Tag: Writing paths
Story of a quest for emancipation, from the pen of the Tanzanian Adam Shafi Adam
Political awareness and self-knowledge are the two main themes of the Indocile, a novel in Swahili which has just been translated into French. Its author Adam Shafi Adam, originally from…
At the origins of Algerian literature: five questions for Hervé Sanson
Hervé Sanson is a specialist in Maghreb literature. It recounts the conditions for the emergence of French-speaking Algerian literature in the 1950s, as the country plunged into a brutal war…
In the hustle and bustle of colonial Kenya, with Ngugi wa Thiong’o (2/2)
Dreaming in war is the French title of the childhood memories of the novelist and playwright Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Octogenarian, the writer restores in this first volume of his Memoirs…
Utopia according to the Sierra Leonean novelist Ishmaël Beah [Rediffusion]
Former child soldier, Sierra Leonean Ishmaël Beah made himself known by publishing The path traveled, a poignant autobiographical account of the Civil War, its darkness and its brutality. He is…
A writing lesson, with Mauritian novelist Shenaz Patel
Between essays, poetry and short stories, Desêtre and other fragments is a collection of literary texts proposed by the 2023 class of the writing workshop sponsored by the French Institute…
In search of the father, with the Franco-Moroccan Rachid Benzine
The Silences of the Fathers is the fourth novel from the pen of the Franco-Moroccan writer Rachid Benzine. This novel about the unsaid and resentments between father and son, against…
Tchicaya U Tam’Si a “cursed” poet: conversation with literary critic Boniface Mongo-Mboussa
Tchicaya U Tam’Si is a monument of modern African literature. A specialist in his work, the literary critic Boniface Mongo-Mboussa devotes a luminous biographical essay to him. Both narrative and…
In the company of the damned and blessed of Lagos, with Ayobami Adebayo
After making herself known by publishing a deliciously sentimental and successful first novel, the Nigerian Ayobami Adebayo delivers with In the time of the damned and the blessed his second…
Inside Zimbabwe’s political zoo, with NoViolet Bulawayo [1/2]
Zimbabwean novelist, NoViolet Bulawayo illuminates the foreign re-entry 2023 with her second novel Glory, an allegorical account of the history of Zimbabwe. Original, inventive and funny, this book is a…
In the heat of the barbaric night, with the Franco-Algerian Zadig Hamroune
Lovers of Caravaggio, Flaubert and Mozart, Zadig Hamroune delivers with The barbaric night a lyrical autobiographical novel, structured as a substitute for impressionist frescoes where the images have the color…