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Books & Arts

Senegalese couple clinches the 2023 Caine Prize for African Writing

The prestigious Caine Prize for African Writing in 2023 has been secured by a dynamic duo from Senegal. The duo’s short story, “A Soul of Small Places,” resonates with profound literary trends in the country while delving into the burgeoning realms of horror and speculative fiction across the African continent. Specialist in African literature, Caroline […]

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Books & Arts

Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’s latest novel divulges tragedy about the rich and the poor in a modern Nigerian

Nigerian writer Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ took the literary world by storm with her debut novel Stay With Me in 2017. Six years later, she has followed up with an equally brilliant second novel, A Spell of Good Things, which has been longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023. Just as with her first novel, A Spell of Good Things delves masterfully into the complexities of polygamy […]

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Books & Arts

Ugandan writer on Caine Prize 2023 shortlist

Uganda’s writer Yvonne Kusiima has been nominated for the Caine Prize for African Writing. Kusiima has been nominated for her story, Weaving, which was published by Isele Magazine in 2022. She is among the five African Writers nominated for the Caine Prize 2023. Kusiima who lives in Kampala, holds a degree in Social Sciences from […]

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Books & Arts Featured

Essay on Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Sparks Controversy

An essay on Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o by Kenyan journalist Carey Baraka sparked controversy recently. Baraka spent three days with Ngũgĩ at his home in California and penned a long, reflective essay about his encounter with the renowned novelist.  The essay, titled Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: three days with a giant of African literature,” was published in […]

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Books & Arts Featured News

Kenyan writer decline invitation to give lecture at Makerere over anti homosexuality law

The anti-gay bill passed in Uganda is gratuitous in its cruelty.  It criminalises the human body, speech, thought, intent, literature, music and language. In short it criminalises culture itself while claiming to be protecting African culture. I therefore feel I cannot honor my invitation to visit Makerere University to give a lecture this August at the Mashariki Conference.  […]

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Books & Arts EDITORS' PICKS

23 African Feminist Books for the Aspiring Revolutionary

This week in our book recommendation series in celebration of women’s history month, we present a booklist for all those readers who want to think and act like revolutionaries. The books here are touchstones of African feminism and are all about dismantling the patriarchy. “I wrote this book with enough rage to fuel a rocket” […]

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Books & Arts Featured

Nobel Prize winner Maria Ressa rails against social media disinformation in ‘How to Stand Up to a Dictator’

From the recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, How to Stand Up to a Dictator is an impassioned and inspiring memoir of a career spent holding power to account. In 2021, Filipino journalist Maria Ressa won the Unesco Press Freedom Award, and was one of two journalists awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  In her […]

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Books & Arts EDITORS' PICKS Featured

Book review: The girl child; Growing to Become a Woman of Value

In the course of the 1980s and 1990s the US philanthropy body: Carnegie Corporation of New York sustained a sociology Think Tank, “Carnegie Commission on adolescents development”. It is devoted to documenting the taxonomy of reality besetting the maturation and fruition of a juvenile through the dark tunnel of transition from child to a responsible […]

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Books & Arts

Book review: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

By Steve Glaveski Fresh off the back of the success of Sapiens and Homo Deus, Professor Yuval Noah Harari has returned with another book, not quite for the ages, but for the 21st Century. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century cuts through the information overwhelm and muddy waters of the online world and confronts the […]

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Books & Arts

Book review: Why Nations Fail

By Warren Bass “Why Nations Fail” is a sweeping attempt to explain the gut-wrenching poverty that leaves 1.29 billion people in the developing world struggling to live on less than $1.25 a day. You might expect it to be a bleak, numbing read. It’s not. It’s bracing, garrulous, wildly ambitious and ultimately hopeful. It may, in […]