Pa Gya! A Literary Festival in Accra, organised by the Writers Project of Ghana and hosted by the Goethe-Institut happens from 19th to 21st October 2018.  According to WPG,  there will be “over sixty writers, publishers, and literary organisations from Ghana and beyond. The festival will feature readings, book launches, workshops, panel discussions, poetry performance, music, talks, and more.”  Festival guests include Efe Azino Paul, Bisi Agyapon, Ayesha Haruna Attah, Billy Kahora, Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, Nii Ayikwei Parkes among many others.  Folks for several teams including Afrikult, Writivism, Squidmag, Golden Baobab and BloggingGhana will represent.  The opening event will feature the poets Kofi Anyidoho and Nana Asaase in conversation.  I will host Bisi Agyapon’s book reading and also take part  in a women’s writing panel.

The full schedule is here. It is fully packed and looks absolutely wonderful.  This is only the second edition of Pa Gya! but Writers Project of Ghana is promising quite the literary blast in Accra this coming weekend.

Aké Arts and Book Festival will take place, in Lagos, from 25th to 28th October 2018. Two big changes this year: the venue change from Abeokuta and the October date as opposed to the customary November.  But I can’t complain because Lola Shoneyin and her  Book Buzz team are bringing back Jennifer Makumbi, who is only my favourite African writer of the moment. And Nuruddin Farah headlines this year’s festival.  Other guests include Nnedi Okorafor, Niq Mhlongo, Panashe Chigumadzi, Paul Beatty, Ishion Hutchinson, Sefi Atta, Frankie Edozien and many more. The theme for this year’s festival is “Fantastical Futures”.  The full programme line up is here. I’ll host a book chat with Diana Evans (Ordinary People) and Ayesha Haruna Attah (The Hundred Wells of Salaga) and moderate the “Is African Really Open for Business?” panel discussion.  It’s going to be another great Akefest.

Citizens of Accra and Lagos, y’all know where to be when the time comes!

To the books.

The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck

German women writers: now here is a category of writers whom I don’t read, often or otherwise. In general, I don’t read contemporary German fiction.  I say this quite confidently because I tend to plan out what to read from the translation fiction space. Even at 2% (the proportion of books that are translated into the English), there is still a too-many-delights-very-little-time vibe so I regulate aggressively.  I confess bad, unjustified over-reaction where I tried my mind on Gunter Grass’ The Tin Drum and it didn’t go well so I quit the entire contemporary German space for her Eastern European neighbours! So imagine my surprise when it dawns on me, just as I’m sitting down to write this review, that within a span of 2 months, I’ve read TWO books by German women writers.  Jenny Erpenbeck and the Russian-German Alina Bronsky. I’m critical about my lack of pace when it comes to translated fiction, but because I always want to read more of it than I actually do, I keep lists upon lists of books that cross my radar. Lists that are heavily informed by other bloggers. So The End of Days it was, since it’d been among the mentions of good translated fiction in previous years.

The novel, which won The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2015, illustrates in five parts, the “but what if…” question in a woman’s life. It opens in 1902 with a baby girl’s cradle death, a death which tears her family apart and sends her father fleeing to the United States.  But what if she had lived? We then follow four different paths, four different possibilities of living, from 1902 to the fall of the Berlin Wall.  The central motif in this novel is probably the secrets we keep in order to seemingly protect our loved ones. But other themes such as the treatment of Jews in Eastern Europe and state repression prevail in this novel which functions as a twentieth century historic panorama. It’s an impressive, rich and powerful novel which utilises different point-of-views in its narration. I like Erpenbeck’s sparse prose. The Ends of Days is translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky.

Far from My Father by Véronique Tadjo

Two of Tadjo’s books – As the Crow Flies and Queen Pokou – are under review here on this blog.  She’s a writer I read.  Far from My Father draws autobiographical elements from the author’s life. The protagonist, Nina, is biracial – her father is Ivorien and her mother is French.  Nina, who has been living in a self-imposed exile, returns to Côte D’Ivoire to bury her dad.  The country, and city Abidjan, are recovering from a decade-long war, where citizens are just starting to reconnect and get back to a semblance of peace-time living.  The issues surrounding Nina’s short return are familiar.  The guilt of missing her father’s last days; strained family relationships; the outsider status; finding that you are stuck in a past country.  As she sorts out her father’s papers and plans the funeral; as family members gather, she interrogates her parents’ marriage and her father’s life. In short, things come out of the woodwork, folks come through the door. Nina finds that perhaps she didn’t really know her father, at least not as well as she thought.  Alienation, belonging, patriarchy, polygamy – these are issues Nina deals with as she ponders whether to stay in Abidjan or go back to France and resume her life with her partner. She will forge new ties to homeland, make peace with the past, find a way to fill in the answers and bury her dad.  It’s a brave book that Tadjo has written.  This novel doesn’t have any experimental elements unlike Queen Pokou and As the Crow Flies, which I greatly enjoy.  Nonetheless, I liked Far from My Father.  The book is translated from the French by Amy Baram Reid, who also wrote the book’s afterword.  I remain opposed to introduction and afterwords, especially for a book’s first publication. Far from My Father is a contemporary novella. I can’t understand the need to explain Tadjo and her work to readers. We don’t need African whisperers.

Maid in SA: 30 Ways to Leave Your Madam by Zukiswa Wanner

Maid in SA is hilarious, fast read and light in the sense of a heavy, political subject made easy.  The book analyses the relationships between madams and their domestic workers along race and class lines. The first part is a guide written for the workers, on the different types of madams – “The Rich Madams”, “The Indian Madams”, “ The African Madams” – how it’s like to be in their employ and why the worker will leave.  Wanner is thorough, there are sub-categories by class. I think Maid in SA is considered a satire and I don’t know why.  The scenarios that Wanner describes are hardly exaggerated. And while generalized, these guides are definitely not caricatures.  Wanner’s observations are nuanced, keen and pithy.  Even as someone living in a West African city, the guide on the “The African Madams” was spot on. Perhaps, Wanner might be considered a bit kind because the level of exploitation of domestic workers here in West Africa is epic. Part II is a guide on “The Helpers”,  written for the Madams. Here, guides are grouped into “rural, city, Mosotho, Zimbabwean, and Malawian helpers”.  It helps that Wanner herself is very familiar with other African countries because none of her helper guides come off as stereotyping. It’s obvious that the author made ample use of a wide variety of material and because that material is condensed into just 92 pages, the book is rich in substance while making us hoot all the way to the end. Fab!

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Book Are My Favourite Things.  The idea is to connect a book selected by the host to another book of your choice through six criteria of your choosing. It is a First Saturday of the Month event (of course I’m late!).  I would like to use this meme to discuss books I’d previously read before beginning this blog or books I’ve read that I haven’t yet got round to reviewing, which are a lot of books.

This week’s selected book is Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin. I haven’t read this book or any other book by the author. I’m familiar with the TV miniseries production based on the book and how popular it was in the USA. I might have watched an episode or two and that’s the sum total of my interaction with this book.  Tales of the City was serialised before it was published as a novel so

the next book is Eugene Onegin by Aleksándr Sergéyevich Púshkin, which was also serialised. Púshkin is one of my favourite poet/novelist/playwright.  Onegin is a classic.  A dandy; thwarted love; then found love; a duel; commentary on social conventions. The book has been adapted into opera (Tchaikovsky), ballet, many films (the production by the Fiennes is marvellous), etc. Pushkin wrote Eugene Onegin in stanzas and the form he devised is known as the “Onegin stanza” or the “Pushkin sonnet”.

Vikram Seth wrote his debut novel, The Golden Gate, entirely in Onegin stanzas.  I love novels-in-verse.  If you don’t, then I’d happily suggest Seth’s A Suitable Boy, a novel that cannot shake its prominent descriptor as one of the longest novels ever written in the English language. However, one doesn’t even notice the novel’s length because it’s so funny. The Golden Gate centers around a group of friends in San Francisco and covers a variety of issues at the core of their lives.  The connection is ‘novels set in Francisco’ and my current favorite in that category is

Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun. From my review: “the novella is a character study of Moraya Da Silva, a Nigerian woman in her 70s living in San Francisco. Moraya is a retired English Professor; she lives alone; owns Buttercup, an old Porsche; she flirts, hold conversations with characters from books; she’s forgetful; she loves shoes; she maintains a sexual life and interest. An African elderly woman who is not a grandmother, who doesn’t dispense wisdom at every turn. Is that one too an old woman? Yes, yes, yes!”.  Ladipo’s Moraya breaks the stereotypical mold of old women in African literature and it’s a delightful story so I heartily recommend.

When it comes to the portrayal of older African women, Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun is linked to Yewande Omotoso’s The Woman Next Door. This latter novel is about two elderly neighbors, one black and one white, living in a wealthy South African enclave. Their relationship is at first acrimonious but then thaws to a warm détente over a series of quite mundane neighbourly things and crises.  Omotoso’s skill in writing nuanced characters is what makes this book a must read for me. Yewande Omotoso was born in Barbados and so the next book is

In the Castle of My Skin, by another writer born in Barbados:  the acclaimed George Lamming. The novel is a coming of age story set in the Caribbean migrant community in 1950s London.  In the Castle of My Skin is a classic.

The last connector is colonial coming-of-age stories and so we finally arrive at Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga.  The novel opens with:

“I was not sorry when my brother died”

This line’s arrival was a seismic event in African literature. The novel covers themes such as the yoke of patriarchy and colonialism but whew, all folks remember are the stores of Tambu and Nyahsa. Another classic!

That’s it for this week’s Six Degrees of Separation from Tales of the City to Nervous Conditions. We started in 1970s San Francisco, then back to 1820s St Petersburg, Russia (s/o to the World Cup), then back to San Francisco, then a trip to South Africa, a hop to London via Barbados and then finally settling in Zimbabwe. We are grateful for travelling (and reading) mercies!

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

I confirm all the wonderful things said about this novel and all the statements made about the talents of the writer.  The book is stunning and superb. The hype is real, y’all. Yeong-hye, a young wife, after a series of dreams, becomes a vegetarian overnight. This greatly upsets, upturns the lives of those closest to her, including her mediocre, annoying, sexist, dismissive husband. The story is told in three parts: in the first-person by the husband; in the 3rd person by Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law; and finally by her sister In-hye, also in the 3rd person.  The novel concerns a woman who has completely extricated herself from Korean society, a woman who has allowed herself full permission and space to break down. Because Yeong-hye belongs to a society with strict, intractable norms of behaviour, the fallout from her descent into interiority has far-reaching consequences for those around her. Extreme though it may be, The Vegetarian is critical of the cost her society demands for individualism and yes, freedom.  Women who say to hell with y’all, in various ways and degree, know full well how this goes.  The themes aside, The Vegetarian is beautifully-written, it’s visceral, quiet where needed, violent and loud in other places. Deborah Smith deserves all the accolades for her translation and for giving readers in English the opportunity to experience a Han Kang.  I think this is the first novel by a Korean that I’ve read. Yes? Maybe. So (1) I’ve added Han Kang to my list of writers whose entire oeuvre I must read and (2) why stop there, I’ll be adding more Korean fiction to my reading diet.

What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons 

There is much that the author shares with her protagonist – both have South African mothers and American fathers; both belong to South African and American societies; both are caught in a space between those two countries; and both lost their mothers to breast cancer. What We Lose is one of those memoir-fiction books. I’ve often bristled at this category of fiction (don’t ask). Thank goddess for change because I simply don’t mind nor care anymore. What We Lose is a book about grief and mourning; about Thandi’s care and loss of her mother, about the vertigo of profound loss. The narration, or lack thereof, mirrors the disjointed, nonlinear sense of reality that Thandi experiences in the period leading up to, and after her mother’s death.

Clemmons employs fiction, nonfiction, science, blog posts, graphs and other data to cover a wide range of issues, mostly in short vignettes, that impinge upon this harrowing period in Thandi’s life.  The list includes race relations; colorism; the outsider status of those in the Diaspora when they return home to Africa; and breast cancer care and mortality rates among black women. But always there is the question of who am I? Who am I without my mother? Where is home without my mother? How do I live now? Yeah, grief.  An experimental, haunting debut. Pick it up. (I moderated an #Akefest17 convo between Zinzi Clemmons and Hadiza el Rufai, whose book also concerns grief.)

Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun by Sarah Ladipo Manyika

It isn’t that single folks are never lonely, it’s that there is more to their lives than their attachment status.  Likewise, it isn’t that old people don’t display the effects of aging, it’s that like younger people, there is far more to their lives than what a number implies. Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun is a character study of Moraya Da Silva, a Nigerian woman in her 70s living in San Francisco. Moraya is a retired English Professor; she lives alone; owns Buttercup, an old Porsche; she flirts, hold conversations with characters from books; she’s forgetful; she loves shoes; she maintains a sexual life and interest. An African elderly woman who is not a grandmother, who doesn’t dispense wisdom at every turn. Is that one too an old woman? Yes, yes, yes!

Moraya suffers a fall and has to leave her beloved home for a short stay at a retirement home.  In the telling of what transpires in the facility, the reader is treated to Moraya’s history. Manyika also weaves in narratives and vignettes of Moraya’s friends and  of new friends that she makes. This serves to date the era but also brings in issues such as race, terrorism, old love, dementia etc.  But none of these overshadow what this book is essentially about: Moraya and this particular moment in her life. This is a dignified, refined, thoroughly delightful novella. I’m a fan of Sarah Ladipo Manyika and her work.  This is her second book; the first is In Dependence which I reviewed on this blog.

I love the cover.  And I love the title.  It’s perplexing when some writers, after laboring over the creation of a book, proceed to saddle their beloved with an ugly title.  Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun …  I will end with an IG post where the Manyika talks about how and why she picked the title.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BjrdWXcBQu9/?hl=en&taken-by=cassavarepublicpress

This week’s selected book is The Poisonwood Bible by the American writer Barbara Kingsolver. I’ve read this book when it came out, in 1998, and was an immediate bestseller.  It follows a missionary family, the Prices, who relocate from Georgia to the colonial Belgian Congo in the 1960s, around the time when the independence struggle has intensified. I’m sure every Western white writer who contemplates writing a book set in Africa first thinks of the Congo; their attachment to that book which Achebe did a famous take down of is really strong.

Anywho.  The Poisonwood Bible is a family saga and primarily the four daughters in their Belgian Congo adventure. For the most part, it’s well-written but somewhere in the middle the novel devolves into ideologies and preachiness.

Belgian Congo is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, named after the Congo River. The smaller Republic of Congo is also named after the great river so

The next book is Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou, the famous writer who was born in the Republic of Congo.  He is prolific; he releases a book every two years.  But to my disgrace, I’ve only read Broken Glass, a hilarious novel about a former teacher nicknamed Broken Glass and his favourite drinking hole, Credit Gone Wrong. A really good read and I’ve promised myself a Mabanckou reading project.

Alain Manbanckou was a Finalist for the 2015 Man Booker International Prize and so was Maryse Condé so

The next book is Segu, a sprawling historical pre-colonial saga about the Bambara people and their encounter with Islam, Christianity and the slave trade. I love this masterpiece. Based on an actual place and historical events, Segu has plot twists, drama and intrigue.  I recommend it everyday when someone asks for historical dramas set on the continent. Maryse Condé has an excellent bibliography.

Segu was published in 1984 and so

The next book is Josè Saramago’s The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, also published in 1984. I list this among Saramago’s Best Five Books, in which I say “this is a chronicle of Ricardo Reis’ final year.  He is a Portuguese doctor who, for most his life, has been living and practicing in Brazil.  He returns to his homeland when he learns of the death of the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa.  Not much happens, plotwise, in this book.  Sometimes the ghost of Pessoa pops into Reis’ room for a chat… Ricardo Reis is one of the heteronyms created by Fernando Pessoa.  Via Wikepedia, “the literary concept of heteronym, refers to one or more imaginary character(s) created by a writer to write in different styles”.  Saramago extends this concept and has the writer and his creation existing together.  Delightful”

The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis is meta-fiction, a form of fiction which the “text – either directly or through the characters – is ‘aware” that it is fiction”. Well-written and conceived meta-fiction is so much fun to read so

The next book is the epic meta-fiction Possession: A Romance by A. S. Byatt. Two contemporary academics explore the love between two fictional poets, Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. Byatt created fictional diary entries and entire literary works for these two poets. When I first read the book, I wasn’t aware that the two poets were fictional, so there I was looking up Ash and LaMotte! An involving, all-consuming read.

There is a suicide in Possession and so

The next book is Zukiswa Wanner’s London, Cape Town, Joburg which starts off with a suicide in the family of a mixed-race couple who’ve moved from London to South Africa after the end of apartheid.  This book is about a marriage, family betrayal and the politics of new South Africa. An enthralling read with a heartbreaking plot twist. Read it!

London, Cape Town, Joburg tells a family story’s across multiple cities and so

The final book is Taiye Selasi’s Ghana Must Go which depicts a family working through trauma and healing, in multiple cities – Accra, Lagos, London, Boston. A magnificent read, my favourite part is the first twenty pages it takes for the father to die.

That’s six degrees of separation from The Poisonwood Bible to Ghana Must Go. We started in the Belgian Congo, then off to the Republic of Congo, then we stopped in Mali, off we went to Portugal, via Brazil, then England where we left for South Africa and then finally landed in Accra and Boston. We’ve travelled well in books.

•  What It Means When A Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah
• Cain by José Saramago (translated by Margaret Jull Costa)
• Such Small Hands by Andrès Barba (translated by Lisa Dillman)
• Collective Amnesia by Koleka Putuma
• The Secret of Purple Lake by Yaba Badoe
• Maid in SA by Zukiswa Wanner
• The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck (tr. by Susan Bernofsky)
• Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
• A Woman’s Body is a Country by Dami Ajayi
• Far from My Father by Véronique Tadjo (tr. by Amy Baram Reid)
• Aya by Marguetire Abouet and Clément Oubrerie

The list has novels (including translated fiction), a collection short stories, a graphic novel and two collections of poetry. One could call the list eclectic.  Only genre missing is non-fiction but I’ll remedy that in the coming months.

I paused publishing reviews after Cain and Such Small Hands because I wanted to focus my energies on #PoetryMonth. I’ll get back to reviews in May but I’ll begin with commentary on some books that I read in past years.

Plans for April

I’ll continue reading Nnedi Okorafor with Binti Home. I want to review Yewande Omotoso’s The Woman Next Door so I’ll reread that. And since I’m considering a reading project of the Dublin Prize shortlist, I’ll pair the Omotoso with Han Kang’s Human Acts. I’m also looking at:

• The Yearning by Mohale Mashigo
• Buddha’s Little Finger by Victor Pelevin
• Safe House (a non-fiction anthology) edited by Ellah Allfrey
• a book by Alain Mabanckou
• Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

That’s my relaxed plan for May’s reading. What’s on your list to read this month?

Planning: how I will do this year’s Readathon. The twice yearly reading event was started by the late blogger Dewey in 2007 and it’s been kept going by a dedicated community of book bloggers and readers.  I think my first, only participation, was in April 2010.  The basic idea is to read for 24 hours, with breaks for sleeping, eating and whatever other distractions. Participants also cheer the community on (via various social media platforms); bloggers post updates; challenges are held; prizes are won.  It’s a great event for the book blogging and readers community  worldwide; this year about 1,500 readers have signed up. The goal is to read 1,000,000 pages!

Starting:  The official  start time is 12:00 GMT, adjusted for all time zones.  I will start at 10am GMT. I might have a meeting today so I’m giving myself a 2hr head start.  And depending on my distractions, I may go beyond the 24-hour period to make up any time lost.

Selecting: books for the readathon.  The general advice is to select a bunch of books of varying lengths and a mix of genres. Here is my selection:

I’m rather excited about the books I’ve selected.  Each book is under 270 pages.  Readathons can get tedious – distractions; drowsiness; the munchies; boredom etc. Changing up the reading is a good strategy. The books are;

• one graphic novel, Aya by Abouet and Oubrerie
• two collections of poetry, Cape Coast Castle by Kwadwo Opoku-Agyemang and A Woman’s Body is a Country by Dami Ajayi (these are re-reads)
• two works of fantasy, Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti and Binti: Home
• three works of general fiction, The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck; Far From My Father by Véronique Tadjo; and Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
• one crime fiction, Bound to Secrecy by Vamba Sherif
• a collection of shorts, Indigo by Molara Wood (this is also a re-read)
• one non-fiction, Safe House edited by Ellah Wakatama Allrey

I might pick a book that’s not on this list (no surprise there). I won’t be providing regular updates on this blog.  Rather, I’ll use Instagram and Twitter so that I can also cheer other participants on.  I will do a wrap-up post later in the coming week.

Anticipating:  the end of #PoetryMonth as April draws to a close. It’s been fun. I love curating and posting poems on this blog. They come in handy when I need quick fixes of poetry or when my Mum says “read me a poem”.  Now that I’m cautiously optimistic that I can blog regularly, I’ll bring back my weekly Wednesday post on poems. In the meantime, I have 3 more poems to post before April ends.

Motivated: My reading has been uneven this year due to frequent bouts of illness.  I’m feeling rather good today and motivated to do some fun reading.

To the next 24 hours! Y’all have a good weekend!

WRONG NUMBER NUMBER TWO

No,
There’s no “Mr. Coleman” here.

And no, no.
You mustn’t stay to chat me up.

To warn you historical ancient,
every ominous note intended,
Please stranger, do not tarry.
The path here was
Only accidental.

The voice whose music so draws you
Perchance lies in the throat of
The serpentine protrusion
A 1000 leagues long and a 1000 bushels wide,
That has within its span,
Great mansions whose interiors of
Iroko, oak, cedars and sandalwood
Goblets of gold and silver from mines
Long collapsed, and now hidden under
Wild flowers and foliage of the valley.

Please return to the humdrum
Unromantic life you knew
Before you called the wrong number.

Be safe.
—— by Ama Ata Aidoo

Wana is extraordinary, a woman so special, a performer.  Her voice in this piece, mehn. Enjoy!

Oughta Be A Woman

Washing the floors to send you to college
Staying at home so you can feel safe
What do you think is the soul of her knowledge
What do you think makes her feel safe

Biting her lips and lowering her eyes
To make sure there’s food on the table
What do you think would be her surprise
If the world was as willing as she’s able.

Hugging herself in an old kitchen chair
She listens to your hurt and your rage
What do you think she knows of despair
What is the aching of age

The fathers, the children, the brothers
Turn to her and everybody white turns to her
What about turning around
Alone in the everyday light

There oughta be a woman can break
Down, sit down, break down, sit down
Like everybody else call it quits on Mondays
Blues on Tuesday, sleep until Sunday
Down, sit down, break down, sit down

A way outa no way is flesh outa flesh
Courage that cries out at night
A way outa no way is flesh outa flesh
Bravery kept outa sight
A way outa no way is too much to ask
Too much of a task for any one woman
—— by June Jordan