The art of the story is a never ending one when the mind is infused with the light of creative intelligence.
MORE Global Titles, African Authors!
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MORE HARVEST of expressions abound at African Books Network. The art of the story is a never ending one. It is in the creative domain of the author, the composer of craft, not only to dream dreams but, if he gets lucky, transcribe such dreams into a readable, realisable, and understandable framework for public appreciation.
The titles are wide ranging from books of poetry, short and long reads to literary criticism and scholarly essays. From historical through cultural epistemology, and with the varieties of ideas, vision and style, all adding with elegant graphic cover finishing, we can agree no less with Handelbooks that African Books titles have become important referrals in contemporary studied approaches to literature and culture. Here now are more recent books from the stable of African Books Network.
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THE DARK EDGE OF AFRICAN LITERATURE
The Dark Edge of African literature proposes arguments and theories for interpretation or exposition of Africa’s modern fictions irrespective of the language of narrative. It attempts to discern how such interpretation of contemporary history may be received from an African perspective and what the implications are for African cultures and literatures abound by such experience. Starting with a writers profile of twentieth century African dictatorships and the African writer critical approaches on Somali, Nigerian, Kenyan, Angolan, Sudanese literatures present many different, if often not recognised, materials on uprising and resistance to readers of African literature. The physical and psychological dislocation by war, the controversy about the relational quality and dependent nature of text on context, and the exigency that informs the deliberate distortions of certain figures and images by contemporary African writers are some of the issues covered in this volume.
View/ Buy The Dark Edge of African Literature
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Africa in Narratives illuminates or proves, against the backdrop of attitudes toward nations deemed ‘ethnic’ or ‘minorities’, that literature in Africa can live up to the challenge of aesthetic imagination to form an active, refreshing part of world cultural discourse. African countries have evolved imaginatively beyond their present ephemeral stages of social and political turmoil not to talk of intellectual imitations of western thought, nation literatures should be subject to the imperative of a continental cooperation.
View/ Buy Africa in Narratives
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CROSSING BORDERS IN AFRICAN LITERATURES
Crossing Borders showcases intellectual attempts to commit the process of African interrogation of postcoloniality and postmodernity to the exploration of perspectives on black identities and interactions of contemporary cultural expressions beyond the borders of Africa and across the Atlantic. We have particularised on theoretical and critical perspectives that show how the controversial influence of westernisation of Africa has demanded remedial visions and counteractive propositions to the cycle of abuses and fragmentation of the continent. We have consequently distilled some very significant historic and informative insights on modern African and black literary traditions methodically espoused to articulate the greater unity in the diversities, fusions and hybrids that have been embedded in the external and subjective realities of our universe.
View/ Buy Crossing Borders in African Literatures
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AFRICAN RYTHMNS
New Approaches to Literature
With new integrative and indigenous approaches to literary affairs the focus of this volume is on the influence of tradition in African writing. Using the work of Chinua Achebe two scholars from outside Africa offer insight on oratorical devices in modern African fiction, two chapters follow which, by fusing traditional elements in transitional societies, illustrate the cultural awareness that touch on the exalted role of the artist in their communities. The post colonial rhetoric also continues with echoes of political commitment on modern poetry – town issues in the discourse of Africa’s literary progress in the last decade. The growing concern for African youth development is at the heart of a dialogue with children’s fiction writer Anezi Okoro. Two scholars of Africa orature have written on the birth songs of Cameroonian women performers and the riddle contents of youth artists from Nigerian in a manner which recognises the immediate relevance of this cherished but neglected part of African literary aesthetics.
View/ Buy African Rhythms: New Approaches to Literature
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COUNTER DISCOURSE IN AFRICAN LITERATURE
This volume charts the widening frontiers of black literary aesthetics using the prose and dramatic fictions of writers from Africa and the African diaspora. The chapters come in two interactive phases of current critical discourses involving rejoinders from past-present concerns and issues of cultural and contemporary modernity. These studies stress the argument that African literature is hardly discussed outside contemporary history and that the reason for the apparent disconnection among groups in Africa and the diaspora can be traced to the disparate elements within the continent and diaspora.
View/ Buy Counter Discourse in African Literature
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COMPARATIVE STUDIES IN AFRICAN DIRGE POETRY
COMPARATIVE Studies in African Dirge Poetry is an important contribution to research in African literature by Nigerian scholar GMT Emezue. We meet, in this seminal work, the métier of various categories of African mourners. These are the conjurers of images and weavers of emotions manipulating human feelings and sensitivity by such admirable craftsmanship as can only be known to those gifted bards of all ages. GMT Emezue’s interest in traditional African dirge songs and modern poetry is borne from her conviction that nowhere in the corpus of oral poetry have there been more works of heightened creativity than the dirge forms. In this study of these varied emotional and artistic responses of dirge singers and composers in many parts of Africa, the author posits a theory of African dirge poetry drawn from what she identifies as ‘recurring points in the genre’. A worthwhile fruit of an assiduously pursued research revealing a lot about African interactive and unified cultures, says veteran professor Ossie Enekwe of the University of Nigeria.
View/ Buy Comparative Studies in African Dirge Poetry
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TRILOGY. CHILDREN OF KOLOKO, GAMJI COLLEGE, THE VISTOR
CHILDREN of Koloko is Ce’s first novel told through the eyes and actions of young Yoyo and his friends, Buff and Dickie. The story spans the life and habits of Koloko, a semi urban Nigerian town, and her people. In this collection Chin Ce displays the craft of dialogue in his portraiture of characters who only reflect the modern sensitivities of Africa’s dying values. Gamji College is Chin Ce’s second published prose fiction dealing with the character of the new nation states of Africa under the various civilian and military regimes that govern them in the twenty-first century. The Visitor is a story set in the future of 2040 AD where Deego views a movie and triggers off a series of experiences which draw from a history of crime and consequence, villain and victim, in a Third World country.
View/ Buy Trilogy: Children of Koloko, Gamji College, The Visitor [Fiction].
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NEW VOICES. A COLLECTION OF RECENT NIGERIAN POETRY
THE timely appearance of this anthology of African poetry has expanded the African literary frontier, marking the resurgence of new and fairly known works in the beggarly charted firmament of African poetry.
On the distinction of this collection, the editor notes: ‘We have followed an arrangement distinguished from past attempts at demarcations along themes and convenient publication periods.
The objective is to present a wide list of readable materials that will appeal to audience from wider academic levels and nationalities.
View/ Buy New Voices: A Collection of Recent Nigerian Poetry [Anthology]
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OPULICHE
OPULICHE is a work of biographical fiction by Igbo proverbs author and poet Pauline Kanene Davids.
Davids’ first novel on the life of a unique female heroine called Opuliche (Special One) is in the tradition of many feminist writings that have challenged and upstaged myths and long held notions of female silencing or lack of relevance in a traditional African environment. Tagged ‘a story of courage and triumph,’ PK’s novel is told in twenty two short chapters divided in two equal parts. They chronicle the birth, growth, training and education of the girl child who grew to be the first female undergraduate of her town. By her struggles and achievements through college, Opuliche proves the popular maxim that one’s fortune can be determined by oneself alone. The benign or otherwise malevolent circumstances all serve to help fulfil our chosen paths and destinies.
