#AfricaMonth
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thedc3.bsky.social
For the last day of May, we want to take time to highlight our member @kaemsi.bsky.social for Africa Month! Learn about Africa Month and Kaemsi (she/her) here: thedc3.carrd.co#africamonth

Kaemsi is also live on Twitch!
twitch.tv/kaemsi
The Disabled Content Creators Collective
The DC3 Stream Team Homepage!
thedc3.carrd.co
June 1, 2025 at 12:03 AM
atlanticfellows.bsky.social
Last May, Atlantic Fellows met in Nairobi to discuss dismantling inequities across Africa.

For #AfricaMonth, hear a panel on Regional Integration within the African Continental Free Trade Area, focused on the cotton, textile and apparel value chain.

soundcloud.com/atlanticfell...
African Regional Convening - Nairobi, Kenya - May 2024 | Regional Integration within the AfCFTA
In May 2024, ATLANTIC FELLOWS from across AFRICA gathered in NAIROBI, KENYA to discuss cross-program, cross-continental collective action needed to dismantle inequities on the continent. The Convening
soundcloud.com
May 28, 2025 at 3:45 PM
thandomzb.bsky.social
Closing #AfricaMonth with an inspiring conversation for every young leader💬
Tune in to the latest episode of In Her Words with Amogelang Chikunyana — Chairperson at African Union ECOSOCC — as we discuss youth power, policy, and inclusive leadership across Africa!

youtu.be/rfE_ZaydMd8?...
Young Voices, Big Impact: The Power of Representation in African Policy with Amogelang Chikunyana
YouTube video by Thando Mazibuko Presents: In Her Words
youtu.be
May 28, 2025 at 1:01 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 542

#AfricaMonth #AfricanWriters
THE IN-BETWEEN WORLD OF VIKRAM LALL by M.G. Vassanji (2003) "My name is Vikram Lall. I have the distinction of having been numbered one of Africa's most corrupt men . . ." Vikram Lall inhabits an 'in-between world': between his ancestral home in India and the Kenya he loves passionately; between his infamous African past and his uncertain future in exile. In this sweeping and sumptuous novel, M. G. Vassanji weaves a rich tapestry of vivid characters, real and imagined, in a land caught between colonialism and independence, between escape from political terror and a seemingly inevitable return to Africa, a return that may cost Vikram Lall dearly . . .
May 27, 2025 at 8:23 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 541

#AfricaMonth #AfricanWriters
FEATHER WOMAN OF THE JUNGLE by Amos Tutuola (1962) In this novel the people of a Yoruba village gather on ten memorable nights to hear the stories and wisdom of their chief. They learn of his adventures, among them his encounter with the Jungle Witch and her ostrich, his visit to the town of the water people and his imprisonment by the Goddess of Diamonds. Each night the people return, eager to discover if there is a happy ending. Amos Tutuola (1920-1997) was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria. His first novel, THE PALM-WINE DRINKARD, was acquired by T. S. Eliot and published by Faber in 1952.
May 27, 2025 at 5:57 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 540

#AfricaMonth #AfricanWriters
QUILLS OF DESIRE by Binwell Sinyangwe (1993) Wiza is a very ambitious, highly intelligent student, who is in his final year at school, and determined to follow his brother's example and go to university in the UK. Temperamental, idealistic and passionate, there are many pitfalls on the road to success, as he provokes the hostility of the headmaster and the jealousy of less able colleagues. Finallly they get the better of him and Wiza has to try to adapt either to a world he despises, a world of poverty and underprivilege, or to a world where traditional customs and values prevail. In this book Binwell Sinyangwe has drawn out the pressures and the complexity of choices and values that face many keen but poor young African students in polities riven with postcolonial social and economic inequalities. QUILLS OF DESIRE IS written with clarity, wry humour and compassion. Binwell Sinyangwe is a Zambian novelist who studied industrial economics in Bucharest, and worked in the Zambian public and private sectors.
May 26, 2025 at 7:11 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 539

#AfricaMonth #AfricanWriters
EMERGENCY by Richard Rive (1964) The three days in March 1960 between the Sharpeville shootings and the declaration of the first State of Emergency in apartheid South Africa are crucial ones in the life of Andrew Dreyer, a young Cape Town school teacher who is classified as 'Coloured' by the government. One of six children born in District Six, he ran away the night his mother died, and went to stay with his married sister in the neighbouring middle-class suburb of Walmer Estate. It wasn't until he went to university that he began to shape his own life and grapple with the political issues of his country. By the time of the 1960 troubles, he is involved enough to be pursued by the Special Branch; and goaded by the critical events of late March he finally plunges into direct political action in a moment of personal breakthrough. EMERGENCY has been hailed as "the finest Bildungsroman in our national literature. In form alone it is a masterpiece of controlled structural ironies" (UPFRONT, 5 October 1986). First published in 1964 and banned in South Africa until the late 1980s, this assured, intelligent and entertaining novel was Richard Rive's debut. Richard Rive was the author of WRITING BLACK; ADVANCE, RETREAT; 'BUCKINGHAM PALACE', DISTRICT SIX; and EMERGENCY CONTINUED (written during and set in the 1980s states of emergencies declared by the white supremacist Botha government during the violent death rattle of the apartheid tyranny, and published posthumously in 1990). He also edited the first volume of the letters of Olive Schreiner. He was murdered in his home in 1989. Cover illustration by Tyrone Appollis.
May 26, 2025 at 6:11 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 538

#AfricaMonth #AfricanWriters
MYSTERIES FROM AYUKABA VILLAGE by Daniel Ojong (2009) These delightful and haunting stories are written from the centre of Cameroonian village life, where tradition and modernity intersect. Ayukaba village is populated by vivid characters who contend with the encroachment of the outside world, but who are also rooted in a rich matrix of local knowledge, beliefs and traditions. This world is subtly touched by 'magic' and by the uncanny. Here, the everyday is extraordinary: past and present meld; real and imagined experiences collide and intermingle; ordinary people perform heroic deeds. At the heart of each tale is a mystery. In one, a loving son completes an impossible journey to his father's funeral, and discovers that the power of sorrow can momentarily challenge the finality of death. In another, two old friends on a hunting trip find their prey grotesquely transformed into a creature that is half man, half beast. In many of the stories, the boundaries between the living and the dead are porous: a long-dead boy is discovered living happily in a neighbouring village; or a river must be appeased with gifts to relinquish the body it has swallowed. Through the evocative interplay of shadow and light, sorrow and laughter, Daniel Ojong combines dark whimsicality and humour with poignant magic realism. Cover illustration by Bambo Sibiya
May 26, 2025 at 5:57 AM
kaemsi.bsky.social
SCHEDULE 🧵
Times UTC+2

Tue Thu 11am Office Hours w/ #SpiritCityLofiSessions

Tue 6pm #Enshrouded #PRCopy @terminalsio.bsky.social @keengamesstudio.bsky.social w/ @sunberry.bsky.social

Wed 7pm #AssassinsCreedOrigins #AfricaMonth

Fri 7pm #Veilguard

Sat 11am #LoveAndDeepspace main story & event
Schedule: week of 26 May to 1 June 2025. Africa Month. All times in UTC +2. Streams on twitch for came sea. 27 and 29 May 11am Office Hours with Spirit City Lofi Sessions; 27 May 6pm Enshrouded (PR copy) with Sun berry. 28 May 7pm Assassin's Creed Origins. 30 May 7pm Dragon Age the Veilguard. 31 May 6pm Love and Deepspace main story, maybe also event. Image includes an orange and blue ombre background and Kaemsi’s logo watermark: a rounded ‘k’ with teeth in the side vee and the stem of the letter carrying a crown. Also the text Africa Month next to the African Union icon - the African continent outline formed by the negative space in a white spot, and yellow stars forming a circle frame, all under a forest green background.
May 25, 2025 at 11:00 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 537

#AfricaMonth #AfricanWriters #AfricaDay
INKINSELA YASEMGUNGUNDLOVU by Sibusiso Nyembezi (1961; translated from isiZulu by Sandile Ngidi as THE RICH MAN OF PIETERMARITZBURG in 2008) Le noveli ixwayisa ngobugebengu. Ixoxa ngoNdebenkulu owayehamba ethi yena usiza abantu ngokubathengisela izinkomo zabo kubelungu bezindali nabamasilaha kanti uyabagebenga. ——— A suave urban swindler invites himself to the village of Nyanyadu in the sleepy hinterland of rural South Africa where he dupes a well-meaning but naive local notable into a deceitful partnership. The promise of untold riches for a community living off the land as apartheid encroaches on their way of life leads almost to disaster. This is the familiar story of a man who has adopted the ways of the 'white man' to further his own nefarious schemes. Yet this tale does not warn about the loss of a culture, but celebrates the sense of community that apartheid assaulted - but failed to break. It is a poignant yet humorous glimpse of a rural way of life that is far from forgotten.
May 25, 2025 at 5:47 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Some life-saving books treasured, beloved or enjoyed by the Czar of All the Tolstoyan Multiverses over the decades and in the many incarnations of the #LateImperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

📚💙 📚🖋 536

#AfricaMonth #AfricanWriters #AfricaDay
WEDDING SONG by Naguib Mahfouz (1984 [1981]; translated by Olive E. Kenny from AFRAH AL-QUBBAH; edited and revised by Mursi Saad El Din & John Rodenbeck) This is the story of a theatrical family of Cairo, whose playwright son exposes its most intimate and sordid secrets on the stage in his first play. The story is told four times from four different viewpoints: that of the family acquaintance, the father, the mother, and Abbas, the son, who is the central character. The novel focuses on how time works changes, transforming love into hate, beauty into ugliness, loyalty into treachery, and idealism into debauchery. Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006) wrote over thirty novels and more than a hundred short stories. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. He lived in the Cairo suburb of Agouza with his wife and two daughters.
May 25, 2025 at 4:19 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 535

#AfricaMonth #AfricanWriters #AfricaDay
THE JEALOUS LOVER by Larbi Layachi (1986; dictated to Katherine Harer in English) In his non-fiction book, THE JEALOUS LOVER, Larbi Layachi unsparingly depicts his years as a teenager in Tangier, Morocco. Banished by his stepfather to sleep in a leaky shed where he all but drowns, the boy leaves home. At twelve he sets out on his own, resting at night on café floors, and fishing for a living on the beach. By turns, he smuggles contraband, meets a Spanish girl and falls in love, serves two terms in Tangier jails, oversees a beach café, and vends black market cigarettes in alleys. The troubled life he leads and the men he meets combine to form a vivid tale. THE JEALOUS LOVER continues in the vein of Larbi Layachi's previous best-seller, A LIFE FULL OF HOLES (1964).
May 25, 2025 at 2:19 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 534

#AfricaMonth #AfricanWriters #AfricaDay
WHAT THE DAY OWES THE NIGHT by Yasmina Khadra (2010 [2008]; translated by Frank Wynne from CE QUE LE JOUR DOIT À LA NUIT) "If a woman loves you, Younes, if she truly loves you, and if you have the wisdom to appreciate this great privilege, then there is no god to touch you." When Younes is just nine years old his family's livelihood is destroyed and they are forced to find work in the grimly impoverished Algerian slum of Jenane Jato. Obsessively proud yet overwhelmed by the prospect of having to start again, Younes's father reluctantly agrees to entrust him to his brother, a wealthy pharmacist who raises Younes in the vibrant, colourful and affluent European town of Río Salado. Renamed Jonas, he begins a new life and forges a unique friendship with a group of boys, an enduring bond that nothing – not even the Algerian Revolt – will shake. Yet with the return to Rio Salado of Emilie – a beautiful, beguiling young woman who captures the hearts of all who see her – an epic love story is set in motion that will challenge the complicity of these four boys and force Jonas to confront the burden of having to choose between two worlds: Algerian or European; loyal or selfish; past or present; surrendering to fate or grasping control of his own destiny. In WHAT THE DAY OWES THE NIGHT, Yasmina Khadra has written a majestic novel of colonial Algeria, a turbulent, passionate, heart-rending tale about a country beset by crisis. Set against the war of independence and a harsh yet mystic landscape, Khadra's dazzling prose and consummate compassion illuminate the terrible rift between lovers, family and friends who love the same country in sometimes incompatible ways and for sometimes very different reasons. Yasmina Khadra is the nom de plume of the former Algerian army officer, Mohammed Moulessehoul, who took a feminine pseudonym to avoid submitting his manuscripts for approval by the army. He is the author of five other books published in English. He lives in France.
May 25, 2025 at 1:23 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 533

#AfricaMonth #AfricanWriters
TALES FROM SOUTHERN AFRICA translated and retold by A.C. Jordan (2004 [1973]) The spirit of isiXhosa speaking polities was enshrined in oral traditions through which, from generation to generation, communities transmitted customs, values, and norms. The poet and the storyteller stood at the centre of these traditions, as communities' chroniclers, entertainers, and collective conscience. The novelist and critic A.C. Jordan was an enthusiastic observer of the customs and history of the linguistic community from which he came, particularly of the oral narrative performances he witnessed first as a child, and later during his many journeys throughout South Africa. Given the disruptive and often destructive consequences of colonialism (and the extension and intensification of these under apartheid), and the impact of increased literacy among and incorporation into twentieth century mass mediated rearticulation of mass culture, traditional storytellers, and the oral tradition itself, as elsewhere in the world, have almost been lost to to many South Africans. Jordan's vivid written translations and versions of some of the best-loved folk tales in isiXhosa, with their heroes and monsters, children lost and found, wayward adolescents and their rites of passage, are a celebration of the vibrant heart of the traditions of the peoples of the southeastern corner of Southern Africa. TALES FROM SOUTHERN AFRICA was first published in the United States in 1973; the first South African edition appeared in 2004.
May 25, 2025 at 11:22 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 532

#AfricaMonth #AfricanWriters
BONES by Chenjerai Hove (1988) In 1989 BONES won the prestigious Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. The citation described it as "a powerful, moving and ambitious novel, written with exceptional linguistic control, plumbing the depths of human suffering but The novel provides a sensitive evocation of Marita, a farmworker, whose only son joined the freedom fighters in Zimbabwe's war of liberation. Marita's courage and endurance is reconstructed through the memories of those who knew her, in a poetic language rich in Shona idiom. Every recollection gives texture and weight to the portrayal of a woman whose 'simple life' was a battlefield of hardship and oppression. Chenjerai Hove's first novel in English was hailed by critics as "a work of great generosity, humour and affection", reminds us that many of our moral choices are often contained in the minutiae and habits of everyday life.
May 25, 2025 at 8:43 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 531

#AfricaMonth #AfricanWriters
JUMP AND OTHER STORIES by Nadine Gordimer (1991) "A short story occurs, in the imaginative sense. To write one is to try to express from a situation in the exterior or interior world the life-giving drop – sweat, tear, semen, saliva – that will spread an intensity on the page, burn a hole in it."—Nadine Gordimer Through these magnificently crafted stories a reader embarks on journeys across cultures, from the war in Mozambique to the beaches of the South of France, from the affluent suburbs of Johannesburg to the back streets of London, over political territories from the Underground to revolution. Many of the settings are South African, yet such a variety of voices is heard: the child fleeing from civil war through the wild animals of the Kruger Park, the carefree teenager who falls innocently in love with a terrorist, the middle-aged cynic who puts his find of a valuable ring on a beach to a strange purpose. There is a grim fairy tale about total security systems in the happily-ever-after, the parable of a Jewish watchmaker emigrating from pogroms to a country where others are being persecuted, the rites of passage into manhood by parachute and betrayal, and the ironies of an opulent, 'safe house' love affair. This is an evocative, enriching, collection as attuned to the private dramas of peace as to the rumblings of war at the end of the twentieth century.
May 24, 2025 at 6:16 PM
kaemsi.bsky.social
Little reminder that fundraiser is tomorrow, but also change of plans-:

I need to push start to 4pm. Something unexpected has come up 😓

BUT ready for dono shenans while playing Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan, made by Kiro'o Games in Cameroon so come join for #AfricaMonth

join.aurionverse.com
May 24, 2025 at 5:12 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 530

#AfricaMonth #AfricanWriters
GIFTS by Nuruddin Farah (1993) In this beguiling story of a Somali family and the struggles of its powerful matriarch to keep it whole, Nuruddin Farah delves into the ways people—families, communities, countries—are bound together by what they are willing to give and what they choose to receive. Duniya is raising her twins as a single mother and working long hours as a nurse at a Mogadiscio hospital, certain she can do just fine without anyone's help. But the fragile self-sufficiency of her world has been rocked by her daughter's latest act of rebellion: bringing home a mysterious foundling infant. And when Duniya impulsively accepts the favour of a ride to work from a charming, wealthy, and romantically interested family friend, she opens up a part of herself that she closed off long ago. Instantly, her whole life is turned upside down. Meanwhile, the hospital where Duniya works is under siege by a desperate population that has been ravaged by war, drought, disease, and famine. Somalia has been invaded by relief organisations from America and Europe, but many Somalis chafe at being burdened with debts they can never hope to repay, and at having to accept tainted goods for which they're obliged to show gratitude. They, like Duniya, however, are being forced to reexamine old choices and to make new ones that reveal what they truly care about. With lyrical and luxuriant prose, Farah weaves a spellbinding tapestry of dreams, memories, family lore, folktales, and journalistic accounts. A master of mingling the intensely personal with the intently political, he explores how histories—global, familial, personal—are molded from the stories we tell and retell. In Farah's novel, Duniya's tale unfolds against the backdrop of Somalia's struggles such that it becomes emblematic of an entire people.
May 24, 2025 at 4:57 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 529

#AfricaMonth #AfricanWriters
THE BRIDE PRICE by Buchi Emecheta (1976) 'Always remember that you are mine', says Aku-nna's father before he dies. But as Aku-nna approaches womanhood her ambitious uncle makes plans to marry her off for a high bride price. Caught in a web of tradition, lust and greed, Aku-nna falls for the one young man she is forbidden to love.
May 24, 2025 at 1:00 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 528

#AfricaMonth #AfricanWriters
BEYOND THE HORIZON by Amma Darko (1995 [1991]; first published in German translation as DER VERKAUFTE TRAUM) Gazing at her naked body in the mirror, Mara reflects on her transformation from naive Ghanaian village girl into a prostitute in a German brothel. Mara has been deceived by her husband, Akobi, into coming to Europe to find a 'paradise', but as the truth about Akobi and her new life unfolds she realises she is trapped. The expectations of her family back in Ghana force her to remain, living a lie. BEYOND THE HORIZON is a gripping and provocative story of the plight of an African woman in Europe, caught in a web of power and control woven by her husband and the racist society which can only account for her by exoticising and hypersexualising her, a place in which that husband wishes to survive and succeed, and the false hopes of those she has left behind.
May 24, 2025 at 11:57 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 527

#AfricaMonth #AfricanWriters
UNCONFESSED by Yvette Christiansë (2006) They called her Sila van den Kaap, slave woman of Jacobus Stephanus van der Wat of Plettenberg Bay. They called her murderer, and demanded that she explain her act of violence. In response, she uttered one strange, powerful word and shut her mouth to them. She was condemned to death, but her sentence was commuted to a lengthy term on Robben Island in Table Bay. Sila spends her days in the prison quarry, breaking stones for Cape Town's streets and walls. She remembers the day her childhood in Mozambique ended, when slave catchers came "whipping the air and the ground and we were like deer whipped into the smaller and smaller circle of our fear". She remembers her masters, especially Oumiesies, who granted Sila her freedom in her will. And she remembers how Theron, Oumiesies's son, destroyed the will and, with it, Sila's life. Christiansë's novel is inspired by events recorded in nineteenth century court records.
May 24, 2025 at 9:30 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 526

#AfricaMonth #AfricanWriters
THE SUN HATH LOOKED UPON ME by Calixthe Beyala (1996 [1987]; translated by Marjolijn de Jager from C'EST LE SOLEIL QUI M'A BRÛLÉE) Nineteen-year-old Ateba lives in a slum neighbourhood in the African city of Awu. Abandoned by her mother, Ateba lodges with her aunt. Caught between the expectations of her aunt, who seeks a high bride-price for her, and the violent threats of her suitor, Ateba begins to lose her fragile hold on sanity. This shocking novel deconstructs the representation of African women in négritude literature. Beyala's work explores the subjecitivity of those who have learnt the emotional and psychological effects of life on the margins of cities. Calixthe Beyala, born in Cameroon, is the author of LOUKOUM and YOUR NAME SHALL BE TANGA.
May 24, 2025 at 7:39 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 525

#AfricaMonth #AfricanWriters
GOLD DUST by Ibrahim al-Koni (2008 [1990]; translated by Elliott Colla from AL-TIBR) Rejected by his clan and hunted by the kin of the man he killed, Ukhayyad and his thoroughbred camel flee across the desolate Tuareg deserts of the Sahara. Between bloody wars against the Italians in the north and famine raging in the south, Ukhayyad rides for the remote rock caves of Jebel Hasawna. Alone in the desert, haunted by the prophetic cave paintings of ancient hunting scenes and the cries of djinn in the night, Ukhayyad awaits the arrival of his pursuers and their insatiable hunger for blood and gold. GOLD DUST is a classic story of the brotherhood between man and beast, the thread of companionship that is all the difference between life and death in the desert. It is a story of the fight to endure in a world of seemingly limitless and waterless wastes, and a paable of the struggle to survive in the most dangerous landscape of all: human society.
May 24, 2025 at 5:52 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

💙📚 🖋📚 524

#AfricaMonth #AfricanWriters
SHIRLEY, GOODNESS & MERCY: A MEMOIR by Chris van Wyk (2004) A finely detailed account of one boy's special relationship with the decidedly quirky relatives, friends and neighbours who made up his community in the racially segregated colonial and apartheid city of Johannesburg, and of the important coping role that laughter and humour played during the years he spent in the areas of Newclare, Coronationville and Riverlea ("townships" designated for members of the population group invented by colonial administration and to which his family was assigned by the white supremacist apartheid regime which blighted South Africa from shortly after the Second World War's end for nearly half a century). It is a truly remarkable memoir, at once both thought-provoking and vastly entertaining, focusing on structures of feeling and intimate memory amid the sulphur-tainted winds of history.
May 23, 2025 at 2:59 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
A vaguely (not so) random selection of books beloved, enjoyed, or absolutely bowled over by across the decades and in the various incarnations of the #LatelmperialLibrary.

🫅🏾📚🤓📖📝🗝🚪🌳🌍

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#AfricaMonth #AfricanWriters
THE UNCERTAINTY OF HOPE by Valerie Tagwira (2008 [2006]) This novel is set in the densely populated suburb of Mbare, Harare, and explores the complex lives of Onai Moyo, a market woman and mother of three children, and her best friend Katy Nguni, who is a vendor and black-market currency dealer. Tagwirs offerd an insight into the challenges faced by a wide cross section of Zimbabwe, where life expectancy has dropped to 37, and where people survive by their wits, their labour, and through friendship. The events take place in 2005, against the shadow of Operation Murambatsvina, the Mugabe government's urban clearance programme which created over half a million internally displaced people and destroyed the livelihoods of many. With depth and sensitivity, Tagwira pulls these many threads into a densely woven novel that provides us with some of the many faces of contemporary Zimbabwe. Valerie Tagwira is a Zimbabwean medical doctor and an author. THE UNCERTAINTY OF HOPE won the National Arts Merit Award (NAMA) in Zimbabwe in 2008.
May 23, 2025 at 1:22 PM