This year is the Year of African Reading – or so I am told.

There are several initiatives to encourage African writers and publishers to invest more time and money in their own stories and to support this there is a real push to read about Africa. 

Enter: The African Reading Challenge 2008. 

Jackfruity and Bazungu Bucks blogged about it a few days back and several readers over at Shelfari have signed up to the challenge that is designed along the lines of the Unread Authors Challenge and Russian Reading Challenge. 

It’s pretty simple. This year, read six books by African writers or about Africa.  Read at least one from each of the following categories. 

1. Literature (novel, short story, poetry, drama)
2. Memoir/ autobiography/ biography
3. History/ current affairs 

I am excited about this because I think there are really good African writers and really good stories coming out of the continent.  I am also interested in it because of the need to dispel incorrect assumptions that African writers are fixated in the post-colonial era and only write about times and places with no real resonance with contemporary Africa.

Just last month I completed Allah is not Obliged  by Ahmadou Kourouma and Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (yes, Mr. Bazanye, I will return it one day).  Right now I am committing steamy, sordid book adultery with Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong’o. 

I think the challenge is really novel, interesting and manageable. I encourage you to join in.  If you do, please let me know in the comments section below. 

Here’s my list: 

The Icarus Girl – Helen Oyeyemi

Why – A possessed 8-year-old, a multi-racial family haunted by its secrets, a semi-demonic invisible friend.  The makings of a potentially really good, spooky read.  Having become rather hardened 30-something, a good scare from a writer who I have been told is one of Nigeria’s best, will be refreshing.

The In-Between World of Vikram Lall – M. G. Vassanji

Why – The Asian community in East Africa is an enigma.  In Uganda Asians from the sub-continent continue to live a prosperous, but very separate life from the rest of the population.  Who are they?  Why are they here?  Do they have a real connection to this land?  Do they, like me, suffer an identity crisis in this neither-here-nor-there world? 

The Last Summer of Reason – Tahar Djaout

Why – This is the last novel written by Tahar Djaout, an Algerian novelist, before he was assassinated by Islamic fundamentalists in 1993.  He’d always been one of my heroes-from-afar and I was elated when I found this book in a used bookstore this week.  Last Summer of Reason promises to be a thrilling exploration of the hypocrisies of totalitarian regimes, spirituality and history.  (Oh, and another hero of mine, Wole Soyinka, wrote the forward for this book.) 

The Sad Story of Burton, Speke and the Nile; Or was John Hannington Speke a Cad? – W. B. Carnochan

 

Why – I know the title is a bit of a mouthful, but I hope the writing will be good and concise.  I know Carnochan is not an African, but the topic is personally intriguing.  The exploration on Uganda by Europeans is something every Ugandan child learns by heart.  However like every other ‘fact’ of history, the study is subjective and perhaps over romanticized.  Perhaps this book will help answer some of my questions. 

The Grandmothers – Doris Lessing

Why – Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007.  She was the wife of a career diplomat who was killed by Idi Amin and she spent in Southern Africa.  She was banned from South Africa and Rhodeisa for campaigning against apartheid.  With a history like that, there’s no telling what this collection of four novellas will bring.

Burden of Nationality: Memoirs of an African Aidworker/Journalist – Jacob Akol

Why – For the past three months I have been reading books on the Sudan, Chad, Northern Uganda and alien abductions.  This seems like a good alternative view to the traumatizing tales of child soldiers, internal displacement and civil war. 

Considering I am soon to be unemployed and will have a lot of time on my hands, other books on my wish list are … The Cairo Triology by Naguib Mahfouz; So Anyway … by Helmut Bertelsmann; On the Bridge of Goodbye by David Robbins; Creole by Jose Eduardo

And anything new by Bazanye, Baingana or Buwembo