08To poison a nation, poison its stories. A demoralised nation tells demoralised stories to itself. To poison a nation, poison its stories. Ben Okri continues his campaign for us to recognise the true importance of stories and storytelling. “Why do we…
An author knows they’ve hit the big time when they are namedropped in The Simpsons. Ben Okri has truly made the crossover between African literature and popular culture and comfortably inhabits both spaces as The Famished Road is gifted to…
What are your thoughts on “African Books to Inspire”? I spend most of my time looking into the screen of my laptop waiting for the right phrase, the better wording of a sentence – sensing semi-formed ideas welling up –…
Ben Okri contends that the oldest technology in the world is… Storytelling. “We are storytelling beings” and even our most rational and calculated thought is far better represented as a narrative: Einstein made relativity accessible by the story of two…
Africa in Words writer C. E. Hastings has had a long hard look at Tim Parks’ essay, Writing Adrift in the World, and sets out her case against the ‘significance of a geographically specific literary canon.’ Parks brands writers of such…
Forever supplying us with lists of newly published and newly found talent, blogger Bookshy has opened up a whole new world of African authors usually left inaccessible to the strict Anglophones among us. In digging through the archives of the…
Sunday 5 July, 13:00 – 14:00 FREE, Aimed at 8-10 year olds
Sunday 5 July, 11:00 – 12:00 FREE, Aimed at 5-7 year olds
“He was a man who answered the questions of his times, the times in which he found himself, in tough, brief, elegant novels and in doing that actually helped to create a language of literature in which many of us…
Saturday 4 July, 6.30pm –8.00pm, BL Conference Centre – Full Price: £10.00, concessions available