Tag Archives: africa

Book review: Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor (Kenya)

The UK’s Observer described Kenyan writer Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s 2014 novel Dust as “the most important novel to come out of Africa since Half of a Yellow Sun“, but I struggled with it. The book opens in Nairobi, Kenya in 2007, where a young man, Odidi, is gunned down, leaving his family devastated by grief. …

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Music review: South African late 20th century classics

Miriam Makeba by Miriam Makeba (1960) I couldn’t spend a month ‘in’ South Africa without listening to some South African music, and this album by Miriam Makeba (who to this point I only knew for ‘Pata Pata’) features in the 1001 albums list, which describes it thus: “traditional Xhosa wedding songs swing into airy African …

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Book review: Down Second Avenue by Es’kia Mphahlele (1919-2008, South Africa)

Down Second Avenue is a work of non-fiction, sometimes sub-titled “Growing Up in a South African Ghetto”, that documents the formative years of Es’kia (Ezekiel) Mphahlele, dubbed the “father of black South African writing”. The book was first published in the UK in 1959, and in the USA in 1971, and I read the Penguin …

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