ktravula – a travelogue!

Barrett and Wainaina in Lagos

PRESS RELEASE —

Quintessence will, on Saturday the 19th of October, host the first readings of the Nigerian editions of critically acclaimed books by two authors.

Igoni Barrett’s Love is Power, or Something Like That has been described as “Something alive, like that,” by none other than Nadine Gordimer. In this, his second collection of short stories, Igoni, with humour and tenderness, introduces us to an utterly modern Nigeria, where desire is a means to an end, and love is a power as real as money.

Binyavanga Wainaina, storyteller, essayist, and force of nature, won the Caine Prize in 2002 for his short story cum essay Discovering Home. This brilliant story has now been fleshed out into the incredible memoir of life lived, and home found, One Day I Will Write About This Place.

At 2 pm on Saturday 19 October 2013, Farafina presents the Nigerian editions of both books at the event of the year: Igoni and Binyavanga under one roof. We hope you can attend this double-billed reading, which will hold at Quintessence, Plot 13, Block 44 Parkview Estate Entrance, off Gerrard Road, Ikoyi. This links to the a blog post with further details of the event is here.

Fagunwa Meets Adichie

Daniel O. Fagunwa (foremost Yoruba novelist) to Chimamanda N. Adichie (contemporary novelist):

Let me leave you with a prophecy. After all, what sort of ghost would I be if I didn’t say something profound about the future? Here it goes:

‘The great African novel will come. But it will not come from writers who insist on writing stories that mirror an African reality that they have reduced to a set of social issues. It will not come from the Afropolitan generation who mistake affluence for worldliness. It will not come from realism because Africans do not like the cannibalism of being fed repacked versions of their own lives. It will come from a mind that understands what the people want, their deepest darkest fears, the archetypes that shape their dreams, the past they’ve placed beyond memory and that has for that reason become their future, their delirious present, their sadness and their fantasy. A mind that imagines a story that is an alchemy of all these, that creates out of these something strange and beautiful, something that Africans understand whether the rest of the world gets it or not, a story that Africans can hold up as a mystery that dissolves their differences. That mind is the African writer to come, the messiah that, like other messiahs, “will only arrive when we no longer need him.”’

Read the rest of the stimulating fictional metadrama here. (via Brittle Paper)

Beautiful Song

by Lianne La Havas (from Black Cab Sessions…) Enjoy.

Lianne La Havas from Black Cab Sessions on Vimeo.

How are Yoruba speakers using Twitter?

KT: Same as everyone else. Code switching with English or whatever language soothes their need at the moment. This is fine. I think it’s important to mention that our intention at the start of the Tweet Yoruba project was not to turn every Yoruba speaker on twitter to monolingual Yoruba tweeters. No, it was to encourage use and improve the current attitude to indigenous language use anywhere. Yoruba just happens to be the language I’m most familiar with. I am interested in (and always encouraged by) indigenous language use anywhere/everywhere, even along with other international languages, until the attitude that one of them is inferior on the basis of the number of speakers is discredited.

Excerpt from my interview with (Egbunike Nwachukwu 0f) Global Voices. Read it here.

An e-Book is a Book – Conversations

For anyone interested in literature, and literary development, this is a good time to be alive, not just because of the quality of output and the zeal of the participants, but also because of the presence of new media and the dynamism it has allowed for the production of new forms, and new ways of expression. We have a new generation of writers doing great things in the face of tremendous odds. We are doing well. Last year’s Caine Prize had four out of five Nigerians (Five writers of Nigerian descent, if you consider Pede Hollist). Teju Cole, Chimamanda Adichie, Chika Unigwe, Igoni Barrett are doing great out there, and new ones are coming up behind them: Emmanuel Iduma, Dami Ajayi, Ukamaka Olisakwe, Ayodele Olofintuade, etc. The Booker also has Zimbabwean NoViolet Bulawayo, who might as well win it. I think we’re doing well.

I hope, of course, that new media eventually gets its pride of place in the mainstream of literary appraisal. It already does well in consumption and reach. Until the Booker, the NLNG, the Orange, or any other major prize rewards someone whose platform is mainly online, then we haven’t reached there yet. I don’t advocate for the death of the book, just like inventors of the automobile didn’t go ahead and shoot all the horses. But judges of prizes need to start looking at the quality of production in the new media, and begin to pay attention to them. It is the future. We may as well get used to it.

From an interview I had with Nwachukwu Egbunike of Global Voices, a few days ago, in which I discussed among other things, writing in indigenous language, my contribution to the TweetYoruba Project, and the state of writing in the world today.

Excerpts from the interview made it into Andrew Sullivan’s blog, discussing writing and other matters.

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