LITERATURE - The African Mirror

Nov

13

2024

A South African politician ends up homeless in Nthikeng Mohlele’s spicy new novel – but is it any good?

LITERATURE

DESPITE the flaws in the latest novel by South African writer Nthikeng Mohlele, there is something alluring about Revolutionaries’ House. It is Mohlele’s most political novel, and the parallels drawn between love and politics – and their pitfalls – are intriguing. Revolutionaries’ House is timely. It advocates the desperate need for South Africa’s political elite to take a step back and evaluate its own deficiencies before thinking of a possible path into a better future. Too little has changed for too few since democracy in 1994. It’s Mohlele’s eighth novel and follows the narrator Mr Winston, “a politician first and…

Nov

09

2024

By MANJEET RIDON, DEBRA BENITA SHAW, DIANA WALLACE, EMILY ZOBEL MARSHALL, INÉS GREGORI LABARTA and SARAH TROTT

Booker prize 2024: the six shortlisted books reviewed by our experts

LITERATURE

FROM a longlist of 13, six novels have been shortlisted for the 2024 Booker prize. Our academics review the finalists ahead of the announcement of the winner on November 12. The Safe Keep by Yael van der Wouden The Safe Keep, a novel about the expropriation and theft of Jewish property during the second world war, revisits a dark chapter of Dutch history. Before being deported, Dutch Jews were stripped of their homes and belongings, and forced to flee Amsterdam with what little they could carry. Van der Wouden’s debut novel shines an ironic light on the act of keeping…

Nov

06

2024

By NHLANHLA DUBE

Colonial white boys in Zimbabwe: John Eppel’s autobiography is a welcome book, but a difficult read

LITERATURE

ZIMBABWEAN writer John Eppel’s literary career has always been defined by one peculiar trait. He publishes fictional work, in stark contrast to the majority of the country’s other white writers who have fetishised the autobiographical mode. During the post-2000s period, white Zimbabwean narratives of crisis which focused on the land reform programme gained an international following. Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle was fought primarily over the land question. In colonial Rhodesia, racist apportionment of fertile land meant that the black majority was removed from productive farmland. The land reform programme sought to correct this historical injustice. Eppel’s focus on novels, poetry and…

Oct

04

2024

By MAKHOSAZANA XABA

Wretched of the Earth has been translated into South Africa’s Zulu language – why Frantz Fanon’s revolutionary book still matters

LITERATURE

FRANTZ Fanon was an influential psychiatrist, Algerian revolutionary and pan-African thinker who was born on the Caribbean island of Martinique. His work – and particularly his final book The Wretched of the Earth (1961) – is still widely referenced to understand the fight against colonialism and also the postcolonial era in Africa. This global classic has already been translated into numerous languages – and is now available in South Africa’s Zulu language as Izimpabanga Zomhlaba thanks to poet, short story writer, anthologist – and now translator – Makhosazana Xaba. We asked her about the book. Why is it important that…

Sep

24

2024

By NADIA DAVIDS

Caine Prize for African Writing: Nadia Davids on her winning story about women and freedom

LITERATURE

SOUTH African playwright, academic, novelist and short story writer Nadia Davids is the winner of the 2024 Caine Prize for African Writing. It’s an important award that has played a significant role in shaping the career trajectories of numerous African writers. She received the prize for her exquisitely written and disturbing short story Bridling. The title refers to a scold’s bridle, also known as a witch’s bridle, a cruel metal muzzle placed on a defiant (or even gossiping) woman’s face in an act of public humiliation in centuries past. A bridle must be worn on stage by the narrator of…

Sep

19

2024

By KEITH GOTTSCHALK

Joe Modise biography dismisses corruption claims against the former South African defence minister

LITERATURE

THE new biography of Joe Modise, one-time commander of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC), is welcome. Comrade and Commander fills in a blank about Modise throughout the ANC’s three decades as an underground liberation movement with an armed wing. The book is edited by Ronnie Kasrils, a lifelong colleague of Modise and later South African deputy minister of defence, and Fidelis Hove, a son-in-law of Modise. Modise’s posting as Umkhonto we Sizwe commander makes him one of the most important leaders throughout the ANC’s underground epoch. In addition, he played a major…

Sep

14

2024

By OLIVIER MOREILLON

Johannesburg’s underbelly is explored in Niq Mhlongo’s fresh new novel about a messy break-up

LITERATURE

NIQ MHLONGO was born in Soweto, Johannesburg in 1973 and grew up under apartheid, South Africa’s institutionalised racial segregation under white minority rule. He graduated in political studies and African literature in 1996 and then studied law, but dropped out in his final year to become a writer instead. Mhlongo entered the South African literary scene with his novel Dog Eat Dog (2004). He’s since published three more novels and three short story collections, and has edited three volumes of writing. Critics have called him “one of the most high-spirited and irreverent new voices of South Africa’s post-apartheid literary scene”.…

Sep

09

2024

By HEIN WILLEMSE

James Matthews: the rebel writer who was South Africa’s voice of resistance

LITERATURE

WORLD-RENOWNED South African poet James Matthews has died at 95. His was the last great voice of an era of writers who worked against South Africa’s repressive and racist system of apartheid, which resulted in him being relentlessly harassed, detained by police and his work banned. Schooled in District Six, an area of Cape Town where black people were forcibly removed to make way for white development, he was most famous for his poems. But he was also a journalist, cultural worker, short story writer, novelist, proponent of the Black Consciousness movement and a one-man cultural institution who never stopped…

Sep

05

2024

By FRANCOISE VERGÈS

Looting of African heritage: a powerful new book explores the damage done by colonial theft

LITERATURE

European colonisation of Africa was not only about armed conquest, massacres and the exploitation of resources. It was also about the appropriation of spiritual and political symbols. It led to the erasure of a social, cultural, and symbolic world. A 2024 book, Fifteen Colonial Thefts: A Guide to Looted African Heritage in Museums, adds to the growing literature on the history of the colonial looting of African art and heritage and the issue of restitution, reappropriation and return. Published by Pluto, the book is edited by Ghanaian-born multidisciplinary artist Sela K. Adjei and Berlin-based postdoctoral researcher Yann Le Gall. It…

Aug

17

2024

By The African Mirror

Women in translation month: a moving Algerian novel tracks the economic struggles of writers and publishers

LITERATURE

JOSEPH FORD FRENCH-ALGERIAN publisher Edmond Charlot is the subject of the Algerian writer Kaouther Adimi’s third novel, and her first to be translated into English. It was published in 2020 under the US title Our Riches and retitled A Bookshop in Algiers for the UK audience. Before he reached the heights of fame, the French Algerian author Albert Camus was part of a group of talented thinkers and writers including André Gide, Kateb Yacine and Mohammed Dib. This group’s early works were first printed and sold by the young Charlot. Adimi’s novel was translated into English by Chris Andrews. It…