Farafina magazine presents: Charles Mayaki at the 2009 PAFF Festival

Day 4

As the festival enters its fourth day, the professional standard of the screenings is being called into question as most movies have desaturated images and poor framing. The problem is due, in part, to the DVD format of the majority of the films and the newness of the cinema house where they’ve been screened.

Two filmmakers interrupted their movies’ screenings because they felt the picture had not being shown at their best. In the case of Nubian Spirit: The African legacy of the Nile Valley, stopped five minutes into its screening, one viewer cracked, “Black history month (February) is the shortest month of the year…goes to figure that a movie on black history would be the shortest movie too.”

The persistent meddling of protective filmmakers straying into the projection booth to ensure the proper screening of their movies has forced organizers to put up a barricade and post a sign warning filmmakers to keep out.

audience members at the strategies for success panel 1

Other than that, in spite of the economic recession, the turnout has been good with African movies scoring high marks with the African American audience, for effective story-telling, honest approach and generally presenting an alternative to the typical Hollywood product. South African director Darrell Roodt’s Zimbabwe first booked by a church group, is definitely a favourite so far and could very well be the hit of the festival.

While I haven’t been able to attend any of the shorts which currently have a festival of their own, one of them, Kwame by Ghanaian director Edward Osei-Gyimah, a graduate of the University of Southern California, caught my attention.  This short film talks about a Ghanaian cab driver who comes to terms with the reasons why he immigrated to America.

Director Edward Osei Gyimah

Meanwhile, Gospel Hill has thrown me off American movies. Even the talents of Samuel L. Jackson, Danny Glover and Angela Basset and the high-end equipment of Fox Movie Studios could not save this movie from being sterile, boring and clichéd. No wonder it is bypassing theatres and heading straight for the video market—This is what happens when set dressers are allowed to moonlight as scriptwriters!

Zimbabwe

Prolific director, Darrell James Roodt tackles the crisis currently affecting the nation of Zimbabwe in his movie, Zimbabwe. Director of the first indigenous Zulu language movie, Yesterday, which received an Oscar nomination for best foreign language film, he excels here by bringing a soft touch to a tough story or is it a tough touch to a soft story.

More famous amongst African Americans for his film Sarafina, starring Whoopi Goldberg, he crafted a story that had people talking in the lobby afterwards. It seems now, with South Africa joining the bandwagon, everyone has caught the video bug. From a filmmaker known for his celluloid productions, it is a surprise to see this movie filmed in low-rent digicam, yet it takes nothing away from the story.

Zimbabwe (Kudzai Chimbaira), a 19-year-old, is the name of the lead character who loses her mother at the beginning to AIDS. Left in charge of her siblings, and abandoned by her townsfolk who believe she is cursed owing to the number of deaths in her family from the disease, she heads off to Beitbridge to live with an aunt.

Beitbridge resides at the border between Zimbabwe and South Africa and there is a bridge that links the two countries. Zimbabwe is treated unfairly if not badly by her aunt and the lure of the riches across the border soon begin to weigh on her. It is inevitable that she will cross the bridge and become an illegal immigrant. It is her experience that forms the underpinnings of the story.

With a style that owes more to the rules of Dogma ’95—the Danish Film movement—than African video culture, the movie looks raw and uncouth as befits the story it tells. It bears a resemblance to the movies of Lars Von Trier where the gamine heroine suffers all kinds of injustices. There are racist and xenophobic South Africans, with exception to Charles (Tongai Arnold Chirisa) in a fine performance, who would put her through the worst ordeals. Chimbaira handles her difficult role with aplomb. She is supposed to be nothing but a young girl unwise to the ways of the world.  When she sips a milk shake for the first time or impressed by a roadside canteen by calling it a restaurant, she exhibits the necessary raw innocence that is believable.

Employed as a maid to a rich white Afrikaans family, it is obvious the director is quoting scenes from Luis Bunuel’s Belle de jour. At the beginning, he also quotes the Italian neo-realist traditions of Bicycle Thieves and Open City. Melodramatic in the latter stages and hard to stomach at times, the movie crescendos with an ending that caused audible gasp from the audience.

There was no Q & A afterwards. Zimbabwe is playing as part of the Narrative Feature Competition.

Munyuraganbo (Rwanda/USA)

American director Lee Isaac Chung deals with the Rwandan genocide in his debut feature Muyurangabo, named after an ancient Rwandan warrior. Set fifteen years after the Rwandan civil war, Muyurangabo recounts the story of two friends, Sangwa, a Hutu, and Ngabo, a Tutsi.

When Sagwa brings his friend to his family’s home, tension rises in light of their ethnic differences but the boys are only stopping by and soon take off again to pursue a journey of which the purpose is undisclosed. The time they spend together eventually puts a strain on their relationship and as their story unfolds, they discover the meaning of hate and the absolution of forgiveness.

Shying away from foreshadowing or tipping its hand, Muyurangabo is artistic and even includes a poetry recital performed directly to the camera. Unusually meditative and languorous, this movie isn’t for everyone, but perfect for those who appreciate European-style intellectual films. To its credit, most of the crew in this festival favourite is local—an unusual occurrence for movies with foreign backing.

Farafina Magazine Presents: Charles Mayaki at the 2009 PAFF Festival

Day 3

The third day of PAFF kicked off with a panel discussion on Notorious, a movie about the life of Christopher Wallace aka Notorious B.I.G. Moderated by journalist Farai Chideya, the panel was made up of producer Bobby Teitel, writers Cheo Hodari Coker and Reggie Blythewood, and casting director Twinkie Byrd.

Scene from Notorious

The fast-paced discussion benefitted from the many nuggets brought to the table by Cheo Hodari Coker. A writer for the hip-hop magazine Vibe, Coker interviewed Wallace twice; once in 1994 and again, shortly before his murder. In his last interview with Coker, Biggie was all about family, and his daughter especially. Biggie, as the movie depicts, was also a mama’s boy—he was scared, up until the day he died, of what his mom would think.

Highlights of the discussion included debates about the misogyny that ‘dogs’ rap and the ‘Madonna whore’ concept espoused by the characters of Faith Evans and Lil’ Kim. Casting director Twinkie Byrd, a lively character, invited two actors from the movie onto the stage. Julia Pace Mitchell plays Jan, Biggie’s first baby mama who, as Julia put it, gets “dumped for the lighter-skinned chick”, referring to Faith Evans. While Julia had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with Jan, actor Dennis White, cast as D-Rock, Biggie’s best friend who takes the fall for Biggie, wasn’t so lucky as D-Rock was still incarcerated at the time of filming. Both actors, who came across as intelligent and promising, are part of the Theatre Troupe of Howard University, Washington D.C.

A Q & A session with the audience followed where someone raised the issue of the movie’s inadequate treatment of the time Biggie time spent away from New York, while drug dealing in North Carolina, to which Cheo Hodari Coker answered that there was not enough time to put everything in and certain things had to be compressed. When Biggie got his record deal, Sean “Puffy” Combs had to go down to North Carolina and persuade him to come back to New York. Interestingly enough, the day after Biggie left, cops raided the area and a lot of his cronies got busted and ended up doing time.

Producer Bobby Tietel also talked about the difficulty of marketing the movie, which was completed only two weeks before opening. Obviously, he wished it could have reached a wider audience because it got excellent reviews.

Attendees also discovered that the movie project had surprisingly been pushed by Ms. Wallace rather than Puffy who joined in after production started.

A friend of Antonique Smith, cast as Faith Evans, provided comic relief when he took the microphone, after getting Smith on the phone, and put his cell on speaker so the actress could thank the casting director, producer and writers for giving her the role. She was speaking from the Berlin Film Festival where Notorious is part of the festival.

Coker got in the last word when he said the movie is ultimately about manhood and what it means to be a man.

Nubian Spirit: The African Legacy of the Nile Valley had a full house. In this movie, British-Jamaican director Louis Buckley set out to educate his audience and reclaim Egypt as a cornerstone of Black civilisation.

Nubian Spirit

Most of the argument surrounding Egyptians is centred on King Tut and Cleopatra; why are they not depicted as black and why do European historians argue that they were not black? Buckley’s documentary helps put to rest these disputes by tracing the roots of Egypt back to the two original kingdoms of Kush (later Nubia and present-day Ethiopia) and Kemet (present-day Egypt), by the Nile Valley. From 4000–800 BC, these kingdoms enjoyed a close relationship and were populated by black people alone.

Only after 800 BC did the Assyrians defeat the people of Kemet, followed by the Persians, the Greeks under Alexander the Great, who renamed the union of the sister kingdoms Egypt, and finally the Romans who found Cleopatra as queen.

Along the way, conquerors came, rewrote history in their favour and appointed their descendants as Pharaohs. Kemet was segregated from Kush which was never conquered. By so doing, they also separated the people whose race differed only by virtue of the progeny of intermarriage and immigration to the region.

Tracking scientific, religious and educational innovations while referring to a plethora of historians, the documentary stresses the contributions people of the Nile Valley made to the world while outlining events which led to their diminished dominance and end of their empires.

Interesting and educational, Nubian Spirit places everything in time while emphasizing the need for archaeologists to look for more answers in Ethiopia and to understand its meriotic language in the same way they have combed through Egypt and deciphered its hieroglyphics language.

In the heated Q & A segment that ensued, audience members threw criticisms at Africans who care nothing about their history and also brought up the latest tour of the tomb of King Tut where he was depicted as an Arab-looking man. I think the director, a jovial character who cracked a lot of jokes, put it best when he said that “all civilizations have contributed to each other and should be recognized equally”. This is what the message this movie successfully conveys.

Scene from Rain

Rain is a Bahamian movie starring American TV actress CCH Pounder and newcomer Renel Brown as the titular Rain. The death of Rain’s grandmother takes her from a sheltered existence on a ragged side of the island to the capital city of Nassau where she rejoins the mother who abandoned her. Her mother Glory is a drug addict who lives in the seedy area of town nicknamed ‘the graveyard’ populated by prostitutes, pimps and homeless people. Rain is introduced into this life of primordial existence where the kids at her new school take a dislike to her and where people have no hope of breaking free of their situation. Rain has two things going for her; an exercise coach (CCH Pounder) who befriends her and her own innate ability on the race track which might get her a scholarship and pave way for her exit.

In this well made movie with convincing performances, Greek Bahamian director Maria Govan demonstrates an observant eye for the culture and people she depicts. Govan came to Los Angeles to make movies and worked on a few productions before returning to her native country where she started making documentaries. She raised the money for her productions by calling on the generosity of wealthy citizens of Nassau.

PAFF is Govan’s fourth festival promoting Rain and her hope is that the exposure will make it easier for acquisitions people to see the movie and to get Rain distributed.

Farafina Magazine Presents: Charles Mayaki at the 2009 PAFF Festival

Day Two

 Day two was spent seeing three movies: The Yellow House from Algeria, Life Now from Togo and The Bloody Writing is Forever Torn. As the festival enters its second day, it is clear that many of the African filmmakers will be unable to attend the festival, the cost of travelling to the United States being a deterrent. At the moment it is hard to tell which filmmakers will actually be in town for the screenings of the movies. This hopefully will be made clearer in the future. This weekend, there will be a couple of major industry panels including a screenwriting panel led by Reggie ‘Rock’ Blythewood who wrote the recently released movie Notorious, which is about the life and death of the rapper Biggie Smalls.

 Other events include a screenplay pitching session to some of the industry’s established writers and a fine arts market where African artists will exhibit their work.

 The Bloody Writing is a short documentary film about a conference that took place in Ghana in 2007 on the history and effects from what is commonly called the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. It was the first major conference on the slave trade held in Africa in 46 years. Most importantly, it was the first time that European, South American and American scholars gathered with their African peers to discuss the slave trade.

 Focusing on the trade from the Gold Coast area, it takes us into two of the major forts at Elmina and Cape Coast castle, where slaves were held before being shipped across the Atlantic. It is interesting to note that Elmina was recently a night club and restaurant until outraged activists—and the potential loss of revenue from tourism their protests would have caused—led the Ghanaian government to transform into the historical site it deserves to be.

 It is noted in the documentary that most Africans do not discuss or understand the impact of the slave trade and its history because of the refusal to teach it in schools, this largely due to the fact that many of the ethnic groups participated in it. It is at this time we meet a Chief from Northern Ghana who demands to be part of the conference. His tribe were the targets of the stronger Asante Empire during the slave trading days and many of his people were captured and sold as slaves. History in Ghana has tended to ignore this issue. We visit his village where a slave defence wall built back then still stands. More disturbing is the ostracism of descendants of slaves in certain quarters.

 All these issues are enlightening in a nimble piece of work that exposes ideas and themes not often covered in discussion of slavery; that is, the Africans culpability in selling their own brothers and neighbours. Though the documentary contains some unnecessary and obtrusive slave capture re-enactments set to a variation on the theme music from Braveheart, it still has its heart in the right place. It ends with a powerful theatrical dance performance by the Ghana National Company titled Musu. This dance, a journey through the ordeals endured by a slave, is more much more powerful than any of the staged re-enactments.

 The director was not available after the screening but there was a Q&A with David Hiller, a member of the Omohundro Conference who sponsored the confab. It publishes the quarterly journal, William & Mary. It was only supposed to be a conference of American scholars, but that changed when they began receiving calls from African scholars wishing to participate and had to find a way to raise the budget to accommodate 50 of them.

 David Hiller mentioned the difficulty some of the African scholars had in discussing the issues raised, some even wishing to ignore it because their ethnic groups had been slave capturers. An African American in attendance asked if there was talk of expanding the discussions to include seeking reparations from the countries involved in the slave trade, to which Hiller replied that the organization only puts ideas out there and tends not to be activist in nature.

 Another conference, though smaller in scope, will be held again in Ghana later this year. To hear papers read and delivered at the conference, visit the Omohundro website.

The Yellow House

 

“There is no cure for sadness,” says a doctor to Mouloud, the lead character in The Yellow House (La Maison Jaune). As the film opens information reaches Moloud—who lives in the hinterlands away from society—that his son is dead, and he sets out for the city in an oxcart to retrieve his body.

 This part of the movie is contemplative, with little dialogue and long passages of silence. In the city, Moloud struggles to find the mortuary. On his return after the burial, he finds he has a problem. His wife has fallen into depression. Hence the statement from the doctor he visits. Mouloud and his three daughters must find a cure for her illness. The journey to find this cure is what this great piece of cinema is about.

 Directed with a sure hand by the fifty-year-old veteran actor Hakkar Amor, this film falls into the tradition of African cinema characterized by Sembene and Chahine, albeit with some touches of 90s Iranian cinema characterised by Abbas Kiarostami. The film creates an atmosphere, one of simplicity and honesty, that the audience relishes in.

 The Yellow House won the best film category at the Dubai Film Festival.

 

Scene from Life, Now

 

Despite the enrichment Francophone cinema has provided over the years to PAFF, none of it has ever come from the 6 million-strong nation of Togo. The movie Life, Now goes some way to addressing this deficiency, as this film from Togo measures up favourably with movies from bigger nations on the continent.

 The advent of video with its cheap cost and processing has provided Africans the opportunity to take the cameras into the streets and tell the tales of the common man. The two biggest industries, Nigeria and Ghana, have used the opportunity to overwhelm us with melodrama and love stories stolen from the worst of Indian cinema and the Brazilian telenovela industry. In many other African countries, this crass aesthetic is absent. One can’t talk about this movie without referencing the shift in African cinema from those Francophone movies set in rural areas towards the stories of the citizens in the slums of urban cities, whether as seen in the Ugandan movie Divizionz, or the Kenyan movie Kibera Kid and popping up in other video films embraced by the public in other countries.

 The storyline for Life, Now begins in the streets of Togo, where three friends run a racket stealing high-end cars and shipping them across the border to the larger nation of Nigeria. As a character says, “You can’t imagine how big Lagos is. It is about three times the size of Togo.” The characters and director seem enamoured with Nigeria.

 This is not the only connection the story has to Nigeria. Pamela, a girl sent away at a tender age, lives with a cruel Nigerian madam who curses at her and makes her do all the house chores. She arrives back in Togo to look for the parents she does not know. At the same time a wealthy merchant seeks the son he gave up years ago—this son turns out to be Eli, the leader of the three-member gang of smugglers. To say these stories are intertwined is stating the obvious and the director spends most of the screen time bringing it all together.

 Director Steven AF shows a strong command of camera and is obviously influenced by old French and Italian cinema. Choice of music is especially strong though not mixed and edited professionally enough to make for a perfect sync. The director seems a big fan of the music of Ennio Morricone.

 While most African video movies lack adequate lighting due to the high cost, this movie luxuriates in it. It gets too much at times and it is an example of why even if you give an inexperienced DP the best tools, he will still find a way to mess it up. But the mistakes are fixable and probably will be because this looks like a rushed print (the movie has a January 2009 copyright date). Also, the movie appears to have been dubbed old Indian movie style with dialogue recorded in post-production, creating mouths that move out of sync with the dialogue.

 Director Steven AF is obviously talented but in this movie he tackles a storyline he is not quite ready to handle; the story is melodramatic with rape and incest as major topics and an obvious allusion to Greek Tragedy, especially Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Wide screen lensing and camera set ups range from good to excellent.

 A point of note: The Nigerian government ought to hire the director to be their PR agent. Nigeria comes across as the land of plenty, with Lagos representing some form of El Dorado.

 Life, Now and The Yellow House are playing in the Panorama section of the festival.

 

Coming up… tomorrow, the industry panel discussion with the writers and casting director of Notorious, the B.I.G. story

 

 

Farafina Magazine Presents: Charles Mayaki at the 2009 PAFF Festival

Day 1

The PAFF Festival in Los Angeles kicks off today with the premiere of the South African movie Jerusalema. There are movies from all regions of the continent. Movies to be covered include Maroko (Nigeria), Munyurangabo (Rwanda), Distant Tremors (Senegal), and Stolen Kisses (Egypt), among others. We begin with the movie Divizionz. Divizionz is a Ugandan/South African production from the collective known as Yes! That’s Us. It is playing in the panorama section of the festival.

In a widening departure from the traditions that have come to define contemporary African cinema, Divizionz is a throw-forward in the ideals of African filmmaking. With a do-it-yourself attitude and style that exemplifies the African movie industry—as well as a healthy dose of the best of American independent cinema—it breaks new ground for cinema on the continent.

By focusing on a day in the life of four aspiring musicians who are on their way to an open mic performance in the city that might just change their fortunes, it sticks close to the human story, and employs this device to delve into the day-to-day existence of the city’s slum dwellers and the ways in which their lives collide with the cavalier politics of their leaders.

Still from Divizionz

Kapo (played by rap star Bobi Wine) is the leader of the quartet which includes the female Kanyankole (Catherine ‘Scarlet’ Nakyanzi), Mulokole (Bobby ‘Lot’ Olem) and the devious, one-legged Bana (played by another hip hop star, ‘Buchaman’). Each member hails from a different ethnic group, with the relationship between Bana and Kayankole standing out for particular abrasiveness.

The journey to get a demo track for their performance leads us into the heart of the slum; the drug culture of the area manifests itself in interesting ways and exposes us, the viewers, to crooked cops who harass the dwellers, and rampant tribalism, which harasses too in its own way. In one scene on the streets of the slum, there is a particularly energetic chase of the lame Bana by Kapo on a chartered bike, Kapo having just been cheated by Bana.

The drama in the movie ultimately lies in whether all four singers will make it to the all-important open mic performance and if the consequences of this journey to leave the slums behind will permanently scar their friendship.

Using split screens a bit excessively and caught up with extensive dialogue sequences at times, it makes the most of its $6,000 budget. Shot on DV, its production values are better than average. Directors Donald Mugisha and James Taylor exhibit a sure command of camera technique and storytelling, and they possess an imaginative and ambitious narrative style that announces them as new talent in African cinema.

Post screening of the movie, I conducted an interview with director James Taylor (co-director Donald Mugisha did not make the trip to Los Angeles). Donald and James met at a film market at the Sitanghi campus in South Africa. It was there they struck up a friendship that led to the creation of Divizionz.

Divizionz was shown for free (and pay-what-you-can) in makeshift venues and beer houses in the areas where the movie was set. It was also shown at the Cineplex in Kampala. The movie was a hit with the audience and according to the director (this coming as a surprise to this viewer) a laugh riot to boot. James acknowledged that the jokes are ethnic in nature and play on mannerisms and stereotypes, and are thus more fully appreciated by an insider audience.

James Taylor (who works mainly in serial TV and on documentaries back in South Africa—his last project before Divizionz was a Ramadan religious program for the Islam TV station in South Africa) pointed out that the movie played in the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival and was submitted by a friend directly to the judging committee. It was well-received and James relished the opportunity to network with other filmmakers from around the world—amongst them the acclaimed British director Mike Leigh. Divizionz was picked for sales and distribution by the French company, Wide Management.

Yes! That’s Us (whose motto is built on the Ubuntu philosophy which means I am, because we are) has made a bunch of music videos and short films. They are presently working on an ambitious movie project that will cut across four African countries. The project will deal with the topic of xenophobia on the African continent.

Are you at PAFF? Or do you think the best place to celebrate African cinema is on the African continent? Farafina welcomes your comments.

The Pan African Film & Arts Festival

FARAFINA MAGAZINE COVERS THE 17th PAN AFRICAN FILM AND ARTS FESTIVAL

The 2009 Pan African Film and Arts Festival will run from February 5 – 16 in Los Angeles.

PAFF was established in 1992. It is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the promotion of cultural and racial tolerance and understanding through the exhibition of film, art and creative expression.

One of the films on exhibition this year is titled Skin, starring British-Nigerian actress, Sophie Okonedo. Other films include Kassim the Dream, Zora Neal Hurston, 13 Months of Sunshine and Tight Jeans, amongst others.

The festival will be covered by Charles Mayaki for Farafina magazine, and starting from 6th February 2009, his reports can be read daily on this blog.

Kingsley Kanu Jr. and the Solving Africa Project

We are pleased to introduce Kingsley Kanu Jr. He is a journalist who has embarked on a project called Solving Africa.

He is a currently on tour of seven African countries— Dakar (Senegal), Accra (Ghana), Lagos (Nigeria), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Tunis (Tunisia), Nairobi (Kenya), and Johannesburg (South Africa)—on a quest to discover how young people can contribute towards the development of Africa.

Nigeria will be  Kingsley’s last stop and when he arrives, he will be hosted to a welcome back party by Farafina magazine.

In this short interview with Farafina magazine he talks about the motivation behind the Solving Africa project, amongst other things.

SIX QUESTIONS WITH KINGSLEY KANU JR.

What is Solving Africa?

That answer is here. This project is a collection of dreams; asking young Africans what they see as wrong or right with the continent and their role in its development. But it’s not a policy book. This is first and foremost a work of creative nonfiction that I hope makes people think about some of these issues.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Not being understood.

What motivated you in coming up with this idea?

The African dream is to leave Africa. There are many people like me. We are often at the tops of our classes and each year, our SAT scores and achievements prove that we can run with the best from any country on earth. We have capable people who do not see Africa as theirs to build as much as something to sidestep. But if it isn’t this generation of an educated, uninformed African middle class, who else is going to care? Who else has the resources – social, political and economic – to care?

Which talent would you most like to have?

I’d like to be able to speak and understand every language.

What do you hope to achieve with Solving Africa?

Besides the writing of a book, this project will be about connecting the young Africans I meet during the trip to like-minded Africans in the United States and England. I also hope to establish an annual Solving Africa Conference, where promising Africans from all over the world, between the ages of 18 and 35, meet to discuss issues relating to the continent’s development and their role in its advancement. In addition to developing tourism by Africans to other African nations, actionable ideas from this annual conference would then be presented to political and business leaders for implementation.

Is this your first project?

Yes. Sort of . . .

(Some) Books of 2008

UCHE PETER UMEZ

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: excellent prose, well-rounded characters and scenes, and a nuanced description of Nigeria’s ruling elite in the 1960s, descriptions still reflective of today’s dissolute leaders. Chimamanda manages to handle themes of class and power and passion in a subtle yet telling tone, without affectation.

Measuring Time by Helon Habila leads us through mythic moments that nostalgically expose the poignancy of childhood and identity, the sensitivity of memory and loss, and the ambivalence of heroism and history. Habila’s prose is as hypnotic and gripping as a snake charmer’s tune.

MUTHONI GARLAND

Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan: Akpan writes with dry-eyed wisdom, and is never apologetic or over-emotional when revealing the appalling state to which we subject our continent’s children. In the midst of poverty or tribal and religious warfare in Kenya, Ethiopia, Gabon, Nigeria and Rwanda, children are forced to learn the language and codes of survival, but what really saves their humanity and ours is their familial love. Perhaps Uwem Akpan goes too far in showing the very worst of our nature: while the children provide hope, I was left wondering if that was enough to save them from a similar fate befalling them in future, that is, their growing into another generation of helpless parents. But perhaps, the author is serving a stark warning—that if we don’t care for the weakest among us then we are all endangered. The stories in Say You’re One of Them will stay in my head for a long time.

God’s Bits of Wood by Sembene Ousmane: my bookclub selected Sembene Ousmane’s book which I first read in high school far too many years ago, and I was thrilled to re-read it with adult eyes. The language is lush, the details are so vivid that the book almost reads like a movie and the characters are so keenly observed and multi-layered that despite their intimidating numbers, they make deep impressions. The novel is ambitious, funny, intelligent—cutting about colonial rule without being didactic. We learn much about Senegalese pre-independence culture without feeling lectured or talked down to. The strength of the women is portrayed without coming across as bearing a militant authorial agenda. The moral authority that keeps the railroad strike at the heart of the novel going is moving and believable. The book was published in 1960 and reads like a literary thriller written in contemporary times.

TEJU COLE

The third volume of Albert Camus’ Notebooks, covering the period between 1951 and his death in 1959, was released this year. Amidst the philosophical jottings, plot ideas and scattered memoirs, we see Camus’ gnomic and melancholy reaction to being informed he had won the 1957 Nobel Prize. What kind of person created those unconsoling novels, plays and essays? In photos, Camus always looked like a cool cat: his mind, on the contrary, was white hot.

AKIN ADESOKAN

By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolano is a mesmerizing story about a priest with a poet’s heart, set in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship. Bolano (who died in 2003 at age 50) is a writer’s writer, and he knows where to go for broke.

The Clash Within by Martha Nussbaum is an engrossing book about the rise of Hindu fundamentalism in India. The book is full of good things, but what I find most striking is the author’s objectivity, the way she manages to impartially depict individuals suspected of genocide. I admire the worldview which informs that kind of writing.

WADNAZAI MHUTE

The Shack by William P. Young: I read this book at a time in my life when I needed to. This is a story of tragedy and triumph. It is a book about your faith and how it is tested beyond what you think you can bear. It is also a book about breaking down preconceived notions of who you think God is, what you think your purpose in life is and how you relate to the world based on these ideas. This book is simply written—it is an easy read but it is also a book that will pervade your every thought long after the last page is read. William Young originally wrote this book for his children, and this may be responsible for a depth and simplicity that is often missing in jaded writers. This is a fresh perspective and I highly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to rediscover who they are.

CHIKA UNIGWE

The Magic of Malgudi by R.K. Narayan: It is difficult to believe this book was first published in the 1930s, as the stories are very contemporary. The book is a perfect illustration of the saying: there’s nothing new under the sun. Narayan’s characters are so alive they leap out of the pages of his book. You cannot read this book and fail to connect emotionally with the characters he’s created.

Ali Smith’s Girl meets Boy: this is a re-imagining of the myth of Iphis. Smith’s scope of (re) imagination is impressive. Plus, this novella has one of the best opening lines ever.

SYLVIA OFILI

Two books I read this year that definitely made an impression on me would have to be Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore and Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. For Kafka on the Shore, it is a beautifully written novel, almost poetic in its use of language, and its dark, moody nature appeals to me. It is a fascinating novel where emotions and feelings become almost too beautiful to describe. Shantaram on the other hand, is raw and almost vulgar. I loved this book because it was filled with lots of adventures, one after the other. I never knew which way the narrator would go. Also, the fact that it was based on real events made it a very interesting read. Its pages were filled with gang wars, sickness, death, love, pain, beauty, blood, happiness, sadness—it felt like buying a trip to India with all sorts of adventures included the package.

TOLU OGUNLESI

Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo is a tale of what one might call “reverse slavery”—it imagines that it was the blacks (Aphrika) who enslaved the whites (Europa). This imaginative, and humorous, turning of history on its head furnishes the reader with new light in which to view the transatlantic slave trade and to review notions of racial power and guilt, at the same time gently issuing a reminder about the universality of human cruelty.

Home and Exile by Chinua Achebe: this compilation of a series of lectures delivered ten years ago at Harvard University is vintage Achebe—full of timeless wisdom, humour at once questioning and answering, and that storytelling genius that the world first glimpsed fifty years ago. “You cannot balance one thing; you balance a diversity of things,” Achebe writes in the book. Home and Exile contains the meditations of a gifted and compassionate writer balancing dispossession and repossession; province and metropolis; memory and metamorphosis.

SEGUN AFOLABI

Two re-readings this year—coincidentally both Pulitzer Prize winners. Toni Morrison’s breathtaking ghost story, Beloved, is a novel I had difficulty with when I first read it, but upon re-reading I’m always flabbergasted at its lyricism, beauty and haunting, brutal rendition of slavery and its devastating repercussions.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story collection, The Interpreter of Maladies, is a wonderful evocation of the Indian, specifically Bengali, immigrant experience in the United States. The wife of a recent US arrival flounders while her husband attempts to carve a career for himself; a young couple exchange confessions in their apartment during evening blackouts; a translator interprets illnesses for a doctor on behalf of his patients. Understated and always beautifully written.

JUDE DIBIA

Coconut by Kopano Matlwa: this tale is particularly stunning as it is told from the perspective of two teenage girls, one from a middle class family and the other from a poor home. Race, gender and the lingering effects of apartheid are strong themes in this novel and the writer takes the reader far away with her lyrical and compassionate prose.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence: D.H. Lawrence has remained one of my favourite writers over the years. I found myself rereading this novel which was first published in 1928 and yet I still find it one of the boldest and daring literary texts which tackle sexuality. Doris Lessing’s introduction at the beginning of the 2007 Penguin Classics edition was also an interesting analysis of the author and his work.

SONALA OLUMHENSE

The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence by Martin Meredith: over 750 pages long, this is a comprehensively researched and fluidly presented narrative about African peoples in the past half century. I put it down only to pick it up again; I do not lend it.

Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou is a collection of delicious stories of wisdom and experience and poetry and wit addressed to the daughter Ms. Angelou never had. It is a small volume that reflects various dimensions of her as a person, mother, wife, performer, writer, teacher, poet and speaker.

SEAN JACOBS

Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee: reading the novel, it was not always clear where Senor C. begins and Coetzee ends. Good read, with flashes of Coetzee’s brilliance as a writer, but I still maintain that Coetzee will never again write anything as good as The Life and Times of Michael K.

Allah is not Obliged by Ahmadou Kourouma: literature on child soldiers in West Africa’s civil (and resource) wars have grown into a genre of its own. In the US the most notable exponents of this genre are perhaps Ishmael Beah (A Long Way Gone: Memoir of a Boy Soldier, which was promoted by Starbucks and from which an excerpt was published in the New York Times magazine) and Uzodinma Iweala (who authored the novel Beasts of No Nation). Even the novelist Chris Abani has tried his hand at the genre. For me, the best of this genre is Ahmadou Kourouma’s novel. First published in French in 2000 and translated into English in 2005, it is a more compelling read than all the above combined.

Recommended Reading: Helon Habila in Granta

Helon Habila recaptures in his piece published in Granta, his metamorphosis to becoming a writer.  His story is a sentiment-tinged recollection of the transitions at that time—it was 1999 and Nigeria had embraced a new democracy after years of oppressive military rule. Read and enjoy Another Age…

Interview With Segun Afolabi

Segun Afolabi was born in Kaduna, Nigeria. In 2005, he won the Caine Prize for African Writing for his short story “Monday Morning”. He is the author of the short story collection A Life Elsewhere and the novel Goodbye Lucille. In this chat, he gives insight into what stimulates him to write and how he forges on when he experiences a writer’s block. He currently lives in the UK.

Where and when do you write best?

Usually in the morning—at home or in a coffee shop. If there’s a deadline, then any time, anywhere.

What book(s) changed your life?

Every book I’ve read has altered my perception of humanity to some degree, from Omar Rivabella’s profound Requiem for a Woman’s Soul to The End of the Affair by Graham Greene.

Who are your literary heroes?

The list would include, in no particular order, Jamaica Kincaid, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, JM Coetzee, James Baldwin, Lorrie Moore, Graham Greene, Toni Morrison, Albert Camus . . . Actually, the list could go on for pages and pages.

When did you know you were going to be a writer?

I never knew. I still don’t know. I just happen to be someone who writes in my spare time so I’ve never really thought of myself as a “proper” writer.

How do you celebrate when you finish writing a book?

A special dinner, a short holiday etc—piecemeal, with each finished draft.

Do you reread your published work?

Only to prepare for public readings, although it will be interesting to read them again when I’m old.

What is the last thing you read that made you laugh?

A couple of moments of absurdity in Jose Saramago’s horrifying novel Blindness.

What stimulates the writer in you?

The world and the multitude of (real) stories every day, more absurd and sorrowful and humorous than anything a fiction writer could dream up.

How do you deal with writer’s block?

I just continue to write, even if I know it’s no good.

Who is your perfect reader?

Anyone who takes the time to pick up a book and read it and think about things in this increasingly hurried and superficial world.

If you could own any painting, what would it be?

Probably “Hotel Room” by Edward Hopper—it’s on permanent display at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.