Abdulrazak Gurnah’s stories suggest that it is important to see others in relation to ourselves, to perceive their right of abode even if they cannot claim national belonging.
Abdulrazak Gurnah during the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2017.
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The public politics of African writers has been in the spotlight again due to the bitter disagreement between Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Akwaeke Emezi over transgender issues.
Portrait of French-Senegalese author David Diop whose novel has won the 2021 International Booker prize.
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The French-Senegalese author’s novel At Night All Blood is Black is a harrowing and politically profound story of a Senegalese soldier fighting for the French in the first World War.
Nawal El Saadawi in 2015.
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Western critics hailed the 1952 book as a great work of African fantasy. In fact it’s better understood as a pioneering work of African science fiction.
Its critics complain that current Afrodiasporic literature is not in tune with everyday life on the continent. They see its versions of Africa as sanitised and Westernised.