Category: Books
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Stanelake Samkange – A Reconstruction
On Trial for My Country When the Ides of March claimed of Zimbabwe’s most accomplished man of letters, Prof Stanelake Samkange, in 1988, former Chief Justice Enoch Dumbutshena’s graveside eulogy attacked Zimbabwe for ignoring its best writers. Samkange was a first generation African novelist, public intellectual, journalist, nationalist, educationist, ethnographer, philosopher and historian. Ironically, the…
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It’s Political Economy, Stupid!
Mukoma WaNgugi (Photo Credit: thephoto.co.uk) A debate is current in literary circles, with authors and critics exchanging fire on multiple fronts. The object of controversy is what should constitute African literature. Is there a set template to which candidates must comply to qualify as African writers? If so, who defines it and what horizons does…
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Saints and Sinners in Literature
Leo Tolstoy’s Resurrection If I had a double portion of Leo Tolstoy’s dynamic facility in prose, I would ferment an urgent awakening in contemporary literature. The grand prodigy of Russian literature, who strode out his peers in both literary prowess and spiritual devotion, was lauded in life and honoured in posterity but his ideas are…
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Chinua Achebe and the African Renaissance
Chinua Achebe (Photo Credit: Africascountry.com) Chinua Achebe commands the presidium of African literature. From varied domains, as an author, public intellectual and elder statesman, his work provoked a cultural revolt that became the framing point for later African voices. The Nigerian prodigy’s death on March 21 this year occasioned a flare of indignation over his…
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Mind Your Language
Ngugi WaThiongo (Photo Credit: BBC) Book: Indigenous Language Creation Author: Arthur TP Makanda Publisher: African Institute for Culture, Peace and Tolerance Studies (2013) The keynote medium of culture is language. Legacy, knowledge, beliefs, ideas, values, art, customs and tradition are assigned, packaged, encoded, fortified, updated, adapted, accessed transposed and fermented in the dynamic repositories of…
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Charles Mungoshi Breaks Sabbatical
Mungoshi’s latest novel Branching Streams Flow in the Dark Author: Charles Mungoshi Publisher: Mungoshi Press (2013) Reviewed by Stanely Mushava A range of genius runs the tapestry of Charles Mungoshi’s latest novel Branching Streams Flow in the Dark. The novel has occasioned a flare of rave endorsements from such notables as Lizzy Attree, Oliver Mtukudzi…
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Think Like a Saint, Write Like a Genius
COUNT LEV NIKOLAYEVICH TOLSTOY If I had a double portion of Leo Tolstoy’s dynamic facility in prose, I would ferment an urgent revolution in contemporary art. The grand prodigy of world literature, who soars above his peers in both literary prowess and spiritual devotion, was lauded in life and honoured in posterity but his ideas…
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Piracy Upends Book Sector
Men of letters are often at home at the base of the class pyramid. Figureheads of world literature, notably Leo Tolstoy, Emile Dickinson, William Blake and Dambudzo Marechera, invoked poverty and isolation to make a statement. The occasional appearance of a writer-tramp who defies convention and plies his trade from the peripheries is a…
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Homage to Migrant Labourers
Fraternity is one road less travelled. The dispersion of Africans far and wide to eke out sustainable livelihoods is a leap into the night, with millions detached from their cradles longing for an anchor in the face of alienation and deprivation. Notable feats, from the outset of history, owe their actualisation to seldom acknowledged contributions…
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A Dead End for Zimbabwean Literature?
Zimbabwean literature is poised for an austere patch. The local book industry has ceded its traditional eminence and is hanging on a wafer-thin lifeline in the face of a digital holocaust. Stakeholder efforts have stretched to the end of the tether. Writers are grappling for an urgent rescue package to bail out their endangered…
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