Author: Nadifa Mohamed
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429979798
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
Yemen, 1935. Jama is a "market boy," a half-feral child scavenging with his friends in the dusty streets of a great seaport. For Jama, life is a thrilling carnival, at least when he can fill his belly. When his mother—alternately raging and loving—dies young, she leaves him only an amulet stuffed with one hundred rupees. Jama decides to spend her life's meager savings on a search for his never-seen father; the rumors that travel along clan lines report that he is a driver for the British somewhere in the north. So begins Jama's extraordinary journey of more than a thousand miles north all the way to Egypt, by camel, by truck, by train, but mostly on foot. He slings himself from one perilous city to another, fiercely enjoying life on the road and relying on his vast clan network to shelter him and point the way to his father, who always seems just a day or two out of reach. In his travels, Jama will witness scenes of great humanity and brutality; he will be caught up in the indifferent, grinding machine of war; he will crisscross the Red Sea in search of working papers and a ship. Bursting with life and a rough joyfulness, Black Mamba Boy is debut novelist Nadifa Mohamed's vibrant, moving celebration of her family's own history.
Black Mamba Boy
Author: Nadifa Mohamed
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429979798
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
Yemen, 1935. Jama is a "market boy," a half-feral child scavenging with his friends in the dusty streets of a great seaport. For Jama, life is a thrilling carnival, at least when he can fill his belly. When his mother—alternately raging and loving—dies young, she leaves him only an amulet stuffed with one hundred rupees. Jama decides to spend her life's meager savings on a search for his never-seen father; the rumors that travel along clan lines report that he is a driver for the British somewhere in the north. So begins Jama's extraordinary journey of more than a thousand miles north all the way to Egypt, by camel, by truck, by train, but mostly on foot. He slings himself from one perilous city to another, fiercely enjoying life on the road and relying on his vast clan network to shelter him and point the way to his father, who always seems just a day or two out of reach. In his travels, Jama will witness scenes of great humanity and brutality; he will be caught up in the indifferent, grinding machine of war; he will crisscross the Red Sea in search of working papers and a ship. Bursting with life and a rough joyfulness, Black Mamba Boy is debut novelist Nadifa Mohamed's vibrant, moving celebration of her family's own history.
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429979798
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
Yemen, 1935. Jama is a "market boy," a half-feral child scavenging with his friends in the dusty streets of a great seaport. For Jama, life is a thrilling carnival, at least when he can fill his belly. When his mother—alternately raging and loving—dies young, she leaves him only an amulet stuffed with one hundred rupees. Jama decides to spend her life's meager savings on a search for his never-seen father; the rumors that travel along clan lines report that he is a driver for the British somewhere in the north. So begins Jama's extraordinary journey of more than a thousand miles north all the way to Egypt, by camel, by truck, by train, but mostly on foot. He slings himself from one perilous city to another, fiercely enjoying life on the road and relying on his vast clan network to shelter him and point the way to his father, who always seems just a day or two out of reach. In his travels, Jama will witness scenes of great humanity and brutality; he will be caught up in the indifferent, grinding machine of war; he will crisscross the Red Sea in search of working papers and a ship. Bursting with life and a rough joyfulness, Black Mamba Boy is debut novelist Nadifa Mohamed's vibrant, moving celebration of her family's own history.
The Orchard of Lost Souls
Author: Nadifa Mohamed
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374709920
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
From one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists comes The Orchard of Lost Souls, a stunning novel illuminating Somalia's tragic civil war. It is 1987 and Hargeisa waits. Whispers of revolution travel on the dry winds, but still the dictatorship remains secure. Soon, through the eyes of three women, we will see Somalia fall. Nine-year-old Deqo has left the vast refugee camp where she was born, lured to the city by the promise of her first pair of shoes. Kawsar, a solitary widow, is trapped in her little house with its garden clawed from the desert, confined to her bed after a savage beating in the local police station. Filsan, a young female soldier, has moved from Mogadishu to suppress the rebellion growing in the north. As the country is unraveled by a civil war that will shock the world, the fates of these three women are twisted irrevocably together. Nadifa Mohamed was born in Hargeisa and was exiled before the outbreak of war. In The Orchard of Lost Souls, she returns to Hargeisa in her imagination. Intimate, frank, brimming with beauty and fierce love, this novel is an unforgettable account of ordinary lives lived in extraordinary times.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374709920
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
From one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists comes The Orchard of Lost Souls, a stunning novel illuminating Somalia's tragic civil war. It is 1987 and Hargeisa waits. Whispers of revolution travel on the dry winds, but still the dictatorship remains secure. Soon, through the eyes of three women, we will see Somalia fall. Nine-year-old Deqo has left the vast refugee camp where she was born, lured to the city by the promise of her first pair of shoes. Kawsar, a solitary widow, is trapped in her little house with its garden clawed from the desert, confined to her bed after a savage beating in the local police station. Filsan, a young female soldier, has moved from Mogadishu to suppress the rebellion growing in the north. As the country is unraveled by a civil war that will shock the world, the fates of these three women are twisted irrevocably together. Nadifa Mohamed was born in Hargeisa and was exiled before the outbreak of war. In The Orchard of Lost Souls, she returns to Hargeisa in her imagination. Intimate, frank, brimming with beauty and fierce love, this novel is an unforgettable account of ordinary lives lived in extraordinary times.
Conscripts of Migration
Author: Christopher Ian Foster
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496824237
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 164
Book Description
In Conscripts of Migration: Neoliberal Globalization, Nationalism, and the Literature of New African Diasporas, author Christopher Ian Foster analyzes increasingly urgent questions regarding crises of global immigration by redefining migration in terms of conscription and by studying contemporary literature. Reporting on immigration, whether liberal or conservative, popular or scholarly, leaves out the history in which the Global North helped create outward migration in the Global South. From histories of racial capitalism, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and imperialism to contemporary neoliberal globalization and the resurgence of xenophobic nationalism, countries in the Global North continue to devastate and destabilize the Global South. Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, in different ways, police the effects of their own global policies at their borders. Foster provides a substantial study of a new body of contemporary African diasporic literature called migritude literature. Migritude indicates the work and ideas of a disparate yet distinct group of younger African authors born after independence in the 1960s. Most often migritude authors have lived both in and outside Africa and narrate the experiences of migration under the pressures of globalization. They also emphasize that immigration itself and stereotypes of the immigrant are entangled with the history of colonialism. Authors like Fatou Diome, Shailja Patel, Abdourahman Waberi, Cristina Ali Farah, and others confront critical issues of migrancy, diaspora, departure, return, racism, identity, gender, sexuality, and postcoloniality.
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496824237
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 164
Book Description
In Conscripts of Migration: Neoliberal Globalization, Nationalism, and the Literature of New African Diasporas, author Christopher Ian Foster analyzes increasingly urgent questions regarding crises of global immigration by redefining migration in terms of conscription and by studying contemporary literature. Reporting on immigration, whether liberal or conservative, popular or scholarly, leaves out the history in which the Global North helped create outward migration in the Global South. From histories of racial capitalism, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and imperialism to contemporary neoliberal globalization and the resurgence of xenophobic nationalism, countries in the Global North continue to devastate and destabilize the Global South. Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, in different ways, police the effects of their own global policies at their borders. Foster provides a substantial study of a new body of contemporary African diasporic literature called migritude literature. Migritude indicates the work and ideas of a disparate yet distinct group of younger African authors born after independence in the 1960s. Most often migritude authors have lived both in and outside Africa and narrate the experiences of migration under the pressures of globalization. They also emphasize that immigration itself and stereotypes of the immigrant are entangled with the history of colonialism. Authors like Fatou Diome, Shailja Patel, Abdourahman Waberi, Cristina Ali Farah, and others confront critical issues of migrancy, diaspora, departure, return, racism, identity, gender, sexuality, and postcoloniality.
Eastern African Literatures
Author: Russell West-Pavlov
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198745729
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
The book offers an overview of Eastern African writing in English since the mid-twentieth century. It shows how proximate modes of literary communication, arising out of residual but vibrant traditions of oral communication, blend with contemporary media to produce hybrid genres of proximity specific to Eastern African literary production.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198745729
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
The book offers an overview of Eastern African writing in English since the mid-twentieth century. It shows how proximate modes of literary communication, arising out of residual but vibrant traditions of oral communication, blend with contemporary media to produce hybrid genres of proximity specific to Eastern African literary production.
Postcolonial Poetics
Author: Elleke Boehmer
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319903411
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 227
Book Description
Postcolonial Poetics is about how we read postcolonial and world literatures today, and about how the structures of that writing shape our reading. The book’s eight chapters explore the ways in which postcolonial writing in English from various 21st-century contexts, including southern and West Africa, and Black and Asian Britain, interacts with our imaginative understanding of the world. Throughout, the focus is on reading practices, where reading is taken as an inventive, border-traversing activity, one that postcolonial writing with its interests in margins, intersections, subversions, and crossings specifically encourages. This close, sustained focus on reading, reception, and literariness is an outstanding feature of the study, as is its wide generic range, embracing poetry, essays, and life-writing, as well as fiction. The field-defining scholar Elleke Boehmer holds that literature has the capacity to keep reimagining and refreshing how we understand ourselves in relation to the world and to some of the most pressing questions of our time, including resistance, reconciliation, survival after terror, and migration.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319903411
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 227
Book Description
Postcolonial Poetics is about how we read postcolonial and world literatures today, and about how the structures of that writing shape our reading. The book’s eight chapters explore the ways in which postcolonial writing in English from various 21st-century contexts, including southern and West Africa, and Black and Asian Britain, interacts with our imaginative understanding of the world. Throughout, the focus is on reading practices, where reading is taken as an inventive, border-traversing activity, one that postcolonial writing with its interests in margins, intersections, subversions, and crossings specifically encourages. This close, sustained focus on reading, reception, and literariness is an outstanding feature of the study, as is its wide generic range, embracing poetry, essays, and life-writing, as well as fiction. The field-defining scholar Elleke Boehmer holds that literature has the capacity to keep reimagining and refreshing how we understand ourselves in relation to the world and to some of the most pressing questions of our time, including resistance, reconciliation, survival after terror, and migration.
Tintinnabulation of Literary Theory
Author: Andrew Nyongesa
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 1779065140
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 255
Book Description
There can never be literary growth in the contemporary world which is devoid of literary criticism, this is the backbone of literary theory. Literature is no longer a mere narration of stories, and prudent literary writers know that great literature is based on theoretical frameworks which give their works an edge in the intellectual world. In this book, Tintinnabulation of Literary Theory: Traversing Genres to Contemporary Experience, Andrew Nyongesa demonstrates how five theoretical frameworks, namely: Marxism, Feminism, Postcolonialism, Psychoanalysis and Stylistic are applied to genres of literature. The last chapter shows how theory has moved away from the lecture hall to real life experience. The book is a practical guide to university students and tutors of literature in their undying desire to embrace Literary Criticism.
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 1779065140
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 255
Book Description
There can never be literary growth in the contemporary world which is devoid of literary criticism, this is the backbone of literary theory. Literature is no longer a mere narration of stories, and prudent literary writers know that great literature is based on theoretical frameworks which give their works an edge in the intellectual world. In this book, Tintinnabulation of Literary Theory: Traversing Genres to Contemporary Experience, Andrew Nyongesa demonstrates how five theoretical frameworks, namely: Marxism, Feminism, Postcolonialism, Psychoanalysis and Stylistic are applied to genres of literature. The last chapter shows how theory has moved away from the lecture hall to real life experience. The book is a practical guide to university students and tutors of literature in their undying desire to embrace Literary Criticism.
New Daughters of Africa
Author: Various Authors
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0241997011
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 798
Book Description
Nearly three decades after her pioneering anthology, Daughters of Africa, Margaret Busby curates an extraordinary collection of contemporary writing by 200 women writers of African descent, including Zadie Smith, Bernardine Evaristo and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. A glorious portrayal of the richness and range of African women's voices, this major international book brings together their achievements across a wealth of genres. From Antigua to Zimbabwe and Angola to the USA, overlooked artists of the past join key figures, popular contemporaries and emerging writers in paying tribute to the heritage that unites them, the strong links that endure from generation to generation, and their common obstacles around issues of race, gender and class. Bold and insightful, brilliant in its intimacy and universality, this landmark anthology honours the talents of African daughters and the inspiring legacy that connects them-and all of us.
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0241997011
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 798
Book Description
Nearly three decades after her pioneering anthology, Daughters of Africa, Margaret Busby curates an extraordinary collection of contemporary writing by 200 women writers of African descent, including Zadie Smith, Bernardine Evaristo and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. A glorious portrayal of the richness and range of African women's voices, this major international book brings together their achievements across a wealth of genres. From Antigua to Zimbabwe and Angola to the USA, overlooked artists of the past join key figures, popular contemporaries and emerging writers in paying tribute to the heritage that unites them, the strong links that endure from generation to generation, and their common obstacles around issues of race, gender and class. Bold and insightful, brilliant in its intimacy and universality, this landmark anthology honours the talents of African daughters and the inspiring legacy that connects them-and all of us.
Recontextualizing Resistance
Author: Emily Golson
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527507378
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 371
Book Description
Resistance is a concept that rose to the forefront of several areas of study when Max Weber made careful distinctions between authority, force, violence, domination, and legitimation. It gained strong attention when the well-known Palestinian journalist, activist, fiction writer and critic Ghassan Kanafani (1936–1972) published a study entitled the Literature of Resistance in Occupied Palestine: 1948–1966, a work that contributed to postcolonial theories of power, race, ethnicity and gender, and second generation theories of orientalism, feminism, and disability. Initially identified by philosophers, historians, and social critics as a focal point for situations in which oppressors brutally destroy the identity or subjectivity of the oppressed, resistance has been transformed by fiction writers, filmmakers, lyricists and speechmakers into a process in which responses and counter-responses to some type of injustice create difficult situations with complicated nuances. These works now form the foundation for what has come to be recognized as “resistance art.” This book gathers the insight, knowledge, and wisdom found in different manifestations of this art to further our understanding of the impact of resistance on contemporary life.
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527507378
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 371
Book Description
Resistance is a concept that rose to the forefront of several areas of study when Max Weber made careful distinctions between authority, force, violence, domination, and legitimation. It gained strong attention when the well-known Palestinian journalist, activist, fiction writer and critic Ghassan Kanafani (1936–1972) published a study entitled the Literature of Resistance in Occupied Palestine: 1948–1966, a work that contributed to postcolonial theories of power, race, ethnicity and gender, and second generation theories of orientalism, feminism, and disability. Initially identified by philosophers, historians, and social critics as a focal point for situations in which oppressors brutally destroy the identity or subjectivity of the oppressed, resistance has been transformed by fiction writers, filmmakers, lyricists and speechmakers into a process in which responses and counter-responses to some type of injustice create difficult situations with complicated nuances. These works now form the foundation for what has come to be recognized as “resistance art.” This book gathers the insight, knowledge, and wisdom found in different manifestations of this art to further our understanding of the impact of resistance on contemporary life.
Letters to a Writer of Colour
Author: Deepa Anappara
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 147359880X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 211
Book Description
Filled with empathy and wisdom, personal experiences and creative inspiration, this is a vital collection of essays on the power of literature and the craft of writing from an international array of writers of colour. 'Electric essays that speak to the experience of writing from the periphery . . . a guide, a comfort, and a call all at once' Laila Lalami, author of Conditional Citizens 'A whip-smart collection' Kamila Shamsie, author of Best of Friends What if we reconsidered our assumptions about how fiction should be written? And can we then apply our discoveries to both what we read and how we read? This book explores these questions and encourages us into a more inclusive conversation about storytelling, featuring: • Taymour Soomro on resisting rigid stories about who you are • Madeleine Thien on how writing builds the room in which it can exist • Amitava Kumar on why authenticity isn't a license we carry in our wallets • Tahmima Anam on giving herself permission to be funny • Ingrid Rojas Contreras on the bodily challenge of writing about trauma • Zeyn Joukhadar on queering English and the power of refusing to translate ourselves • Kiese Laymon on hearing that no one wants to read the story that you want to write • Deepa Anappara on writing even through conditions that impede the creation of art Plus essays from Tiphanie Yanique, Xiaolu Guo, Jamil Jan Kochai, Vida Cruz-Borja, Femi Kayode, Nadifa Mohamed in conversation with Leila Aboulela, Myriam Gurba, Mohammed Hanif and Sharlene Teo. 'This book is essential' Nikesh Shukla 'Bracing and moving . . . No one interested in how we read and should read fiction can afford to miss this' Pankaj Mishra, author of Run And Hide
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 147359880X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 211
Book Description
Filled with empathy and wisdom, personal experiences and creative inspiration, this is a vital collection of essays on the power of literature and the craft of writing from an international array of writers of colour. 'Electric essays that speak to the experience of writing from the periphery . . . a guide, a comfort, and a call all at once' Laila Lalami, author of Conditional Citizens 'A whip-smart collection' Kamila Shamsie, author of Best of Friends What if we reconsidered our assumptions about how fiction should be written? And can we then apply our discoveries to both what we read and how we read? This book explores these questions and encourages us into a more inclusive conversation about storytelling, featuring: • Taymour Soomro on resisting rigid stories about who you are • Madeleine Thien on how writing builds the room in which it can exist • Amitava Kumar on why authenticity isn't a license we carry in our wallets • Tahmima Anam on giving herself permission to be funny • Ingrid Rojas Contreras on the bodily challenge of writing about trauma • Zeyn Joukhadar on queering English and the power of refusing to translate ourselves • Kiese Laymon on hearing that no one wants to read the story that you want to write • Deepa Anappara on writing even through conditions that impede the creation of art Plus essays from Tiphanie Yanique, Xiaolu Guo, Jamil Jan Kochai, Vida Cruz-Borja, Femi Kayode, Nadifa Mohamed in conversation with Leila Aboulela, Myriam Gurba, Mohammed Hanif and Sharlene Teo. 'This book is essential' Nikesh Shukla 'Bracing and moving . . . No one interested in how we read and should read fiction can afford to miss this' Pankaj Mishra, author of Run And Hide
British Muslim Fictions
Author: C. Chambers
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230343082
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
Through interviews with leading writers (including Ahdaf Soueif and Hanif Kureishi), this book analyzes the writing and opinions of novelists of Muslim heritage based in the UK. Discussion centres on writers' work, literary techniques, and influences, and on their views of such issues as the hijab, the war on terror and the Rushdie Affair.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230343082
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
Through interviews with leading writers (including Ahdaf Soueif and Hanif Kureishi), this book analyzes the writing and opinions of novelists of Muslim heritage based in the UK. Discussion centres on writers' work, literary techniques, and influences, and on their views of such issues as the hijab, the war on terror and the Rushdie Affair.