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African Book Festival in Berlin 2022. A Report. engl/ger
Yesterday.Today.Tomorrow. That was the leitmotif of this year’s African Book Festival in Berlin. Finally without any restrictions, finally everything live and on the spot. The joy about this could be felt everywhere when you were out and about at the festival. Cultureafrica was media partner this year, but this should not distort the view when reporting about this event. By Hans Hofele/cultureafrica.net FÜR DEUTSCHE VERSION NACH UNTEN SCROLLEN But: Where does one start to report? About a literary event that is more than the sum of its events? Even in retrospect, it was a very intense long weekend. If you count the launch of InterKontinental on Thursday evening, it was four days in which you could get involved with…
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Centering Black Literature: An Interview with James Murua- engl/ger
In the run-up to the African Book Festival in Berlin, of which cultureafrica.net is a media partner, there will be a series of interviews with participants and experts in the African literary scene. This time it is James Murua. He is one of the most influential bloggers in the African literary scene. He has attended many literary festivals, both nationally and internationally. His website jamesmurua.com is one of the most successful on the continent. James Murua lives with his wife, the writer Zukiswa Wanner, in Nairobi, Kenya. The interview was conducted during the Heroe Book Fair literary festival in Mombasa.
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Ugandas First Woman – Author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi at the African Book Festival – Interview ger/engl
What happens to a book when you address Africa as a readership? Africans should write the way they want to write. In Africa, we were brought up as if we were Europeans too. So when Europeans write, they don't think about Africans and whether we understand them. But when we write as Africans, we think about whether they will understand the way we write." If we Europeans think that we can read and understand Shakespeare, why was it not possible for the Germans, the English to read and understand how I write for Africans....
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African Book Festival Berlin: Interview with South African curator Lidudumalingani_engl/ger
This year’s edition of the African Book Festival Berlin has an impressive list of authors who will take part in the festival. Margaret Busby will be there, Igoni Barrett, JJ Bola, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi and many more. Lidudumalingani Mqombothi is this year’s curator of the festival, which takes place from August 26th to 28th in Berlin. The native South African sees himself as a multimedia artist. Writing, photography, filmmaking. In 2016 he won the renowned Caine Prize for African Writing with the short story „Memories We Lost“. Two months before the festival, Hans Hofele didn’t just talk to him about literature. FÜr DEUTSCHE VERSION NACH UNTEN SCROLLEN HH: You once said “photography is like poetry in a picture”. You…
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Ally Abdallah: The Book, the Festival, Zanzibar and the Nobel Prize winner – Interview engl/ger
It is a great event, a great surprise that Ally Abdalla has managed to pull off. For the first literature festival in Zanzibar, Ally was able to attract no less than the current winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Abdulraznak Gurnah. For Gurnah, who is from Zanzibar but had to leave the island in the 1960s, it is a triumphant event to be back. At the Heroe Book Fair in Mombasa, I spoke with author, filmmaker and organizer of the new cultural event in Zanzibar, Ally Abdalla.
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From Capital of Books to an International Book Event: Les 72 Heurs du Livre in Guinea- engl/ger/fre
This week, the book fair "72 Heures du Livre" starts for the 14th time in the capital Conakry of the West African Guinea. Book fair? Guinea? Exactly. What started here 14 years ago on a small scale has since developed into an international cultural event that has become known far beyond the borders of Guinea. In 2017, Conakry was even awarded the title "Capital du Livre" by UNESCO. An enormous boost and impetus for even more book-related activities.
