What do authors think about when they read their own novels? Follow me inside Ben Okri’s head and see for yourself. On a copy of The Famished Road recently donated to English Pen, Okri left revealing marginal comments that give us a sense of how he processed his own writing. For example, on page 500:

 The last sentence took a long time to come to me; and then it came all at once, a distillation of the inward mood of the book, a moment of poetry, a gift from the gods to a hungry yearning loving writing soul.

Scroll down to see more marginal comments. All the pages below correspond to the first edition of the novel published by Jonathan Cape. Enjoy!

p.3 ‘Worked a lot on the opening paragraph: everything is in it: all came out of it; thinking of music; the opening notes; had to get the words absolutely right or the rest won’t follow….Odd that the beginning was written last, when I knew what the work was dreaming…’

p.3 ‘From ‘Abiku’ to ‘spirit-child’ is a leap; a leap from fact to poetry, from belief into something more open, into which hope can perhaps enter, if it wishes…’

p.3 ‘Thinking of those masters, those masters whose eyes peer out in the faces of the astonishers of the human race’

p.8 ‘Do you have intimations of spirit-companions? Those voices in your head at the edge of precipices, those gentle voices where do they come from calling you over into beyond’

p.9 ‘Suffering says go or stay’

p.9 ‘To lock yourself in life. The courage to be.’

p.25 ‘Lucky I couldn’t draw so well: saw these so clearly if I could paint or draw would have done them in clear bright normal colours.’

p.106 ‘Opening the bar to many dimensions’

p.313 ‘Ali the blind old man: a nightmare real in the incandescent days. I know in my bones his living symbolism. These histories like wilting flowers know his touch his gaze. These histories rising like rape in spring know the transcending of his bones.’

p.500 ‘The last sentence took a long time to come to me; and then it came all at once, a distillation of the inward mood of the book, a moment of poetry, a gift from the gods to a hungry yearning loving writing soul -’

Endpaper ‘In the vast playground

of imagined reality
the writer moves counters
in an invisible game
And all the things of earth
and dreams and realms
In between are moved
Too, in ways unsuspected.
The sand shifts,
People live and die and live
Again on the mysterious
Tree of life;
And their death melts
Like stories at the roots
of the tree to nurture
Philosopy Politics Laws
And love’s endless ways
Things passing in the questing
wind. Blood, tears, birth,
Laughter, mysteries, wonders,
Growing and dying.
Counters moved by the hand
on blank paper in the vast
playground we call living.
The moon returns from pluto.
The chequered board gleams,
In the twilight
where spitit-children
Glimpse flowers and fishes
Multiplied in the land.
The road rolls on beyond.
No longer famished,
No longer a road.
Counters moved in a dream.
The universe responds
With the gift of the word

9-1-13
London’

Want to Nadine Gordimer’s annotations on Conservationist? Click HERE.

Originally published in UK Guardian

John Williams: You teach writing in your home country. What are two or three principles you think it’s important to instill in young writers?

The excerpt you about to read is from Buchi Emecheta’s 1980 novel Joys of Motherhood. It’s the debut post in a new Brittle Paper series called “Sex in African Novels.” Enjoy!

Agbadi had slept so much in the day that, now he was feeling better, he was finding it difficult to sleep the night through. He must have dozed for a while, nonetheless, for when he opened his eyes, the whole compound was quiet. Cool night air blew in through the open roof window and he could hear his goats grunting. He heard a light breathing nearby on a separate goatskin. Now he remembered—Ona was there lying beside him. He watched her bare breasts rising and falling as she breathed, and noted with amusement how she made sure to stay as far away from him as possible, as though in unconscious defiance, like everything else she did. Her leg was thrust out so that it was almost touching him.

“The heartless bitch,” he thought, “I will teach her.”

He winced as his still-sore shoulder protested, but he managed to turn fully on to his side and gazed his fill at her. To think that in that proud head—held high even in sleep, and to think that in those breasts, two beautiful firm mounds on her chest looking like calabashes turned upside-down—there was some tenderness was momentarily incredible to him. He felt himself burn.

Then the anger came to him again as he remembered how many times this young woman had teased and demeaned him sexually. He felt like jumping on her, clawing at her, hurting her. Then again the thought that she needed him and was there just for his sake came uppermost in his mind and won against the vengeful impulse. He found himself rolling towards her, giving her nipples gentle lover’s bites, letting his tongue glide down the hollow in the center of her breasts and then back again. He caressed her thigh with his good hand, moving to her small night lappa and fingering her coral waist-beads. Ona gasped and opened her eyes. She wanted to scream. But Agbadi was faster, more experienced. He slid on his belly, like a big black snake, and covered her mouth with his. He di not let her mouth free for a long time. She struggled fiercely like a trapped animal, but Agbadi was becoming himself again. He was still weak, but not weak enough to ignore his desire. He worked on her, breaking down all her resistance. He stroked and explored with his perfect hand, banking heavily on the fact that Ona was a woman, a mature woman, who had had him many a time. And he was right. Her struggling and kicking lessened. She stared to moan and groan instead, like a woman in labor. He kept on, and would not let go, so masterfully was he in this art. He knew he had reduced her to longing and craving for him. He knew he had won. He wanted her completely humiliated in her burning desire. And Ona knew. So she tried to counteract her feelings in the only way she guessed would not give her away.

“I know you are too ill to take me,” she murmured.

“No, my Ona, I am waiting for you to be ready.”

She felt like screaming to let free the burning of her body. How could one’s body betray one so! She should have got up and run out, but something was holding her there; she did not know what and she did not care. She wanted to be relieved of the fire inside her. “Please, I am in pain.”

She melted and could say no more. She wept and the sobs she was trying to suppress shook her whole being. He felt it, chuckled, and remarked thickly, “Please, Ona, don’t wake the whole household.”

Either she did not hear, or he wanted her to do just that, for he gave her two painful bites in between her breasts, and she in desperation clawed at him, and was grateful when at last she felt him inside her.

He came deceptively gently, and so unprepared was she for the passionate thrust which followed that she screamed, so piercingly that she was even surprised at her own voice: “Agbadi, you are splitting me in two!’

Suddenly the whole compound seemed to be filled with moving people. A voice, a male voice, which later she recognized to be that of Agbadi’s friend Obi Idayi, shouted from the corner of the courtyard: “Agbadi! Agbadi! Are you alright?”

Again came the law laughter Ona loved and yet loathed so much. “I am fine, my friend. You go to sleep. I am only giving my woman her pleasures.”

Grunting like an excited animal with a helpless prey, he left her abruptly, still unsatisfied, and rolled painfully to the other side of the goatskin. Having hurt her on purpose for the benefit of his people sleeting in the courtyard, he had had his satisfaction.

She hated him at the moment. “All this show just for your people, Agbadi?” she whispered. Unable to help herself, she began to cry quietly.

Then he felt sorry for her. He moved her closer to him and, letting her curl up to him, encouraged her to get the bitterness off her chest. He felt her hot tears flowing, but he said nothing, just went on tracing contours of those offending nipples.

————————————————————————————

Image by Luis Royo.

About The Author: Emecheta is a Nigerian novelist. In three decades of writing, she published about 20 novels, mostly in the 70s and 80s.

Interesting Fact About Emecheta:  Suspicious about her writing, her physically abusive husband burned the manuscript of her first novel. To get the full scoop on her drama-filled marriage and how at the age of 22 she left her husband, taking all five children with her, read her auto-biographical novels In The Ditch and Second Class Citizen.

No matter how great a novel is, it will not sell itself. It needs to be peddled!

But authors cannot rely on publishers to do all the work of getting the word out and getting the work into the reader’s hand. Authors have a part to play in the marketing of their books.

South African Poet Helen Moffett who is on the Books Live team writes this cute, cheeky but highly informative piece on how authors can help market their books.

It is long piece but a must-read.

Enjoy and learn!

Dear Lovely Author,

I’ve been wanting to reply properly to the letter you sent me for such a long time. You wrote so angrily, about how you had poured all this work into your book, got it published with a reputable publisher – only to see it apparently falling into a black hole. We both know it’s a very good book: I edited it. The (only) two reviews – by careful, creditable people – were full of praise. You blame the publisher, of course; there is a long catalogue of the things you think they should have done, and which they didn’t do.

As I read your mail, I was compiling a list in my head of all the things authors should do if they want to keep their books afloat in the great sea of indifference that greets most South African and indeed African literary fiction. Or afloat at least long enough to sell enough copies to cover the publishers’ outlay.

When it comes to marketing, many authors, drunk on the smell of fresh ink, assume that the publisher will do it – or at least, take the lead. The most they will have to do is show up for panels at fun conferences wearing a jacket nicely pitched between boho and tweedy, and bearing a trendily archaic fountain-pen for signings. Oh dear oh dear.

No one ever really tells authors the truth: that in the tiny sphere that is the Southern African fiction world, marketing is something they are going to have to do themselves. The support from your publisher will vary wildly; sometimes tiny publishers are excellent about what I think of bake-sale marketing strategies (hand-selling small quantities of books at lowered prices at poetry readings, lectures, even parties, for instance). Sometimes the bigger publishers have budgets (!), and will actually throw launches, host events, print posters, pay for campaigns like Homebru and more. Sometimes it will look as if they are doing absolutely nothing (this is almost never the case, though; there is a lot of underwater paddling that the author doesn’t see – the publisher is far more anxious to capture their outlay than you are). But whatever the publishers do or don’t do will come across as erratic to you, especially if it’s your first book.

It’s a basic truth that you have to take the lead in marketing your book. See your publisher as a partner who will back you up, but understand that you’ll be the one steering the process. The old days of doing a J. D. Salinger, of retreating to a garret or a cabin in the woods while expecting your book to create if not a storm, at least a ripple – they’re gone, along with the purity of the notion that any work of art should stand or fall on its own merits.

For your book to sell, you need to be an odd mix: selfish, strategic and sincere. And let’s add another ‘s’ into the mix – for social media.

First of all, you need to be selfish in pushing your book out into the world, and persistent (without being pushy or a prima donna) in pursuing all the avenues available. Will there be an electronic version of your book, and can you get it onto e-selling platforms? Are there any literary festivals coming up? Any conferences or special interest gatherings (gay, environmental, political, sporting, hobby-related?) that you could hitch your book to? Does it qualify for any literary competitions? (Never assume that your publisher will automatically enter you for these. You might even have to pay for international postage to help things along.)

Being selfish doesn’t mean being impolite. Ask your publisher to get you onto a panel at a literary festival, or how you can help them to organise a launch. They can open doors that are closed to you. But you’ll soon learn that there are certain routes you need to take yourself; you may have a contact at a library or university department that will give you a chance to talk about your book. Always keep your publisher posted about what you manage to set up – you may need them to sell the book for you, if your friendly indie bookstore won’t (and that’s something else to cultivate – your relationship with your local bookseller, of which more later).

I believe launches are essential, but your publisher may disagree. Do remember though, that these are seldom occasions at which vast quantities of books are sold. (See here for more on how to manage a DIY launch.)

It goes without saying that if you are a misanthrope or someone who freezes on stage, you need to get over it pdq. These days, authors need to be friendly, professional, articulate and witty, and if you aren’t, start learning how. I’ve attended agonising launches where authors have had their monosyllabic answers dragged from them almost with pliers. And once I had to fill in at a book fair after an author threw a hissy fit, walking off a panel because the distributor hadn’t delivered his books. Agreed, it’s infuriating when this sort of thing happens (and it will), but just ONE tantrum, and you will never be invited to a literary festival again, and your publisher will think twice before looking at your next manuscript.

You need to be strategic about where and how you’re going to apply your energies – assuming that like most writers, you have a day job. So you need to plan around that. If you’re deskbound, then social media is your friend. Set up something – a website, a blog – that means that anyone who googles your name can instantly click on a link to buy your book. This is vital – you must make it easy for folk to buy online. No-one with an internet connection should ever have to ask “How do I get hold of your book?”

My personal take (others will disagree) is that it’s no use creating a Facebook page or Twitter account for your book – rather chat about it on your personal social media platform. But don’t spam your friends and followers – it gets annoying.

If your day job is unrelated to writing, this isn’t a bad thing. If your clients and colleagues are, say, computer programmers or party planners, that creates an entirely new potential market for your book. Obviously you shouldn’t push, but make them feel included in your publishing project. This goes for all your circles – I once had members of my flamenco class show up at one of my book launches.

And while we’re talking strategy, get creative. I’ve tried many tricks, including leaving a copy of my debut collection of poems (which deals with, among other things, infertility) in my gynaecologist’s waiting-room. By local poetry standards, it’s a bestseller (i.e., it’s actually been reprinted/).

Some strategies are obvious. If you’re local, and you don’t have a Books Live microblog, I have no sympathy for your tales of marketing woe. But even here, you need to do two things: post blogs that are NOT always about your book (tell folk what you’re reading, take part in debates about local fiction) – and read and comment on the blogs of others. You may think no-one notices these, but you’d be amazed at who comes browsing by.

This leads to perhaps the most NB advice of all: one of the most underestimated and valuable marketing resources is other writers. I’ve never forgotten a conversation we had where you implied, rather aggressively, that you saw other writers simply as competition. Right then, I had a hunch that your book might not sell.

In most cases, if your book is to succeed, you need other authors. This is where the sincere bit comes in. To gain traction on the local book scene, you have to take part in it – actively and enthusiastically. I think it was Justin Fox who said that the day South African writers stopped buying each other’s books, the local market would collapse, and he has a point. Literary fiction in particular sells to a tiny niche audience in this country, and that audience largely consists of writers and intellectuals.

You need these people to come to your readings and events. I’ve lost track of the times I’ve gone to a launch, sternly telling myself I can’t afford to buy any more books – only to be won over by hearing the author read.

Writers who hear you read and like it will recommend your book to their friends. Who also have friends who read books. And their friends go to book clubs, or write book columns for newspapers, or have book blogs, or belong to social media bookchat groups, or post on Goodreads.

But how do you get the attention of this small but influential bunch? You need to get the ball rolling by going to their book launches in the first place. It’s almost a hanging offence not to go to events featuring your publisher’s other authors. Buy their books, ask them to sign them, read them, and then – this is critical – if you like them, say so. Not just to their faces, but on public platforms.

Plus, your presence at launches and your purchases will not go unnoticed by your local indie bookshop, where most such events are held. Get to know their staff. Tell them about your book, but as part of the local writing scene – who your influences are, and what audience is most likely to buy it. It’s no good saying “I’ve written this amazing book about a boy who can communicate with rhinos”. Say “I’ve written a book set in Nairobi and Joburg that has shades of magic realism, sort of like Lauren Beukes’s Zoo City, but with the same environmental concerns you see in Zakes Mda’s Heart of Redness.” Then they’ll know exactly who to sell your book to.

Not only that, you never know when they might organise a festival or an event or even a protest (against rhino poaching) and say, “Hey, why don’t we get that chap who wrote X on a panel with Lauren and Zakes…”

Local writers are your colleagues and potential allies in the great swim-or-sink publishing adventure. Volunteer to read their drafts; congratulate them on their achievements; offer to write prefaces or blurbs for their books. Sign up for every short story or other anthology going, and make it known that you will jump at commissions.

Don’t stop there. Go to book fairs and festivals, attend poetry readings, take part in initiatives like Short Story Day Africa, organise local events for World Book Day, Library Week, NaNoWriMo – the list is endless.

All this bread on the waters will come back to you with jam on it. Through the relationships you build, you’ll be asked to interview other writers or sit on panels with them. Every time this happens, your books go on sale, too.

The connections should run deeper than that, though. It’s other writers who will read your manuscripts and make invaluable suggestions. They’ll put you in touch with excellent cover designers or brilliant development editors. You never know when one with an agent or international publisher might be able to hook you up too. You can weep on their shoulders about bad reviews, even worse royalty statements, and the dread letter putting your beloved book out of print. (Every writer has horror stories along these lines, no matter how successful they may seem.) But all this is based on relationships of sincere reciprocity. No writer is an island, especially not on the African continent.

But, but, you say. You live in the middle of nowhere – no hobnobbing at book events for you. Or you’re too busy (you have a life, a family, a day job). So do almost all the writers I know, including the successful ones. If you have electricity or a generator, a modem or a smartphone, then there is no excuse.

One of the best-connected local writers I know is Lauri Kubuitsile. She has a popular blog, a newspaper column, and is active on Facebook and Twitter. She writes textbooks, romances, YA, short stories and mysteries – and is capable of very fine literary fiction as well. She’s worked with multiple local publishers. She’s been shortlisted for the Caine Prize and won coveted writing residencies. By any accounts, she’s a successful writer. She has an incredibly effective network, mostly via the world-wide web, across Southern Africa. And yet she lives in a village in the Botswana bush.

So: to sell your book, build a network, and then work at maintaining it. Frankly, it’s often the best part of the lonely business of writing. I wish you luck – but remember, we have to make our own luck.

Love,
Helen

This piece was originally written for Modadji’s Small Publishers’ Catalogue 2013. 

The most recent episode in what seems like an old quarrel between Wole Soyinka and Adewale Maja-Pearce began with Soyinka’s infamous Sahara Reporters interview.

We have always known that Soyinka is extraordinarily gifted when it comes to insulting people. Little surprise at the bitting and borderline cruel remarks targeted at Maja-Pearce for allegedly misrepresenting Soyinka’s relationship with J. P. Clarke and Chinua Achebe.

The saddest part for me was that this work was bound to give joy to sterile literary aspirants like Adewale Maja-Pearce, whose self-published book – self-respecting publishers having rejected his trash – sought to create a “tragedy” out of the relationships among the earlier named “pioneer quartet” and, with meanness aforethought, rubbish them all – WS especially. Chinua got off the lightest. A compendium of outright impudent lies, fish market gossip, unanchored attributions, trendy drivel and name dropping, this is a ghetto tract that tries to pass itself up as a product of research, and has actually succeeded in fooling at least one respectable scholar. For this reason alone, there will be more said, in another place, on that hatchet mission of an inept hustler.

— W. Soyinka, Sahara Reporters

Maja-Pearce has since responded to these insults. He claims that Soyinka is still upset at him for writing a negative  review of his 2007 memoir, a book that received very mixed review at the time of publication. Maja-pearce’s review was written way back in 2007 for the London Book Review and describes Soyinka’s work as “a rambling, badly-written book.”

An email exchange attributed to Soyinka and Maja-Pearce that reveals Soyinka was somewhat bothered by the review was published in The New Gong Magazine.

Don’t know how authentic this is.

See for yourself!

—–Original Message—–

From: Adewale Maja-Pearce 
To: Wole Soyinka
Sent: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 9:20 am
Subject: biography of J.P. Clark

Hi Wole

My greetings to you. It’s been a long time. I trust you are well.

I’ve just embarked on a critical biography of J.P. Clark and am intrigued by your
differences over the claim you made in The Man Died concerning his role during
your incarceration. I have heard his full side of the story and seen the
correspondence with his lawyers. I would very much like to get your side of the
story in order that I do not misrepresent either party. J.P. Clark claims that he was
never in Abidjan at the time and that the professor who told you what he was
supposed to have said was never named; that, indeed, you claimed, as you wrote
in your book, that the unnamed professor merely said it as an aside over a drink in
a bar. He also said that you and Rex Collings had shown him the galleys of the
book before it went to press and he denied it but that you and your publisher went
ahead and published anyway.

I very much look forward to hearing from you.

With all best wishes

Adewale

To: Adewale Maja-Pearce
Subject: Re: biography of J.P. Clark
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:16:35 -0400
From: Wole Soyinka

Wae,

Pity these things have to be raked up. However, JP was right regarding venue. It
was not Solely on account of that single error in location, the fault of my
recollection, not the professor friend, I deleted all reference to the incident in the
next edition. You may check.Repeat, the venue was wrong, but not the story.

The galleys were indeed shown to JP, on my instructions.The offer to JP was as
follows: This is what you are alleged to have said.. Anything you wish to state in
connection with it will be published in the book side by side with this story, which I
absolutely believe. His response was: “Since you’ve gone this fa and you obviously
believe the story, go ahead and publish”,. Rex Collings and I discusse it, and we
decided to go ahead. JP NEVER denied the story.

Years later, JP’s lawyers wrote, and threatened to sue. I told them to go ahead. My
informant, who is still alive said, “Are you telling me he wants to deny it?”  He was
more than ready to testify in court.. I expect he still is, having even become a Born-
again and a preacher.

You may also wish to ask JP to tell you what he had to say about WS during his
incarceration that nearly resulted in Chinua Achebe and he coming to physical
blows. Or maybe talk to Chinua Achebe.

All in all, my recommendartion is that this affair of WS/JP should be laid to rest. Myt
instinct was that he wanted very much to do this when he sought me out in
Abeokuta to join him and Chinua on the Vatsa mission. I think it would be wiser of
him to refuse any further commentary on that unfortunately chapter, Some things
are best left alone to die with the passage of time.

I’m rather glad you made contact because there was something I’d been saving for
whenever I next ran into you. I learnt that you applied for one of the Schaeffer
Writer fellowships at UNLV. You should know that I found myself compelled to
recuse myself from participating in the selection, and refused any assessment of
your candiudature. This was because, from so many directions, I learnt of your
review of my YOU MUST SET FORTH AT DAWN, and always with the question:
“What’s with you and Adewala Pearce.’ Or ‘Have you read such-and-such review?
Anyone you know?’ ‘Is there a history between you and the writer of that review?’
and variations thereof..Solely concerning your review, no one else’s. I found that
curious. I haven’t read the review and do not intend to. Just want to advise you to
be sure to have resolved your real motives in embarking of JP’s biography.

Wole Soyinka

From: Adewale Maja-Pearce 
To: Wole Soyinka
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 3:05:35 PM
Subject: Re: biography of J.P. Clark

Dear Wole

Many thanks for your response. As a trained historian, my own belief is that matters
of public record should not be left to die with the passage of time – how can they,
given that they are a matter of public record? – but should be vigorously debated.
My concern, as I said, was to be fair to all parties, which was precisely why I sought
your own side of the story. It would be curious if a critical biography of JP omitted
any reference to what, after all, became a huge issue in literary circles, tied as it
was to the civil war, itself a defining event in Nigerian history.

Regarding my review of your latest book, it’s a pity that you have not read it and, as
you say, do not intend to read it. It seems to me that if one is going to form an
opinion about a piece of writing then it is incumbent on the person to actually read
what was written before doing so and not simply rely on the opinions of others. That
said, I disliked the book intensely and said so, as was my fundamental human right.
I’m not, and never have been, a cheerleader for anyone, WS and JP included. The
related idea that I might be embarking on the JP book in order to attack WS, which
you seem to imply, is not merely absurd but, I might say, insulting, although
perhaps you did not mean it to be so. At any rate, my time at INDEX taught me that
censorship takes many forms, and that any attempt to stifle vigorous intellectual
debate, especially by those who insist on it for themselves, is in many ways worse
than the overt variation practiced by the likes of Stalin and the apartheid state – to
say nothing of Abacha.

As for you declining to participate in the selection for my application to UNLV, I can
only wonder why you bothered to tell me. If the reason was that you do not think me
a good enough writer, then I must thank you for not standing in my way; if it was
because somebody said that I wrote a negative review of your book, which I do not
want to believe is the case, then I must remain silent, a la Wittgenstein: What
cannot be spoken about must be passed over in silence – or something to that
effect. However, I am no philospoher, just a writer, or trying to be one.

To end on a more positive note. I was the one who edited a book of essays on WS
for his 60th birthday because of my regard for your achievement as a writer. The
record is there for all to see. I stand by what I wrote then in the preface because I
believed it then and I believe it now, just as I stand by my review of your latest book
because I believe that, too.

Kind regards

Adewale

I always wondered what my pops, who is 74, thought about my writing coz we’ve never addressed it like that. I mean we talk on the phone and trip and laugh and gossip and I get schooled and scolded if its relevant, and he tells me stories etc, but zip nada about my writing.

Even as I presented him with an autographed hard copy of We Need New Names, alongside books by Colum McCann and Manuel Munoz on my visit home about a week ago, he acted like it wasn’t there. No pat on the back, no comment or acknowledgement besides a grunt.

If I didn’t know him I would have been shattered, but then I do; he’s my pops after all—the unsentimental man who rarely dished straight-up praise to us when we were growing up. I’d do well in school for example and he’d express his happiness to an uncle or something but never directly to me. Weird dude!

But back to the story… I don’t need to wonder much now, about how he feels I mean. Because I saw, under my pop’s worn pillow, a newspaper with an article plus an interview I’d done back when I won the Caine Prize a couple of years ago; I’m told he sometimes sleeps with the aging thing under his pillow, an action that to me is worth more than a million conversations.

I was deeply, deeply moved, but instead of expressing how I felt, I too put on a cloak of silence because there were no words. No, no words for my beautiful, complex pops who will say a lot about many things and absolutely nothing about certain ones.

Bulawayo is the 12th winner of the Caine Prize for Fiction. Her debut novel We Need New Names is currently getting massive amounts of love from critics. This piece was originally published on her blog: NoViolet Blogs

Chimamanda Adichie has often told the story of the Lagos dentist who chided her for writing about sex in Half of a Yellow Sun. Here is how she puts it in a recent interview:  ”This woman wrote me a very lovely email, this woman who is a dentist in Lagos and she said, ‘Chimamanda you mean so much to us. My daughter looks up to you, but please in your next book don’t write about sex. And if you must write about sex, please don’t make it enjoyable.’”

As uncalled-for as the woman’s admonition may seem, it fits the common stereotype that African novelists and readers alike are not keen on sex. Two unspoken rules have thus far governed the inclusion of sex in African novels. The first rule is simple: leave it out of the story entirely. The second rule applies to novelists who feel compelled for whatever reason to touch on the sex lives of their characters: handle sex as cautiously as possible by placing it within a moralizing context.

It was in 1969, three years after Man of the People was published, that someone asked Achebe why he seemed uncharacteristically open about the sex life of the principal character. Achebe is initially taken aback by the question but eventually responds: “The sex is not there just for titillation if that’s what you are worrying about. I think it plays an important part in the development of the character.” Now, I haven’t read Man of the People and so cannot speak for the quality or the explicitness of these scenes. But Achebe makes his feelings about sex in novels quite apparent. Sex has to serve a practical purpose in narratives. There can be no sex for sex sake. To linger and tease out the subtleties of the erotic moment would be indulging and no one wants to do that.

But if, like me, you are interested in these sort of things, you’ll know where to go to dig for erotic treasures in African novels. People who think that African novelists are generally shy about these things just don’t know their African novels well. I meet these kinds of people all the time. They’ve read their Achebe and Ngugi and, therefore, think they know how novelizing is done in Africa. But, they dont.

It all started in the 50s with the Onitsha Market chapbooks. Mable the Sweet Honey That Poured Away or Caroline the One-Guinea Girl may not be Fifty Shades of Grey but the authors of these pamphlets are equally unabashed about taking the reader inside the bedroom. There is plenty of sex in Buchi Emecheta‘s seemingly preachy novels. The way she narrates sexual encounters with a Nollywood-like urgency makes for such a fun and funny read. If you have a taste for literary perversions, I know just where to direct you. First to Sudan. I have in mind Tayib Salih‘s 1969 novel, Seasons of Migration to the North. And then to Somalia: Nuruddin Farah‘s Secrets. Teju Cole’s Open City could easily win the award for the most snooty African novel ever written. But don’t be fooled. Tucked away in that brainy little novel is a freaky afternoon with a stranger in faraway Belgium.

If I haven’t convinced you that African novels are as sexy and sexual as they come, stop by again next week for the first post in a new Brittle Paper series. It is titled “Sex in African Novels” and will feature excerpts of sex scenes and erotic moments in classic and contemporary african novels.

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Adam Segal: In many of your stories, you handle technology with a real elegance. “Dream Chaser” and “Trophy” confront tech head-on: Internet cafes, incomprehensible tech jargon, a cell phone that won’t stop ringing. Elsewhere we have a Facebook friend rendezvous and a character downloading pop hits straight to his phone. And yet it never distracts…Do you concern yourself with the technological trappings of a story? Do you have any advice for a writer who wants to make a story “real” without making certain details superfluous?

Igoni Barrett: The seemingly superfluous detail has its function in storytelling, of course. Cervantes used windmills to great effect in Don Quixote, and telegrams played a prominent role in the opening of Howard’s End. Both of these technologies—windmills and telegraphy—were considered modern at the time those books were written. Today, social media and telephony are as integral to our lives as windmills were to Cervantes’s era and telegrams to E. M. Forster’s. The twenty-first century writer could do worse than replace Cervantes’ windmills with an iPhone and Lawrence’s telegrams with a Twitter DM. And so, yes, I’m preoccupied with the technological trappings of a story, but only insofar as these serve to refract the secret workings of the human heart.

— Interview with Igoni Barrett

Igoni Barrett is a Nigerian writer. His collection of short stories Love is Power or Something Like That was published last month by Graywolf Press.

“Notes on Writing” is a collection of short remarks by African writers on writing and the writing life. 

Here you are, gazing suspiciously at me!
Or perhaps it’s the patches of words
I wobbled upon on the eve of last year.

What really brings us together now,
Your desire to listen or mine to speak?
Perhaps we could do both, if you come closer.

So alone now—me and you! Distance, lost—
Time, paused—only prints of your sliding gasps
Tells me secretly of your swelling curiosity.

So while you ponder cuddling these pebbled words,
Curious friend, though far, words comprehend no end,
Long I heard they walked the breath of the earth!

Make no mistake, I see you, as you see me,
For deep down inside, beyond the hugs of logic,
The mind is all seeing, if truly words are gods-

And yes, they are! For I have seen phrases
That ordered genocides and nouns that sealed graves,
Heard moaning dialects between cleavages
And tenacious monologues that stirs revolutions,
For in the beginning was the word and the word is you!

So in the absence of distance as you know it,
Say something to me gently and listen tenderly-
For my reply is between this comma, and your smile.

—————————————————————————

We are excited to kick off our poetry section with this softly evocative and flirty piece by Anefiok Akpan, an unpublished Nigerian poet.

A graduate of the University of Ibadan where he studied advertising, Anefiok currently works as a part time Copywriter and Social Media Analyst at the Nigeria Centenary Project.

Anefiok speaks Hausa, Yoruba, Ibibio, Efik and English. He loves traveling and meddling in people affairs and is an aspiring photographer. He is the 2008 winner of The Wole Soyinka/Dapo Adelugba Prize for Literature.

Twitter: @Anefiok

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That’s Teju Cole in the barber’s chair. Is he taking a selfie while getting a hair cut?

Ha! Someone has a devoted admirer.

A fan writes about his first meeting with Teju Cole of Open City fame. You don’t have to read too closely to catch the hint of unwitting adoration despite the writer’s restrained account of the experience. Cute certainly. But reading this got me thinking about the world of African literary celebrities. Have you ever met a famous African novelist? What was the experience like?

“I looked around quickly for my author of interest and there he was: Teju Cole, author of the highly acclaimed Open City and the lesser known Every Day is for the Thief.”

“Like many other fans of Cole’s work, I followed him where I could, including Twitter. Eventually, though I cannot now recall when, he reached out to me and so began an interesting relationship in cyberspace, and it was this that made me want to make contact with Cole more than anything; to make real the abstract communication the internet had afforded us.”

“We eventually met. He walked over and greeted me warmly as I wondered how he could’ve known it was me. Immediately I felt as if a cyberspace connection had been translated into the real and physical world. I felt that I could now comfortably say that I know this person, not only their tweets or side-profiled avatar.”

“Cole was last in the line-up and he had the crowd hanging on his every word.”

“We had time for one drink as Cole graciously accepted the compliments of those who remained behind.”

“We agreed that another meeting would have to happen in future. In the end, we didn’t see each other again that week. But those brief moments that we met and spoke certainly helped to put a voice, animated body and face to a name I always admired.”

Read the full piece HERE

HERE is an account of a fan meeting Chimamanda Adichie.