Ellah Wakatama Allfrey

I haven’t read all of the 39 stories in this anthology – just the ones from countries that I hadn’t encountered before…

Africa 39, New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara was commissioned as a Hay Festival Project – there’s a similar collection called Beirut 39: New Writing from the Arab World. The 39 writers who are included had to be under 40, and to come from the region or diaspora. The collection includes well-known authors such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Purple Hibiscus; Half of a Yellow Sun; and Americanah) and Taiye Selasi (Ghana Must Go) but most of them are writers I’ve never heard of although many of them have published prize-winning novels and short stories. I did read Adichie’s story ‘The Shivering’ (because it was first in the collection) but my criteria for choosing which ones to read was the countries of origin, and the authors I chose came from Malawi; Ivory Coast (Cote D’Ivoire); Liberia, Angola, Uganda and Zambia.

To see my thoughts about these half dozen stories, please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/03/04/africa-39-new-writing-from-africa-south-of-t...… (més)

Africa39 is subtitled "new writing from Africa south of the Sahara", and in fact the emphasis is on Anglophone writing, other than about 4 of the 39 pieces which are translations. That narrows the geographic spread somewhat, and there seems to be a particular lean twoards Nigerian authors. Nevertheless, there is a ramge of authors writing in different styles and the book does achieve what it sets out to do, bringing new younger names to wider prominence (I'd only heard of two, and had read none before).

Inevitably with an anthology, some of the pieces will stand out more than others, and some being excerpts from novels wiill start and end abruptly. Better viewed as samples to find new authors that speak to you, rather than any kind of coherent whole.… (més)