIPTION - Sudanese author Leila Aboulela won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2000. Sammar is a young Sudanese widow working as a translator in a British university. Rae is a Scottish lecturer in Postcolonial Politics. As Sammar slowly recovers from emotional collapse after her husband's death she finds her friendship with the enlightened and sensitive older man turning to love. But she cannot turn her back on her home, her culture or her faith. Vividly portraying the contrasting landscapes and cultures Of Khartoum and Aberdeen, Leila Aboulela paints an intimate portrait of a young woman torn between conflicting pressures, beliefs and desires. A story of love and faith all the more moving for the restraint with which it is written. J. M. Coetzee. Aboulela shows the rich possibilities of living in the West with different, non-Western, ways of knowing and thinking.' The Sunday Herald.

Leila Aboulela (born 1964) is a fiction writer of Sudanese origin, who lives in Great Britain and writes in English. She grew up in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, and has mainly lived in Aberdeen, Scotland, since 2012. Her most recent books are the novel Bird Summons (2019) and the short-story collection Elsewhere, Home, which was the winner of the 2018 Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award. Her novel The Kindness of Enemies (2015) was inspired by the life of Imam Shamil who united the tribes of the Caucasus to fight against Russian Imperial expansion. Aboulela's 2011 novel, Lyrics Alley, was Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards and short-listed for a Regional Commonwealth Writers Prize. She is also the author of the novels The Translator (a New York Times 100 Notable Book of the Year) and Minaret. All three novels were long-listed for the Orange Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Award. Leila Aboulela won the Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story 'The Museum', included in the collection Coloured Lights, which went on to be short-listed for the Macmillan/Silver PEN award. Aboulela's work has been translated into several languages and included in publications such as Harper's Magazine, Granta, The Washington Post and The Guardian. BBC Radio has adapted her work extensively and broadcast a number of her plays, including The Insider, The Mystic Life and the historical drama The Lion of Chechnya. The five-part radio serialization of her 1999 novel The Translator was short-listed for the RIMA (Race In the Media Award). According to the Scottish Book Trust, 'Leila Aboulela's work is characterised by its distinctive exploration of identity, migration and Islamic spirituality.' Born in 1964 in Cairo, Egypt, to an Egyptian mother and a Sudanese father, Aboulela moved at the age of six weeks to Khartoum, Sudan, where she lived continuously until 1987. As a child she attended the Khartoum American School and the Sisters' School, a private Catholic high school, where she learned English. She later attended the University of Khartoum, graduating in 1985 with a degree in Economics. Aboulela was awarded an M.Sc. and an MPhil degree in statistics from the London School of Economics. In 1990 Aboulela moved to Aberdeen with her husband and children, a move she cites as the inspiration for her first novel, The Translator. Aboulela began writing in 1992 while working as a lecturer in Aberdeen College and later as a research assistant in Aberdeen University. Between 2000 and 2012, Aboulela lived in Jakarta, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha. In 2012, she returned to live in Aberdeen. Aboulela is a devout Muslim, and her faith informs much of her written work. She was awarded the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2000 for her short story 'The Museum', included in her collection of short stories Coloured Lights. Her novel The Translator was nominated for the Orange Prize and was chosen as a 'Notable Book of the Year' by The New York Times in 2006. Her second novel, Minaret, was nominated for the Orange Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Award. Her third novel, Lyrics Alley, is set in the Sudan of the 1950s and was long-listed for the Orange Prize 2011. Lyrics Alley was the Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize - Europe and S.E. Asia. Aboulela cites Arab authors Tayeb Salih, Naguib Mahfouz and Ahdaf Soueif, as well as Jean Rhys, Anita Desai, and Doris Lessing, as her literary influences. She also acknowledges the influence of Scottish writers, such as Alan Spence and Robin Jenkins. Among her works, her second novel Minaret (2005) has drawn the most critical attention. Minaret signaled Aboulela's arrival as an influential member of a new wave of British Muslim writers. Her collection of short stories Elsewhere, Home won the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award in 2018. Her work has been translated into several languages. She is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.
[ 0356 ] Andreas, Neshani. The Purple Violet of Oshaantu. Portsmouth. 2001. Heinemann. 0435912089. African Writers Series.. paperback..

DESCRIPTION - This compelling novel, set in the village community of Oshaantu in rural Namibia, draws on several interconnected stories to offer a compelling picture of the plight of African women. For Kauna, marriage is nothing more than loveless entrapment, and she defies convention by making no secret of her suffering. When her abusive husband is found dead, the villagers are quick to suspect her. Related from the point of view of her best friend, Kauna's story reveals the value of friendship between women of all kinds.

Neshani Andreas was born in Walvis Bay, Namibia, in 1964. She trained as a teacher at the Ongwediva Teachers' College. The Purple Violet of Oshaantu is her first novel.
[ 0357 ] Chinodya, Shimmer. Dew in the