• Words Without Borders features “Apocalypse”

With a nod to the doomsday prophecy, we’re launching 2012 with writing about apocalypse. In two riffs on the Old Testament, André-Marcel Adamek builds a Belgian ark, while Fernando Paiva eulogizes the Creator. Ofir Touché Gafla counts down the hours in a runaway city. Sławomir Mrożek awaits the end of days at McDonald’s. Hector G. Oesterheld and Solano Lopez depict a deadly snowfall in Buenos Aires. Gyrðir Elíasson sees banned books in Iceland’s future. Antônio Xerxenesky exposes a conspiracy to rewrite a famous ending. And Mexico’s Ambar Past provides an incantatory oracle. We trust you’ll enjoy these apocalyptic visions; and if not, well, it’s not the end of the world.

• Belletrista, Issue Number 15 for January/February 2012
• World Literature Today includes a reading list of the “10 Top Japanese Authors of the Past Decade” and an “Apocalypse Reading List”
• Pank Magazine
• The Center for the Art of Translations features eight short stories
• Granta 112: Horror – there are several free articles including a short story by the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk
• The Paris Review Issue 199 includes short stories and poetry that a free online
• Saraba Magazine’s Issue 10 on Music is available for download.  It’s free.
• The December 2011 Issue of DustAccra is available for download.  Free as well.

She kindly obliged my request for a ” list of must read/favorites of North African lit in translation”.  I’m grateful for her response, which is:

———————————————————–

It is very hard for me — and not just me — not to over-represent Egypt when writing about Arab and Arabic literature. Some do better than others: While the International Prize for Arabic Fiction has managed to keep Egyptians to only around 30 percent of their shortlists and winners, the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Arabic Literature skews to more like 50 percent Egyptian.

But as Dr. Samia Mehrez, chair of the Mahfouz medal committee said, “Egypt produces a tremendous lot, whether we like it or not. A lot of what Egypt produces is work that should be considered. We really cannot weigh all of the countries at the same level. Whether we like it or not.”

So, I have purposely not listed Egypt’s Nobel Prize winning author, nor the other Africans on the 1988 Nobel “shortlist” (Tayeb Salih, Yusuf Idris) or the African who was not included because he died in 1987 (Tawfiq al-Hakim) and the “Dean of Arabic Literature” (Taha Hussein). Nonetheless, Egypt remains the largest contributor to this list.

Egypt

Waguih Ghali, Beer in the Snooker Club. Ghali’s only novel, written in his third language (English), this gorgeous novel is set immediately in the aftermath of Egypt’s 1952 revolution and “independence” from Britain.

Sonallah Ibrahim, Stealth, trans. Hosam Aboul-ela. Ibrahim’s warmest novel is told sparely but lovingly. It’s the immediate post-WWII period and told from the point of view of a young boy who is not so unlike Ibrahim himself.

Miral al-Tahawy, Brooklyn Heights, trans. Samah Selim; set in Brooklyn Heights and told by a reluctant immigrant to the U.S.; a beautiful layering of Bedouin Egypt and New York City as well as a lovely rendering of the relationship between mother and son.

Ibrahim Aslan’s The Heron, trans. Elliott Colla. Aslan “wrote with an eraser” and cared deeply about the musicality of his prose. This novel is set among Egypt’s 1977 bread riots.

Libya

Ibrahim al-Koni, Bleeding of the Stone, trans. Maya Jayyusi and Christopher Tingley. A wonderful exploration of the relationships between power, human, and animal. A powerful contribution to writing about the boundaries between “human” and “animal.”

Morocco

Bensalem Himmich, The Polymath,  trans. Roger Allen. This enjoyable philosophical novel centers around the 14th century philosopher Ibn Khaldun.

Mohamed Choukri, For Bread Alone, trans. Paul Bowles. Choukri’s rich and raw autobiographical novel.

Algeria

Assia Djebar, Women of Algiers in their Apartment,  trans. Marjolin de Jager. This is one of the classics of Algerian literature, penned by the sophisticated perpetual Nobel Prize shortlister.

Leila Marouane, The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris,  trans. Allison Anderson. This is a delightful story within a story (within a story?) that explores the ways in which stories are told about North Africans.

Kateb Yacine, Nedjma,  trans. Richard Howard. A Faulknerian exploration of Algeria, conquest, and love.

North Sudan

Tarek al-Tayeb’s The Palm House, trans. Kareem James Abu-Zaid, will be released shortly by AUC Press. You can read an excerpt now on Jadaliyya. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/3863/the-palm-house

Tunisia

Note: Many acclaimed Tunisian authors have not had a book-length work translated into English: Mahmoud Messadi, Muhammad Salih al-Jabri,  Aroussia Naluti,  Al-Bashir bin Salamah, Al-Bashir Khareef, Salah al-Din Bujah, Abdel Qader Ben Shaikh, Faraj Al-Huwar, and Mohamed Al Aroussi Al Matuie, for instance.

Habib Selmi, Scent of Marie-Claire, trans. Fadwa Qasem. A somewhat clunky translation of this wonderful and nuanced psychological tale of a Tunisian in Paris and his French lover.

Rachida el-Charni’s short story “The Way to Poppy Street,” trans. Piers Amodia, was in the recent collection The Granta Book of the African Short Story.

Excerpts of Kamel Riahi’s new novel The Gorilla, have been translated and published in Banipal, The Arab Washingtonian, and Jadaliyya.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/3861/dog-hunting

I have absolutely no reason for hosting nor urging you to participate in this challenge save for the joy of discovering and reading African literature!

Here are the details:

Challenge Period

January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2012

Region

The entire African continent, including its island-states, which are often overlooked. Please refer to this Wikipedia “list of sovereign states and dependent territories in Africa”. Pre-colonial empires and regions are also included.

Reading Goal

5 books.  That’s it.  There will be no other levels.  Of course, participants are encouraged to read more than 5 books.  Eligible books include those which are written by African writers, or take place in Africa, or are concerned with Africans and with historical and contemporary African issues. Note that at least 3 books must be written by African writers.

Genres

• Fiction – novels, short stories, poetry, drama, children’s books.  Note: You can choose to read a number of individual and uncollected short stories.  In this case, 12 such stories would constitute 1 book.  Individual poems do not count but books of poetry do.
• Non-fiction – memoirs, autobiographies, history and current events

Reading Suggestions

• Cover at least two regions, pick from North Africa, Southern Africa, East Africa, West Africa and Central Africa
• Include translated fiction from Arabic, Francophone and Lusophone literature
• You can mix classic and contemporary fiction
• If you are intend to read mostly non-fiction, then please include at least one book (out of the five) of fiction

I’m not inclined to push any reading philosophy, I would however like to encourage participants to broaden their knowledge of African literature. Broadly then:

For the novice, if you have not read any African lit or if you’ve read one book (E.g. Achebe’s Things Fall Apart):  I would advise a mix of at least two regions, two languages, classic and contemporary, with both male and female writers.  A sample reading list could be:

• Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih (North Africa, Arabic, classic)
• Maps by Nuruddin Farah (East Africa)
• Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga (Southern Africa, contemporary)
• So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba (West Africa, classic, Francophone)
• Zoo City by Lauren Beukes (Southern Africa, contemporary, modern fantasy)

For the advanced reader of African literature:  perhaps there is some gap (country, region, language, theme, gender)  you want to fill or author(s) whose works you want to explore further?

You could also, for example:

• Read only collection/anthologies of short stories
• Stick to the literary tradition of one country
• Read only Lusophone literature
• Explore the literature of contemporary South Africa
• Read the books of North African countries of the Arab Spring
• Read wherever the urge takes you!

My suggestions notwithstanding, the most important thing is to have fun and to explore Africa through books.

Other Details

1. Overlap with other challenges is allowed.
2. E-books and audio books are allowed.
3. There is no need to make a list beforehand.  Although most of us love lists, don’t we?

To Sign up:

For those with blogs:  write a post on your blog about the challenge (with or without your list) and sign-up with the Mr Linky below using the direct URL of your sign-up post.

For those without blogs:  you can sign-up with your social media profile (Twitter, YouTube, Goodreads, Facebook or Shelfari).  Please make sure to use the URL of your profile page.  Alternatively, you can leave a comment  indicating  your intention to participate.

Reviews and Completion of Challenge

Reviews of books read are not required but are encouraged especially for those with blogs.  Please share your reviews with the rest of community the on Reviews Page.  If you do not have a blog and would like to guest review on this blog, then please feel free to contact me.

Likewise, completion posts are encouraged and you can share those on the Completion Page.

On Books and Reading Lists

Some classic African literature can be hard to find.  Please check your libraries and use inter-library loans if you have access to such services.  You will be able to do this challenge with the books currently available on the market.

I will publish lists of reading materials under various themes every Friday until I tire of the process.  Please contact me at kinnareadsATgmailDOTcom if you need any help.

Events

1. Ghanaian Literature Week – I have hosted this event for the past two years.  This year, I will move it up from November to probably August (pending an announcement). So you could save your GhanaLit reads for then.
2. Nigerian Literature Event – Amy will host this even again this year.  She will provide more details in due course
3. A new reading event – I’m toying with the idea of a South African Lit week or month.  I will decide soonest and let everyone know.  Or if anyone is interested in hosting this or any event, please do!

You can subscribe to this blog (see top of the right sidebar) to stay updated on this challenge.

That’s it.  Let’s enjoy reading for the 2012 Africa Reading Challenge.

To Sign-Up

Click on graphic and enter your link. I will add the sing-ups to

All the stories below are from Sudden Fiction International: 60 Short Short Stories edited by Robert Shapiro and James Thomas.

One

“The Falling Girl” by Dino Buzzati (Italy)
Translated by Lawrence Venutti

I’ve reviewed this dazzling story here.

Two

“Death of the Right Fielder” by Stuart Dybek (U.S.)

I’m a baseball fan and was delighted to read this story.  Though knowledge of baseball is not required, it helps to know that traditionally nothing much is expected of the right fielder position.  Most balls are hit to the center or left field. The right fielder, in this story, dies out in the field.  Theories abound as to the cause of death.  Magical realism with dark humor.  In just four short pages, Dybek captures the life of 20th Century folks in middle America.  I might write a full review on it.  Excellent story.

Three

“Blackberries” by Leslie Norris (Wales)

The story starts sweetly and innocently when a mother takes her  young son for his first haircut, then shopping for a new cap.  As it progresses, I started to sense that something bad was coming.  And it does but not like I had imagined.  Instead, the boy learns for the first time that his parents “were different people” and “that he must learn sometimes to be alone”.   Touching and profound.

Four

“Don’t Blame Anyone” by Julio Cortázar (Argentina)
Translated by Alberto Manguel

This is the first work by Cortázar that I’ve read, though I’ve been meaning to read him for years.  I had to read this short several times and still it leaves me scratching my head.  A man tries to put on his sweater. Who knew that wearing a piece of clothing could be a nightmare?  And yet I could not discern an injury or a disability.  Surreal and experimental.  I probably need to read it again and again and…

Five

“On Hope” by Spencer Holst (U.S.)

A gypsy animal trainer has trained a monkey to steal jewelry.  British royalty visit the Rock of Gibraltar bringing with them a necklace with the curse Diamond of Hope.  The monkey steals the necklace and the trainer returns it with a note to the “princess”.  This happens three times.  After the third theft, the trainer decides to throw the cursed gem down a trench in the sea.  The actual story ends with the man swimming towards a shark.  But the author notes, in three points, that there is reason to remain hopeful that the trainer prevails.  This is all part of the story.  Funny.

Six

“Happy Endings” by Margaret Atwood (Canada)

This reads as though Atwood was giving a lecture on plot and endings.   It begins with:

John and Mary meet
What happens next?
If you want a happy ending, try A

A is a short plot on John and Mary’s good life together.  She then presents 5 different scenarios but cautions that they all end with A.  “Plots”, she says “are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what”. Now try How and Why”.  Hilarious story.

Seven

“The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket” by Yasunari Kawabata (Japan)
Translated by Lane Dunlop

The narrator observes a group of children playing and looking for insects; their paths are lighted by paper lanterns.  One boy gives a grasshopper to a girl but she discovers, when she opens her palm, that it is a bell cricket.  An inspirational story about hanging onto the beautiful moments of one’s life when all else turns to gray.

Grace Chirima is walking to the Harrow-on-the-Hill train station when we first meet her in Longing for Home. Her “black boots crunched on the frozen ground”.  She is “breathing clouds of steam”.  She’s having a miserable time of it and starts reminiscing about her home in Zimbabwe.  Her family sent her to England to further her studies, funded by money that her grandfather saved specifically for Grace’s education.

Unfortunately, by the end of her first year, with economic conditions worsening in Zimbabwe, she is forced to quit school and work to support her family.  She doesn’t seem to have many friends or any social life, for that matter.  She lives with several British girls who don’t seem to care for her.  But the male roommate, Greg, is kind and shows much concern for Grace.

Upon his advice, Grace applies for a job as a receptionist at his workplace. One morning, with Grace and Greg en route to her interview for the job, tragedy strikes. The tragedy is notable because a specific date is mentioned.  But bad things happen to good people so I shall not dwell nor reveal the nature of this tragedy.  However, I felt that the event was a deus ex machina device to resolve the story neatly.  But let me set that aside.  Because even assuming that the event is plausible, the ending of the story came a bit too suddenly.

The story of the immigrant facing difficult times is well-known in literature. But I still felt drawn to Grace’s story and I was keen to know how Grace, this Grace, felt about her experience.  How she was navigating her new reality.  How exactly she was coping?  And could she see the growing affection in Greg, in spite of what she was going through? In other words, the story was short on rendering Grace’s inner turmoil.

The action of the story takes place in Zimbabwe as well as England.  There are lots of passages about her family and the life they lived prior to the economic decline.  Most were not necessary.  One night, Grace gets a phone call from her mother and she is told about her grandfather’s illness, the harrowing conditions in Zimbabwe and that the family can no longer afford to send her money.  In fact, she will have to support them on whatever earnings she makes in England.

“Grace, your Sekuru has given us all a good life.  Try to see if you can do something to look after him now”.

The entire phone conversation is powerful and very well-written.  It provides all the context and all the information needed to understand and assess the family’s dire circumstances in England.  It makes all the other passages about Zimbabwe redundant.  And I wish the author had used the other space to focus on Grace and her life in England.

I can hear my mother telling me that story is not what the author wrote. I know.  Hajira Amla writes really well and that’s why I wanted to read what she could do with a more complete Grace.

———————–

(African Roar 2011 is currently available at Amazon.com as a kindle e-book.)

Yvonne Vera, in her introduction to Opening Spaces: An Anthology of Contemporary African Women’s Writing (1999) , states:

“Africa is as diverse as its womanhood as it is in its disillusionment. Our reference to an African womanhood is a mere trope, a way of ordering, much too limiting.  Yet the purpose of an anthology is also to create unities, to motivate strengths, and offer a signature. In this collection the aim is to create a circle…joined by land, by the evidence of the eyes, by current struggles, by a hunger for escape”.

Opening spaces is what the women in these fifteen stories do as they forge new values and new modes of relating to traditional systems and expectations.  Some desperately need to escape confinement, whether physical, mental or emotional. Exerting their agency in opening these spaces, some will succeed, others will barely escape with their lives but all reveal a need for solidarity and an acceptance of just who they are.  Nothing more and nothing less.

Stories in the anthology include:

• Ama Ata Aidoo’s The Girl Who Can in which a seven-year-old shows her grandmother a new way of looking at the female body:

…one should be able to do other things with legs was well as have them because they can support hips that make babies.

• In Lindsay Collen’s Enigma, a  teenager executes a plan, which will compromise her own education and life, in order to free herself from the stifling confines of her patriarchal home.
• What startles, in Farida Karodia’s Red Velvet Dress, is not young Katrina’s murder of her abusive father but her mother’s inability to occupy the space that she, the mother, had opened by daring to associate with people outside her Afrikaner society in apartheid South Africa.
• In Leila Aboulela’s The Museum a  young Sudanese woman, studying in Scotland, finds she enjoys the company of a fellow white student. She is engaged, by arrangement, to a man she does not care for.  In the end, she cannot occupy this new space of loving:

“If she had been strong she would have explained , and not tired of explaining.  She would have patiently taught him another language, letters curved like epsilon and gamma he knew from mathematics.  She would have shown him that words could be read from right to left.  If she had not been small in the museum, if she had been really strong, she would have made his trip to Mecca real, not only in a book.”

• Gugu Ndlovu’s The Barrel of a Pen is a harrowing account to a back-street abortion, a portrayal of feminine ties and ends with a search for family.

These women are certainly spirited and some readily employ anger and shocking tactics to demand their due and space:

• It is amazing what a plate of rice can achieve in Ifeoma Okoye’s The Power of a Plate of Rice.  And no, there are no food fights in this story where a harassed schoolteacher confronts her tyrannical headmaster.
• Lilia Momple’s Stress is a dreamy story of one woman’s disintegration and decay.  She lives well while, all around her, people suffer the effects of corruption and national mismanagement.  But she is not satisfied and dreams of consuming one man’s small and hard life.

Anna Dao’s The Perfect Wife upends the usual portrayal of women in polygamy when co-wives forge an enduring, loving relationship when forced to confront life alone when their husband dies just as he returns from fighting in World War I.

I was really by touched by The Home-Coming, Milly Jafta’s gentle story. A mother retires to her  home after a forty-year period working as a domestic help and finds comfort in her daughter.

“In her calm voice she repeated the question, asking whether she was walking too fast for me.  Oh dear God, what kindness.  Someone was actually asking me whether I could keep up.  Not telling me to walk faster, to have no males in my room, to get up earlier, to pay more attention, to wash the dog… I was overcome.  Tears filled my eyes.  My throat tightened, but my spirit soared.  The stranger, my daughter, took the case from her head and put it on the ground next to her… “

Some stories are conventional while others are experimental.  All look at women’s lives, but also cover a range of social, economic, familial and societal issues.  The writers are from East, West and Southern African with one from North Africa. I would have like to see stories from North Africa.  Also, it appears that there are three translated stories (out of fifteen) though it is hard to tell because translators, regrettably, are not mentioned.  All my issues aside, the anthology is a truly enjoyable book and I’m happy to have discovered it again.

Opening Spaces itself opened a space from which African Love Stories emerged.  Credit is due to Nana Ayebia Clarke, formerly of Heinemann, and now of Ayebia Publishing for her work on these two anthologies.

—————

The rest of the stories in anthology are:

Deciduous Gazettes [Melissa Tandiwe Myambo, Zimbabwe]
Uncle Bunty [Norma Kitson, South Africa]
The Betrayal [Veronique Tadjo, Cote d'Ivoire]
Crocodile Tails [Chiedza Musengezi, Zimbabwe]
Night Thoughts [Monde Sifuniso, Zambia]
A Sense of Outrage (Sindiwe Magona, South Africa)

In December, as the end of the year approached and faced with the possibility of missing my personal goal of reading 100 short stories per year, I searched my shelves (and my mother’s) for anthologies to get me quickly to goal. One of the anthologies, Sudden Fiction International: 60 Short Short Stories, sounded so utterly delightful that I decided to start reading the stories as part of this year’s 100 shots of short challenge.

“The Falling Girl” opens the anthology. This is probably the strongest and boldest short story to lead off any anthology that I’ve read.

It begins with:

Marta was nineteen.  She looked out over the roof of the skyscraper, and seeing the city below shining in the dusk, she was overcome with dizziness.

It then continues with descriptions of the skyscraper and the view of the city at such heights.  It’s magical, as well-lit, well-developed urban mega-cities can be at night.  “It was in fact the hour when the city is seized by inspiration and whoever is not blind is swept away by it”.  In due course, I ‘m reminded of New York, my other city across the Atlantic.

But there is a girl on the roof and as these thing go, she must jump and she does; she falls.  This, of course, grips my heart.  It’s a suicide but the author does not go into any detail about why Marta has chosen to fall or what her particular desperation is.  Instead this:

“Given the extraordinary height of the skyscraper, the streets and the squares down at the bottom were very far away.  Who knows how long it would take her to get there.  Yet the girl was falling”.

And I thought, this is absurd.  It doesn’t take that long to fall however high the height from which one jumps.   But Marta does keep falling.  She falls past floors and rooms with parties in full swing.  People wave and talk to her.  They comment on her looks; Marta is pretty but her clothing is modest.  They ask her to stay a while, but she says she is in a hurry.  Seems she wants to get to the entrance of the skyscraper in order to make a ball on time.  Absurd! She was already on the roof.  She notices other girls, some falling faster than her, most are prettier and in fancier clothes. It seems:

“Flights of that kind (mostly by girls, in fact) were not rare in the skyscraper and they constituted an interesting diversion for the tenants; this was also why the price of those apartments was very high”.

Well, I never! Instead of time speeding for Marta as it should, it slows. Slows, even though she comments that gravity has set in.  It slows, the day ends, years past.  Marta ages.  And she keeps falling. At a lower floor, the 28th, a couple see her falling past and the husband says:

“It’s always like that,” the man muttered.  “At these low floors only falling old women pass by.  You can see beautiful girls from the hundred-fiftieth floor up.  Those apartments don’t cost so much for nothing”.

The Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea postulated a mathematical paradox in which an arrow never reaches a tree because it has to cover any half distance over and over again.  The arrow slows down the closer it gets to the tree.  And if Marta lives in a society where falling girls are attractive sideshows then the generous author Dino Buzzatti will engineer it so that she never actually crashes down.  She just keeps falling.  The couple are denied the lower floor’s “advantage” of hearing “the thud when they touch the ground“.

The author

What a stunning inversion of my reality and my expectations!  I know that it’s a metaphor  for something.  That Marta’s decline in age, looks and emotion says a lot about the world we live in.  But I’m not up for such an analysis today. In fact, I’m speechless.  “The Falling Girl” is just a damn, fine short story. A big, poetic story of only five pages.

The translation by Lawrence Venuti cannot be faulted.  My thanks to Robert Shapiro and James Thomas, the editors of the anthology.  And thank you, Mummy. I’m really going to enjoy this book.

————–

So who exactly is Dino Buzzatti?  He was an Italian writer, painter and poet. His most famous work is Il deserto dei Tartari  which was translated into English as The Tartar Steppe (1940).  He died in 1972.  His wiki page. I think we need to add his name to the list of authors worth reading. What a mind!

Off the Shelf

Like most readers, I have lots of  unread books on my selves.  I want to read a bunch of them this year.  I really need the push.  I have chosen Off the Shelf, hosted by Bookish Ardour, out of the many TBR reading challenges available.  The challenge runs from January 1st – December 31st 2012.  My level is “Trying” which means I have to read 15 books that have been in my house prior to January 1.  Books purchased in 2012 are not eligible. Participants can change the levels at any time and overlaps with other challenges are allowed.

The Back to the Classics Challenge 2012

 My mother has been gently nudging me to fill in gaps in my reading of some English classics.  I will have to compile a reading list later in the year.  The Back to the Classics Challenge, hosted by Sarah Reads Too Much, looks exciting and is a popular choice among book bloggers. There are categories and while participants can count the books read towards other challenges, we are urged to read a different book for each category.  So, the categories and my book choices are:

• Any 19th Century Classic :  Hard Times by Charles Dickens or The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
• Any 20th Century Classic: Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
• Reread a classic of your choice:  Beloved by Toni Morrison or To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
• A Classic Play: Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw or The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekov
• Classic Mystery/Horror/Crime Fiction: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
• Classic Romance:  Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (technically not a romance but I’m determined to read it this year)
• Translated Classic:  Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol 
• Classic Award Winner:  Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 
• Read a Classic set in a Country that you (realistically speaking) will not visit during your lifetime  – The Odyssey by Homer or Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Most of these books are on my shelves already so they count towards the Off the Shelves challenge.

Tea and Books

It appears that without some prodding I will not read any of my big books.  The Tea and Books challenge, hosted by The Book Garden,  requires participants to read books with more than 700 pages.  I will read two books which makes me a Chamomile Lover. I much prefer Earl Grey but that would mean reading 6 books and I can’t possibly do that! My options are:

• The Good Soldier Svejk by Jarslav Hasek ( 864 pages)
• The Book of Memories by Peter Nadas (720 pages)
• A reread of Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong’o (784)

The 2012 Chunkster Challenge

Thankfully, books of 450 pages qualify for the Chunkster. I’m committing to four books at the Chubby Chunkster lever. My options are:

• all of the above books listed for the Tea and Books Challenge
• The Engineer of Human Souls by Josef Skvorecky (571 pages).  Sadly, Josef Skvorecky passed away this week, on Jan 4th.  He was 87 years old.  May he rest in peace.
• Paradiso by José Lezama Lima (466 pages)
• Listening Now by Anjana Appachana (514 pages)
• City Sister Silver by Jachym Topol (498 pages)
• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (560 pages)
• Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham (607 pages)

Again, that’s it for now.

Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century was an initiative by the Zimbabwe International Book Fair with encouragement from the historian Ali Mazrui.  For the purposes of this list, an African is “someone either born in Africa or who became a citizen of an African country.”

The 100-book list includes children’s literature, creative writing and non-fiction.  Only creative writing works are present below.   

I find that it omits certain people like Alex La Guma and Alifa Rifaat. Anyway, it’s a good starting place for those looking for classic African literature.  Unfortunately, some of the books are out of print.  I have culled from the overall list those works of creative writing which are still in print and/or are available at a library (hopefully) somewhere near you.

(Note: I used ImageNations’ list of the 70 creative works. The entire list, Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century,  is here.)

1. Achebe, Chinua (Nigeria)–Arrow of God
2. Achebe, Chinua (Nigeria)–Things Fall Apart
3. Aidoo, Ama Ata (Ghana)—Anowa (drama)
4. Almeida, Germano (Cape Verde)–O testamento do Sr. Napumonceno da Silva Araujo (The Last Will and Testament of Senhor da Silva Araújo)
5. Armah, Ayi Kwei (Ghana)–The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
6. Ba, Amadou Hampate (Mali)–L’etrange destin de Wangrin  (Fortunes of Wangrin)
7. Ba, Mariama (Senegal)–Une si longue lettre (So Long a Letter)
8. Ben Jelloun, Tahar (Morocco)–La nuit sacree (The Sacred Night)
9. Beti, Mongo (Cameroon)–Le pauvre Christ de Bomba (The Poor Christ of Bomba)
10. Brink, Andre (South Africa)–A Dry White Season
11. Cheney-Coker, Syl (Sierra Leone)–The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar
12. Coetzee, J.M. (South Africa)–Life and Times of Michael K
13. Couto, Mia (Mozambique)—Terra sonambula (Sleepwalking Land)
14. Dangarembga, Tsitsi (Zimbabwe)—Nervous Conditions
15. Djebar, Assia (Algeria)–L’amour, la fantasia (Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade)
16. Emecheta, Buchi (Nigeria)–The Joys of Motherhood
17. Farah, Nuruddin (Somalia)—Maps
18. Fugard, Athol (South Africa)–The Blood Knot (drama)
19. Gordimer, Nadine (South African)—Burgher’s Daughter
20. Head, Bessie (South Africa)–A Question of Power

     

21. Honwana, Bernardo (Mozambique)–Nos motamos o cao tinhoso (We Killed Mangy-Dog and Other Mozambican Stories)
22. Hove, Chenjerai (Zimbabwe)—Bones
23. Isegawa, Moses (Uganda)—Abessijnse Kronieken (Abyssinian Chronicles)
24. Joubert, Elsa (South Africa)–Die Swerdjare van Poppie Nongena (Poppie Nongena)
25. Kane, Cheikh Hamidou (Senegal)—L’aventure ambigue (Ambiguous Adventure)
26. Kourouma, Ahmadou (Cote d’Ivoire)–Le soileils des independances (Suns of Independence)
27. Laye Camara (Guinea)—L’enfant noir (The Dark Child: The Autobiography of an African Boy)
28. Magona, Sindiwe (South Africa)–Living, Loving, and Lying Awake at Night
29. Mahfouz, Naguib (Egypt)–The Cairo Trilogy
30. Marechera, Dambudzo (Zimbabwe)–House of Hunger
31. Mofolo, Thomas (Lesotho)—Chaka
32. Mutwa, Vusamazulu Credo (South Africa)–Indaba, My Children
33. Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Kenya)–Caitaana Mutharaba-ini (Devil on the Cross)
34. Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Kenya)–A Grain of Wheat
35. Niane, Djibril Tamsir (Senegal)–Soundjata ou l’epopee mandingue (Sundiata: An epic of old Mali)
36. Okibgo, Christopher (Nigeria)—Labyrinths (poetry)
37. Okri, Ben (Nigeria)–The Famished Road
38. P’Bitek, Okot (Uganda)–Song of Lawino (prose poetry)
39. Saadawi, Nawal El (Egypt)–Woman at the Point Zero
40. Salih El Tayyib (Sudan)–Season of Migration to the North
41. Sembene, Ousmane (Senegal)–Les bouts des bois de Dieu  (God’s Bits of Wood)
42. Sony Labou Tansi (Congo)–La vie et demie  (Life and a Half: A Novel)
43. Sow Fall, Aminata (Senegal)–La greve des battus (The Beggars’ Strike)
44. Soyinka, Wole (Nigeria)–Death and the King’s Horsemen (drama)
45. Tutuola, Amos (Nigeria)–The Palm-Wine Drinkard
46. Vera, Yvonne (Zimbabwe)—Butterfly Burning
47. Yacine, Kateb (Algeria)—Nedjma

What’s In A Name 5

This is one of my favorite challenges.  Between January 1 and December 31, 2012, participants are to read one book each with words in the title from the following categories:

• Topographical feature (land formation)
• Something you’d see in the sky
• Creepy Crawly
• A Type of House
• Something you’d carry in your pocket, purse or backpack
• Something you’d find on a calendar

This will be my third year of doing this challenge and I believe these categories are the hardest and trickiest to date.  I congratulate the host, Beth Fish Reads, for coming up with them.  It’s going to be fun.  As always, participants are encouraged to be creative in matching books to the categories.

100 Shots of Short

My perennial challenge to read 100 short stories in a given year.  To help with this challenge, I usually review short stories on Mondays.

The Eastern European Reading Challenge 2012

I wanted to sign up for this challenges last year but I never did.  Luckily its host, Black Sheep Dances, is continuing it in 2012.  I’m a fan of Czech literature but in recent years my readings in that area has ceased and I miss it. Participants can “shoot for 4, 8 or 12 titles and must chose books from the following countries: Croatia, Ukraine, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Hungary, Belarus, Estonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland, Czech Rep., Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Romania, Moldova, and Kosovo”. I will read 4 books and will choose from the following titles:

• Glorious Nemesis by Ladislav Klima
• The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek
• The Engineer of Human Souls  by Josef Skvorecky
• City Sister Silver  by Jachym Topol
• Buddha’s Little Finger  by Victor Pelevin
• Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin
• The Book of Memories by Peter Nadas

These are books from my shelves.  I will have to find books by women.

Wishlist Challenge 2012

I have a feature on this blog where I post a list of books, usually culled from reviews by blogger,  that I’ve added to my wishlist.  Each list contains 6- 10 books and I have 8 such lists. My entire wishlist is growing and these are books that I really want to read.  (Here is the most recent list:  Oh I should get that, or Additions to my Wishlist #8). Fortunately, Judith (Leeswammes’ Blog) has crafted the perfect challenge for my woes!  The rules basically state that:

• Challenge runs from January 1st, 2012 through December 31st, 2012 (but a technicality extends this to January 15th, 2013 ).
• Participants must read 12 books which were already on our wishlists prior to 2012

Now I have to make a list of 12 from my wishlist.  List making – it never ends!

That’s it for now.  I will probably sign up from 4 more challenges. I’m thinking of a chunkster, a classic and a quirky/fun one. All the challenges allow overlap and I’ll take full advantage of that!

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Are you signing up for any challenges this year?  Do you have any suggestions for the categories of What’s in a Name 5? BTW, is a chameleon considered a creepy crawly?