Arts/Culture

Abi Dare’s debut novel, The Girl with the Louding Voice, is one that begins on a high note, engaging the reader immediately. Narrated by a teenage protagonist who is so relatable that her voice to the reader feels like friends gossiping, the novel is set in the protagonist’s village and Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub. Even […]

In one of the earliest scenes of Elder’s Corner, the culturally significant, long in the works documentary about Nigeria’s forgotten musical heroes, highlife maestro Sir Victor Uwaifo summarizes the film’s central thesis with the following words.  “It must be the devil’s trick to be born in a country where neither soul nor talent is appreciated,” […]

Readers of Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon, Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street, and Ifeanyi Ajaegbo’s Sarah House may find Onyeka Nwelue’s The Strangers of Braamfontein familiar, especially in its discussion of sex trafficking of African women. However, that is where the comparison ends. There is blood in Nwelue’s latest novel—lots of blood. This is […]

Everyone likes the idea of home as a safe place, a comforting, anchoring soundness. But sometimes this safety lies not in the familiar but in the complex challenge of exploring new vistas, away from all that was previously held dear. Especially when home is that place that takes instead of gives. The upbeat documentary, Blind […]

You don’t send out invites to these things. So obviously no RSVP’s in return. It’s all guess work. There’s a metaphor somewhere in there. I’ll work it out in a minute.  – Aduke Gomez There is, among the Bambuti of the Ituri forest in the Congo, the impossible music of the bamboo flute. This flute […]

When you enter the world of Rémy Ngamije’s ‘Giver of Nicknames’, you’re probably not thinking of how teenagers perceive injustice. To reduce the story set in a Catholic school in urban Namibia to this one theme is to do injustice to the writing. The shortlisted stories in the 2021 AKO Caine Prize For African Writing […]

This is the second time Meron Hadero, the Ethiopian American writer, has been shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing. She made the shortlist in 2019 with her heartbreaking story “The Wall,” though Lesley Nneka Arimah, the Nigerian American, would win the prize with “Skinned,” a riveting, eerie story about gender inequality. Hadero is […]

‘Like a hum in the forest’, these words are swirling around in the deep recess of my mind asking to be let out. It took a while but it finally found an exit – these winged words set a flight reading The Separation by Iryn Tushabe. They make their unhurried way out of my mind, […]

“We were clowns, children, things….” So starts Rémy Ngamije’s The Giver of Nicknames, where readers are launched into the mind of a hyper-literate narrator who recounts his teenagehood at a private Catholic School in Namibia. From the beginning, Ngamije’s sets out to make the reader aware of the title character’s deft use of language, more […]

“Is your VPN on?” asks Anthony Azekwoh. We’re on the now-familiar Zoom app, attempting to get into a meeting together. Days before our call, the Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari declared an unconstitutional ban on Twitter, forcing millions of Nigeria-based users to access the social platform through a VPN interface, which is able to bypass territorial […]