We are starting a series of important African writers from today and will be posting one writer everyday.
NADIME GORDIMER
Nadine Gordimer (20 November 1923 – 13 July 2014) was a South African writer, political activist and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was recognized as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity". Gordimer's writing dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. Gordimer was born near Springs, Gauteng, an East Rand mining town outside Johannesburg. Her father, Isidore Gordimer, was a Jewish immigrant watchmaker from Žagarė (then Russian Empire, now Lithuania), and her mother, Hannah "Nan" (Myers) Gordimer, was from London. Her mother was from an assimilated family of Jewish origins; Gordimer was raised in a secular household.
Her first published novel, The Lying Days (1953), takes place in Gordimer's home town of Springs, Transvaal, an East Rand mining town near Johannesburg. Arguably a semi-autobiographical work, The Lying Days is a Bildungsroman, charting the growing political awareness of a young white woman, Helen, toward small-town life and South African racial division.
In her 1963 work, Occasion for Loving, Gordimer puts apartheid and love squarely together. Her protagonist, Ann Davis, is married to Boaz Davis, an ethnomusicologist, but in love with Gideon Shibalo, an artist with several failed relationships. Ann Davis is white, however, and Gideon Shibalo is black, and South Africa's government criminalised such relationships.
Gordimer collected the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for A Guest of Honour in 1971 and, in common with a number of winners of this award, she was to go on to win the Booker Prize. The Booker was awarded to Gordimer for her 1974 novel, The Conservationist, and was a co-winner with Stanley Middleton's novel Holiday. The Conservationist explores Zulu culture and the world of a wealthy white industrialist through the eyes of Mehring, the antihero. Per Wästberg described The Conservationist as Gordimer's "densest and most poetical novel". Thematically covering the same ground as Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm (1883) and J. M. Coetzee's In the Heart of the Country (1977), the "conservationist" seeks to conserve nature to preserve the apartheid system, keeping change at bay. When an unidentified corpse is found on his farm, Mehring does the "right thing" by providing it a proper burial; but the dead person haunts the work, a reminder of the bodies on which Mehring's vision would be built.
Gordimer's 1979 novel Burger's Daughter is the story of a woman analysing her relationship with her father, a martyr to the anti-apartheid movement. The child of two Communist and anti-apartheid revolutionaries, Rosa Burger finds herself drawn into political activism as well. Written in the aftermath of the 1976 Soweto uprising, the novel was shortly thereafter banned by the South African government. Gordimer described the novel as a "coded homage" to Bram Fischer, the lawyer who defended Nelson Mandela and other anti-apartheid activists.
In July's People (1981), she imagines a bloody South African revolution, in which white people are hunted and murdered after blacks revolt against the apartheid government. The work follows Maureen and Bamford Smales, an educated white couple, hiding for their lives with July, their long-time former servant. The novel plays off the various groups of "July's people": his family and his village, as well as the Smales. The story examines how people cope with the terrible choices forced on them by violence, race hatred, and the state.
The House Gun (1998) was Gordimer's second post-apartheid novel. It follows the story of a couple, Claudia and Harald Lingard, dealing with their son Duncan's murder of one of his housemates. The novel treats the rising crime rate in South Africa and the guns that virtually all households have, as well as the legacy of South African apartheid and the couple's concerns about their son's lawyer, who is black. The novel was optioned for film rights to Granada Productions.
Gordimer's a
Nadine Gordimer (20 November 1923 – 13 July 2014) was a South African writer, political activist and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was recognized as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity". Gordimer's writing dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. Gordimer was born near Springs, Gauteng, an East Rand mining town outside Johannesburg. Her father, Isidore Gordimer, was a Jewish immigrant watchmaker from Žagarė (then Russian Empire, now Lithuania), and her mother, Hannah "Nan" (Myers) Gordimer, was from London. Her mother was from an assimilated family of Jewish origins; Gordimer was raised in a secular household.
Her first published novel, The Lying Days (1953), takes place in Gordimer's home town of Springs, Transvaal, an East Rand mining town near Johannesburg. Arguably a semi-autobiographical work, The Lying Days is a Bildungsroman, charting the growing political awareness of a young white woman, Helen, toward small-town life and South African racial division.
In her 1963 work, Occasion for Loving, Gordimer puts apartheid and love squarely together. Her protagonist, Ann Davis, is married to Boaz Davis, an ethnomusicologist, but in love with Gideon Shibalo, an artist with several failed relationships. Ann Davis is white, however, and Gideon Shibalo is black, and South Africa's government criminalised such relationships.
Gordimer collected the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for A Guest of Honour in 1971 and, in common with a number of winners of this award, she was to go on to win the Booker Prize. The Booker was awarded to Gordimer for her 1974 novel, The Conservationist, and was a co-winner with Stanley Middleton's novel Holiday. The Conservationist explores Zulu culture and the world of a wealthy white industrialist through the eyes of Mehring, the antihero. Per Wästberg described The Conservationist as Gordimer's "densest and most poetical novel". Thematically covering the same ground as Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm (1883) and J. M. Coetzee's In the Heart of the Country (1977), the "conservationist" seeks to conserve nature to preserve the apartheid system, keeping change at bay. When an unidentified corpse is found on his farm, Mehring does the "right thing" by providing it a proper burial; but the dead person haunts the work, a reminder of the bodies on which Mehring's vision would be built.
Gordimer's 1979 novel Burger's Daughter is the story of a woman analysing her relationship with her father, a martyr to the anti-apartheid movement. The child of two Communist and anti-apartheid revolutionaries, Rosa Burger finds herself drawn into political activism as well. Written in the aftermath of the 1976 Soweto uprising, the novel was shortly thereafter banned by the South African government. Gordimer described the novel as a "coded homage" to Bram Fischer, the lawyer who defended Nelson Mandela and other anti-apartheid activists.
In July's People (1981), she imagines a bloody South African revolution, in which white people are hunted and murdered after blacks revolt against the apartheid government. The work follows Maureen and Bamford Smales, an educated white couple, hiding for their lives with July, their long-time former servant. The novel plays off the various groups of "July's people": his family and his village, as well as the Smales. The story examines how people cope with the terrible choices forced on them by violence, race hatred, and the state.
The House Gun (1998) was Gordimer's second post-apartheid novel. It follows the story of a couple, Claudia and Harald Lingard, dealing with their son Duncan's murder of one of his housemates. The novel treats the rising crime rate in South Africa and the guns that virtually all households have, as well as the legacy of South African apartheid and the couple's concerns about their son's lawyer, who is black. The novel was optioned for film rights to Granada Productions.
Gordimer's a
ward-winning 2002 novel, The Pickup, considers the issues of displacement, alienation, and immigration; class and economic power; religious faith; and the ability for people to see, and love, across these divides. It tells the story of a couple: Julie Summers, a white woman from a financially secure family, and Abdu, an illegal Arab immigrant in South Africa. After Abdu's visa is refused, the couple returns to his homeland, where she is the alien. Her experiences and growth as an alien in another culture form the heart of the work.
Get a Life, written in 2005 after the death of her long-time spouse, Reinhold Cassirer, is the story of a man undergoing treatment for a life-threatening disease. While clearly drawn from personal life experiences, the novel also continues Gordimer's exploration of political themes. The protagonist is an ecologist, battling installation of a planned nuclear plant. But he is at the same time undergoing radiation therapy for his cancer, causing him personal grief and, ironically, rendering him a nuclear health hazard in his own home. Here, Gordimer again pursues the questions of how to integrate everyday life and political activism. New York Times critic J. R. Ramakrishnan, who noted a similarity with author Mia Alvar, wrote that Gordimer wrote about "long-suffering spouses and (the) familial enablers of political men" in her fiction.
Get a Life, written in 2005 after the death of her long-time spouse, Reinhold Cassirer, is the story of a man undergoing treatment for a life-threatening disease. While clearly drawn from personal life experiences, the novel also continues Gordimer's exploration of political themes. The protagonist is an ecologist, battling installation of a planned nuclear plant. But he is at the same time undergoing radiation therapy for his cancer, causing him personal grief and, ironically, rendering him a nuclear health hazard in his own home. Here, Gordimer again pursues the questions of how to integrate everyday life and political activism. New York Times critic J. R. Ramakrishnan, who noted a similarity with author Mia Alvar, wrote that Gordimer wrote about "long-suffering spouses and (the) familial enablers of political men" in her fiction.
J M COETZEE
John Maxwell Coetzee born 9 February 1940 is a South African novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He relocated to Australia in 2002 and lives in Adelaide. He became an Australian citizen in 2006.
He was the first writer to be awarded the Booker Prize twice: first for Life & Times of Michael K in 1983, and again for Disgrace in 1999. Two other authors have since managed this — Peter Carey (in 1988 and 2001) and Hilary Mantel (in 2009 and 2012).
Dusklands (1974), Coetzee’s first book, contains two novellas united in their exploration of colonization, The Vietnam Project (set in the United States in the late 20th century) and The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee (set in 18th-century South Africa). In the Heart of the Country (1977; also published as From the Heart of the Country; filmed as Dust, 1986) is a stream-of-consciousness narrative of a Boer madwoman, and Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), set in some undefined borderland, is an examination of the ramifications of colonization. Life & Times of Michael K (1983), which won the Booker Prize, concerns the dilemma of a simple man beset by conditions he can neither comprehend nor control during a civil war in a future South Africa.
Coetzee continued to explore themes of the colonizer and the colonized in Foe (1986), his reworking of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Coetzee’s female narrator comes to new conclusions about power and otherness and ultimately concludes that language can enslave as effectively as can chains. In Age of Iron (1990) Coetzee dealt directly with circumstances in contemporary South Africa, but in The Master of Petersburg (1994) he made reference to 19th-century Russia (particularly to Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s work The Devils); both books treat the subject of literature in society. In 1999, with his novel Disgrace, Coetzee became the first writer to win the Booker Prize twice. After the novel’s publication and an outcry in South Africa, he moved to Australia, where he was granted citizenship in 2006.
The structure of Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello (2003), a series of “lessons” (two of which had been published in an earlier volume) in which the eponymous narrator reflects on a variety of topics, puzzled many readers. One reviewer proposed that it be considered “non-nonfiction.” Costello makes a surreal reappearance in Coetzee’s Slow Man (2005), about a recent amputee’s reluctance to accept his condition. Diary of a Bad Year (2007) employs a literally split narrative technique, with the text on the page divided into concurrent storylines, the main story being the musings of an aging South African writer modeled on Coetzee himself. In The Childhood of Jesus (2013), a boy and his guardian scour a dystopian world—from which desire and pleasure have apparently been purged—in search of the boy’s mother.
The notably reticent author’s nonfiction books include White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa (1988); Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews (1992); Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship (1996); and the autobiographic trilogy Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (1997), Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II (2002), and Summertime (2009). Here and Now: Letters 2008–2011 (2013) is a collection of correspondence between Coetzee and American novelist Paul Auster. The Good Story: Exchanges on Truth, Fiction, and Psychotherapy (co-written with Arabella Kurtz) was published in 2015.
Disgrace published in 1999 won the Booker Prize. David Lurie, on whom Coetzee visits a contemporary catalogue of humiliations, is a fairly average, twice-married, fifty something lecturer at a Capetown university who, accused of sexual misconduct with one of his students, chooses not to defend himself but rather to suffer his fate with a noble, slightly grumpy, stoicism. In his mind, Lurie has committed no offence; he prefers to get fired and suffer disgrace than endure a politically correct process of rehabilitation. He will not give his bien pensant academic tormentors the satisfaction they crave. “Pa
John Maxwell Coetzee born 9 February 1940 is a South African novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He relocated to Australia in 2002 and lives in Adelaide. He became an Australian citizen in 2006.
He was the first writer to be awarded the Booker Prize twice: first for Life & Times of Michael K in 1983, and again for Disgrace in 1999. Two other authors have since managed this — Peter Carey (in 1988 and 2001) and Hilary Mantel (in 2009 and 2012).
Dusklands (1974), Coetzee’s first book, contains two novellas united in their exploration of colonization, The Vietnam Project (set in the United States in the late 20th century) and The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee (set in 18th-century South Africa). In the Heart of the Country (1977; also published as From the Heart of the Country; filmed as Dust, 1986) is a stream-of-consciousness narrative of a Boer madwoman, and Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), set in some undefined borderland, is an examination of the ramifications of colonization. Life & Times of Michael K (1983), which won the Booker Prize, concerns the dilemma of a simple man beset by conditions he can neither comprehend nor control during a civil war in a future South Africa.
Coetzee continued to explore themes of the colonizer and the colonized in Foe (1986), his reworking of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Coetzee’s female narrator comes to new conclusions about power and otherness and ultimately concludes that language can enslave as effectively as can chains. In Age of Iron (1990) Coetzee dealt directly with circumstances in contemporary South Africa, but in The Master of Petersburg (1994) he made reference to 19th-century Russia (particularly to Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s work The Devils); both books treat the subject of literature in society. In 1999, with his novel Disgrace, Coetzee became the first writer to win the Booker Prize twice. After the novel’s publication and an outcry in South Africa, he moved to Australia, where he was granted citizenship in 2006.
The structure of Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello (2003), a series of “lessons” (two of which had been published in an earlier volume) in which the eponymous narrator reflects on a variety of topics, puzzled many readers. One reviewer proposed that it be considered “non-nonfiction.” Costello makes a surreal reappearance in Coetzee’s Slow Man (2005), about a recent amputee’s reluctance to accept his condition. Diary of a Bad Year (2007) employs a literally split narrative technique, with the text on the page divided into concurrent storylines, the main story being the musings of an aging South African writer modeled on Coetzee himself. In The Childhood of Jesus (2013), a boy and his guardian scour a dystopian world—from which desire and pleasure have apparently been purged—in search of the boy’s mother.
The notably reticent author’s nonfiction books include White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa (1988); Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews (1992); Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship (1996); and the autobiographic trilogy Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (1997), Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II (2002), and Summertime (2009). Here and Now: Letters 2008–2011 (2013) is a collection of correspondence between Coetzee and American novelist Paul Auster. The Good Story: Exchanges on Truth, Fiction, and Psychotherapy (co-written with Arabella Kurtz) was published in 2015.
Disgrace published in 1999 won the Booker Prize. David Lurie, on whom Coetzee visits a contemporary catalogue of humiliations, is a fairly average, twice-married, fifty something lecturer at a Capetown university who, accused of sexual misconduct with one of his students, chooses not to defend himself but rather to suffer his fate with a noble, slightly grumpy, stoicism. In his mind, Lurie has committed no offence; he prefers to get fired and suffer disgrace than endure a politically correct process of rehabilitation. He will not give his bien pensant academic tormentors the satisfaction they crave. “Pa
ss sentence,” he says, “and let us get on with our lives.” He retires to the country to live with his daughter Lucy, and address the meaning of this self-inflicted injunction. It’s here that Disgrace, moving up a gear, begins seriously to engage with the aftermath of apartheid. At first, there is hope. Country life in the eastern Cape, and Lucy’s company, seem to offer the prospect of sanity. But the conflicts of South Africa will never go away. The farm is attacked by a gang of black men, Lucy is raped, and Lurie beaten up. His daughter refuses to press charges, even though one of her assailants is a former “dog man” on the property. The novel ends on a note of utter bleakness. Lurie resolves to stay on the farm to protect his daughter, a domestic act of love by a broken man in search of redemption but almost too confused to know where to find it. Everyone, Coetzee seems to be saying, is a victim. Somewhere, the shade of Samuel Beckett must be smiling. This theme, about the challenges of aging both on an individual and societal level, leads to a line, "No country, this, for old men," an ironic reference to the opening line of the W. B. Yeats poem, "Sailing to Byzantium". Furthermore, Lurie calls his preference for younger women a "right of desire", a quote taken up by South African writer André Brink for his novel "The Rights of Desire".
Life & Times of Michael K is a 1983 novel by South African-born writer J. M. Coetzee. The novel won the Booker Prize for 1983. The novel is a story of a man named Michael K, who makes an arduous journey from Cape Town to his mother's rural birthplace, during an imaginary civil war during the apartheid era, in the 1970-80s. In a South Africa turned by war, Michael K. sets out to take his ailing mother back to her rural home. On the way there she dies, leaving him alone in an anarchic world of brutal roving armies. Imprisoned, Michael is unable to bear confinement and escapes, determined to live with dignity. This life affirming novel goes to the center of human experience—the need for an interior, spiritual life; for some connections to the world in which we live; and for purity of vision.
Life & Times of Michael K is a 1983 novel by South African-born writer J. M. Coetzee. The novel won the Booker Prize for 1983. The novel is a story of a man named Michael K, who makes an arduous journey from Cape Town to his mother's rural birthplace, during an imaginary civil war during the apartheid era, in the 1970-80s. In a South Africa turned by war, Michael K. sets out to take his ailing mother back to her rural home. On the way there she dies, leaving him alone in an anarchic world of brutal roving armies. Imprisoned, Michael is unable to bear confinement and escapes, determined to live with dignity. This life affirming novel goes to the center of human experience—the need for an interior, spiritual life; for some connections to the world in which we live; and for purity of vision.
V S NAIPAUL
V.S. Naipaul, in full Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, (born August 17, 1932, Trinidad—died August 11, 2018, London, England), Trinidadian writer of Indian descent known for his pessimistic novels set in developing countries. For these revelations of what the Swedish Academy called “suppressed histories,” Naipaul won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001.
Descended from Hindu Indians who had immigrated to Trinidad as indentured servants, Naipaul left Trinidad to attend the University of Oxford in 1950. He subsequently settled in England, although he traveled extensively thereafter. His earliest books (The Mystic Masseur, 1957; The Suffrage of Elvira, 1958; and Miguel Street, 1959) are ironic and satirical accounts of life in the Caribbean. His fourth novel, A House for Mr. Biswas (1961), also set in Trinidad, was a much more important work and won him major recognition. It centres on the main character’s attempt to assert his personal identity and establish his independence as symbolized by owning his own house. Naipaul’s subsequent novels used other national settings but continued to explore the personal and collective alienation experienced in new nations that were struggling to integrate their native and Western-colonial heritages. The three stories in In a Free State (1971), which won Britain’s Booker Prize, are set in various countries; Guerrillas (1975) is a despairing look at an abortive uprising on a Caribbean island; and A Bend in the River (1979) pessimistically examines the uncertain future of a newly independent state in Central Africa. A Way in the World (1994) is an essaylike novel examining how history forms individuals’ characters. Naipaul’s other novels include The Mimic Men (1967) and The Enigma of Arrival (1987).
Among Naipaul’s nonfiction works are three studies of India, An Area of Darkness (1965), India: A Wounded Civilization (1977), and India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990); The Five Societies—British, French, and Dutch—in the West Indies (1963); and Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981). Naipaul was knighted in 1989.
In 1998 he published Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples, a portrayal of the Islamic faith in the lives of ordinary people in Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Half a Life (2001) is a novel about an Indian immigrant to England and then Africa. He becomes “half a person,” as Naipaul has said, “living a borrowed life.” Released the year that Naipaul received the Nobel Prize, Half a Life was considered by many critics to illustrate beautifully the reasons that he won the prize. Subsequent works include The Writer and the World (2002) and Literary Occasions (2003), both collections of previously published essays. The novel Magic Seeds (2004) is a sequel to Half a Life. In The Masque of Africa (2010)—which was based on his travels in Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, and South Africa—Naipaul returned to his exploration of religion, focusing on African beliefs.
V.S. Naipaul, in full Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, (born August 17, 1932, Trinidad—died August 11, 2018, London, England), Trinidadian writer of Indian descent known for his pessimistic novels set in developing countries. For these revelations of what the Swedish Academy called “suppressed histories,” Naipaul won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001.
Descended from Hindu Indians who had immigrated to Trinidad as indentured servants, Naipaul left Trinidad to attend the University of Oxford in 1950. He subsequently settled in England, although he traveled extensively thereafter. His earliest books (The Mystic Masseur, 1957; The Suffrage of Elvira, 1958; and Miguel Street, 1959) are ironic and satirical accounts of life in the Caribbean. His fourth novel, A House for Mr. Biswas (1961), also set in Trinidad, was a much more important work and won him major recognition. It centres on the main character’s attempt to assert his personal identity and establish his independence as symbolized by owning his own house. Naipaul’s subsequent novels used other national settings but continued to explore the personal and collective alienation experienced in new nations that were struggling to integrate their native and Western-colonial heritages. The three stories in In a Free State (1971), which won Britain’s Booker Prize, are set in various countries; Guerrillas (1975) is a despairing look at an abortive uprising on a Caribbean island; and A Bend in the River (1979) pessimistically examines the uncertain future of a newly independent state in Central Africa. A Way in the World (1994) is an essaylike novel examining how history forms individuals’ characters. Naipaul’s other novels include The Mimic Men (1967) and The Enigma of Arrival (1987).
Among Naipaul’s nonfiction works are three studies of India, An Area of Darkness (1965), India: A Wounded Civilization (1977), and India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990); The Five Societies—British, French, and Dutch—in the West Indies (1963); and Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981). Naipaul was knighted in 1989.
In 1998 he published Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples, a portrayal of the Islamic faith in the lives of ordinary people in Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Half a Life (2001) is a novel about an Indian immigrant to England and then Africa. He becomes “half a person,” as Naipaul has said, “living a borrowed life.” Released the year that Naipaul received the Nobel Prize, Half a Life was considered by many critics to illustrate beautifully the reasons that he won the prize. Subsequent works include The Writer and the World (2002) and Literary Occasions (2003), both collections of previously published essays. The novel Magic Seeds (2004) is a sequel to Half a Life. In The Masque of Africa (2010)—which was based on his travels in Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, and South Africa—Naipaul returned to his exploration of religion, focusing on African beliefs.
VS Naipaul, Nobel prize-winning British author, dies aged 85 | Books | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/11/vs-naipaul-nobel-prize-winning-british-author-dies-aged-85
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/11/vs-naipaul-nobel-prize-winning-british-author-dies-aged-85
the Guardian
VS Naipaul, Nobel prize-winning British author, dies aged 85
Trinidad-born author won both acclaim and disdain for his caustic portrayals, in novels and non-fiction, of the legacy of colonialism
Wole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Babatunde Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian playwright, poet and essayist. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honoured in that category. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years. In December 2017, he was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize in the "Special Prize" category awarded to someone who has “contributed to the realisation of cultural events that promote understanding and the exchange of knowledge between peoples”.
His first major play, The Swamp Dwellers (1958), was followed a year later by The Lion and the Jewel, a comedy that attracted interest from several members of London's Royal Court Theatre. Encouraged, Soyinka moved to London, where he worked as a play reader for the Royal Court Theatre. During the same period, both of his plays were performed in Ibadan. They dealt with the uneasy relationship between progress and tradition in Nigeria.
In 1957, his play The Invention was the first of his works to be produced at the Royal Court Theatre. At that time his only published works were poems such as "The Immigrant" and "My Next Door Neighbour", which were published in the Nigerian magazine Black Orpheus. This was founded in 1957 by the German scholar Ulli Beier, who had been teaching at the University of Ibadan since 1950.
Upon his return to Nigeria, he founded an acting company and wrote his first important play, A Dance of the Forests (produced 1960; published 1963), for the Nigerian independence celebrations. The play satirizes the fledgling nation by stripping it of romantic legend and by showing that the present is no more a golden age than was the past.
He wrote several plays in a lighter vein, making fun of pompous, Westernized schoolteachers in The Lion and the Jewel (first performed in Ibadan, 1959; published 1963) and mocking the clever preachers of upstart prayer-churches who grow fat on the credulity of their parishioners in The Trials of Brother Jero (performed 1960; published 1963) and Jero’s Metamorphosis (1973). But his more serious plays, such as The Strong Breed (1963), Kongi’s Harvest (opened the first Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, 1966; published 1967), The Road (1965), From Zia, with Love (1992), and even the parody King Baabu (performed 2001; published 2002), reveal his disregard for African authoritarian leadership and his disillusionment with Nigerian society as a whole.
Other notable plays include Madmen and Specialists (performed 1970; published 1971), Death and the King’s Horseman (1975), and The Beatification of Area Boy (1995). In these and Soyinka’s other dramas, Western elements are skillfully fused with subject matter and dramatic techniques deeply rooted in Yoruba folklore and religion. Symbolism, flashback, and ingenious plotting contribute to a rich dramatic structure. His best works exhibit humour and fine poetic style as well as a gift for irony and satire and for accurately matching the language of his complex characters to their social position and moral qualities.
He wrote several plays in a lighter vein, making fun of pompous, Westernized schoolteachers in The Lion and the Jewel (first performed in Ibadan, 1959; published 1963) and mocking the clever preachers of upstart prayer-churches who grow fat on the credulity of their parishioners in The Trials of Brother Jero (performed 1960; published 1963) and Jero’s Metamorphosis (1973). But his more serious plays, such as The Strong Breed (1963), Kongi’s Harvest (opened the first Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, 1966; published 1967), The Road (1965), From Zia, with Love (1992), and even the parody King Baabu (performed 2001; published 2002), reveal his disregard for Af
Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Babatunde Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian playwright, poet and essayist. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honoured in that category. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years. In December 2017, he was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize in the "Special Prize" category awarded to someone who has “contributed to the realisation of cultural events that promote understanding and the exchange of knowledge between peoples”.
His first major play, The Swamp Dwellers (1958), was followed a year later by The Lion and the Jewel, a comedy that attracted interest from several members of London's Royal Court Theatre. Encouraged, Soyinka moved to London, where he worked as a play reader for the Royal Court Theatre. During the same period, both of his plays were performed in Ibadan. They dealt with the uneasy relationship between progress and tradition in Nigeria.
In 1957, his play The Invention was the first of his works to be produced at the Royal Court Theatre. At that time his only published works were poems such as "The Immigrant" and "My Next Door Neighbour", which were published in the Nigerian magazine Black Orpheus. This was founded in 1957 by the German scholar Ulli Beier, who had been teaching at the University of Ibadan since 1950.
Upon his return to Nigeria, he founded an acting company and wrote his first important play, A Dance of the Forests (produced 1960; published 1963), for the Nigerian independence celebrations. The play satirizes the fledgling nation by stripping it of romantic legend and by showing that the present is no more a golden age than was the past.
He wrote several plays in a lighter vein, making fun of pompous, Westernized schoolteachers in The Lion and the Jewel (first performed in Ibadan, 1959; published 1963) and mocking the clever preachers of upstart prayer-churches who grow fat on the credulity of their parishioners in The Trials of Brother Jero (performed 1960; published 1963) and Jero’s Metamorphosis (1973). But his more serious plays, such as The Strong Breed (1963), Kongi’s Harvest (opened the first Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, 1966; published 1967), The Road (1965), From Zia, with Love (1992), and even the parody King Baabu (performed 2001; published 2002), reveal his disregard for African authoritarian leadership and his disillusionment with Nigerian society as a whole.
Other notable plays include Madmen and Specialists (performed 1970; published 1971), Death and the King’s Horseman (1975), and The Beatification of Area Boy (1995). In these and Soyinka’s other dramas, Western elements are skillfully fused with subject matter and dramatic techniques deeply rooted in Yoruba folklore and religion. Symbolism, flashback, and ingenious plotting contribute to a rich dramatic structure. His best works exhibit humour and fine poetic style as well as a gift for irony and satire and for accurately matching the language of his complex characters to their social position and moral qualities.
He wrote several plays in a lighter vein, making fun of pompous, Westernized schoolteachers in The Lion and the Jewel (first performed in Ibadan, 1959; published 1963) and mocking the clever preachers of upstart prayer-churches who grow fat on the credulity of their parishioners in The Trials of Brother Jero (performed 1960; published 1963) and Jero’s Metamorphosis (1973). But his more serious plays, such as The Strong Breed (1963), Kongi’s Harvest (opened the first Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, 1966; published 1967), The Road (1965), From Zia, with Love (1992), and even the parody King Baabu (performed 2001; published 2002), reveal his disregard for Af
rican authoritarian leadership and his disillusionment with Nigerian society as a whole.
Other notable plays include Madmen and Specialists (performed 1970; published 1971), Death and the King’s Horseman (1975), and The Beatification of Area Boy (1995). In these and Soyinka’s other dramas, Western elements are skillfully fused with subject matter and dramatic techniques deeply rooted in Yoruba folklore and religion. Symbolism, flashback, and ingenious plotting contribute to a rich dramatic structure. His best works exhibit humour and fine poetic style as well as a gift for irony and satire and for accurately matching the language of his complex characters to their social position and moral qualities.
Other notable plays include Madmen and Specialists (performed 1970; published 1971), Death and the King’s Horseman (1975), and The Beatification of Area Boy (1995). In these and Soyinka’s other dramas, Western elements are skillfully fused with subject matter and dramatic techniques deeply rooted in Yoruba folklore and religion. Symbolism, flashback, and ingenious plotting contribute to a rich dramatic structure. His best works exhibit humour and fine poetic style as well as a gift for irony and satire and for accurately matching the language of his complex characters to their social position and moral qualities.
The word "malapropism" (and its earlier variant "malaprop") comes from a character named "Mrs. Malaprop" in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 1775 play The Rivals.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first recorded use of "malapropos" in English is from 1630, and the first person known to have used the word "malaprop" in the sense of "a speech error" is Lord Byron in 1814.
The synonymous term "Dogberryism" comes from the 1598 Shakespeare play Much Ado About Nothing in which the character Dogberry utters many malapropisms to humorous effect.
The synonymous term "Dogberryism" comes from the 1598 Shakespeare play Much Ado About Nothing in which the character Dogberry utters many malapropisms to humorous effect.
In this audio I tell you how I made my notes in my books and other study material, how to make notes of summaries and how to take down notes from the internet.
Ama Ata Aidoo
Ama Ata Aidoo (born 23 March 1942, Saltpond), is a Ghanaian author, poet, playwright and academic. She was also a Minister of Education in Ghana under the Jerry Rawlings administration. She currently lives in Ghana, where in 2000 she established the Mbaasem Foundation to promote and support the work of African women writers.
After leaving high school, she enrolled at the University of Ghana in Legon and received her Bachelor of Arts in English as well as writing her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, in 1964. The play was published by Longman the following year, making Aidoo the first published African woman dramatist.
Aidoo's works of fiction particularly deal with the tension between Western and African world views. Her first novel, Our Sister Killjoy, was published in 1977 and remains one of her most popular works. Many of Aidoo's protagonists are women who defy the stereotypical women's roles of their time, as in her play Anowa. Her novel Changes won the 1992 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Africa). She is also an accomplished poet—her collection Someone Talking to Sometime won the Nelson Mandela Prize for Poetry in 1987—and has written several children's books.
She contributed the piece "To be a woman" to the 1984 anthology Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology, edited by Robin Morgan. In 2000 she founded the Mbaasem Foundation, a non-governmental organization based in Ghana with a mission "to support the development and sustainability of African women writers and their artistic output", which she runs together with her daughter Kinna Likimani and a board of management. Aidoo is the editor of the 2006 anthology African Love Stories.
Our Sister Killjoy is about a young African woman named Sissie who goes to Europe to "better" herself (with European education) as described by her African counterparts. The novel revolves around themes of black diaspora and colonialism, in particular colonization of the mind. Sissie observes the other Africans who have emigrated (also for education and the desire for a better life in Europe) and sees them as "sell-outs" who have forgotten their culture and their motherland. Aidoo touches on the effects of post-colonialism and how the traditions and thoughts of the colonizer are instilled into the minds of the colonized. Sissie in the novel represents the need to have a connection to one's past. Aidoo is critical of Africans' adulation of Europeans. The first thing Sissie notices upon going into the town in Germany are shiny and glittery material possessions. Aidoo critiques the way some Africans buy into the notion of white superiority, by turning to Europe when they are looking for the "best," whether in education or material possessions. The orientation toward Europe and the investment in whiteness begins in Africa and continues and is reinforced when Africans migrate to Europe. After colonialism, places such as Ghana and Nigeria are left with European institutions and frameworks and they continue to operate within them post-independence. Aidoo positions "Our Sister" as a radical to stand in strong opposition to those black people whose minds do not seem to be filled with thoughts of their own, such as Sammy, the first black person we are introduced to other than Our Sister. While in Germany Sissie befriends Marija. Although speaking different languages, they build a strong understanding. As Sissie's time in Germany nears an end, Marija makes a pass at her. Sissie has mixed emotions, never having been attracted to a woman before, and it makes her think deeply on same-gendered relationships. Later in the novel, Sissie goes to England and is surprised at the number of Africans she sees. She is shocked at their "wretched living conditions"; they live in basement flats and wear ugly, worn-in clothing. Sissie is shocked at the women who, had they been in Africa, would have worn the most beautiful, luxurious clothing, and have now ruined their own beauty. Sissie describes their position in England as "running very fast just to rema
Ama Ata Aidoo (born 23 March 1942, Saltpond), is a Ghanaian author, poet, playwright and academic. She was also a Minister of Education in Ghana under the Jerry Rawlings administration. She currently lives in Ghana, where in 2000 she established the Mbaasem Foundation to promote and support the work of African women writers.
After leaving high school, she enrolled at the University of Ghana in Legon and received her Bachelor of Arts in English as well as writing her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, in 1964. The play was published by Longman the following year, making Aidoo the first published African woman dramatist.
Aidoo's works of fiction particularly deal with the tension between Western and African world views. Her first novel, Our Sister Killjoy, was published in 1977 and remains one of her most popular works. Many of Aidoo's protagonists are women who defy the stereotypical women's roles of their time, as in her play Anowa. Her novel Changes won the 1992 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Africa). She is also an accomplished poet—her collection Someone Talking to Sometime won the Nelson Mandela Prize for Poetry in 1987—and has written several children's books.
She contributed the piece "To be a woman" to the 1984 anthology Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology, edited by Robin Morgan. In 2000 she founded the Mbaasem Foundation, a non-governmental organization based in Ghana with a mission "to support the development and sustainability of African women writers and their artistic output", which she runs together with her daughter Kinna Likimani and a board of management. Aidoo is the editor of the 2006 anthology African Love Stories.
Our Sister Killjoy is about a young African woman named Sissie who goes to Europe to "better" herself (with European education) as described by her African counterparts. The novel revolves around themes of black diaspora and colonialism, in particular colonization of the mind. Sissie observes the other Africans who have emigrated (also for education and the desire for a better life in Europe) and sees them as "sell-outs" who have forgotten their culture and their motherland. Aidoo touches on the effects of post-colonialism and how the traditions and thoughts of the colonizer are instilled into the minds of the colonized. Sissie in the novel represents the need to have a connection to one's past. Aidoo is critical of Africans' adulation of Europeans. The first thing Sissie notices upon going into the town in Germany are shiny and glittery material possessions. Aidoo critiques the way some Africans buy into the notion of white superiority, by turning to Europe when they are looking for the "best," whether in education or material possessions. The orientation toward Europe and the investment in whiteness begins in Africa and continues and is reinforced when Africans migrate to Europe. After colonialism, places such as Ghana and Nigeria are left with European institutions and frameworks and they continue to operate within them post-independence. Aidoo positions "Our Sister" as a radical to stand in strong opposition to those black people whose minds do not seem to be filled with thoughts of their own, such as Sammy, the first black person we are introduced to other than Our Sister. While in Germany Sissie befriends Marija. Although speaking different languages, they build a strong understanding. As Sissie's time in Germany nears an end, Marija makes a pass at her. Sissie has mixed emotions, never having been attracted to a woman before, and it makes her think deeply on same-gendered relationships. Later in the novel, Sissie goes to England and is surprised at the number of Africans she sees. She is shocked at their "wretched living conditions"; they live in basement flats and wear ugly, worn-in clothing. Sissie is shocked at the women who, had they been in Africa, would have worn the most beautiful, luxurious clothing, and have now ruined their own beauty. Sissie describes their position in England as "running very fast just to rema
in where they are".
Anowa published in 1970. It is based on a traditional Ghanaian tale of a daughter who rejects suitors proposed by her parents, Osam and Badua, and marries a stranger who ultimately is revealed as the Devil in disguise. The play is set in the 1870s on the Gold Coast, and tells the story of the heroine Anowa's failed marriage to the slave trader Kofi Ako. The play has a unique trait where a couple, an old man and an old woman, play the role of the Chorus. They present themselves at crucial points in the play and give their own views on the events in the play. Anowa's attitude of being a modern independent woman angers Kofi Ako. He requests her to be like other normal women. Anowa lives in a hallucinated world and the sorrow of not bearing a child depresses her. Her rich husband, now frustrated with his wife asks her to leave him. Anowa argues with him and finds out that he had lost his ability to bear children and the fault was in him and not in her. This disclosure of the truth drives Kofi Ako to shoot himself and Anowa drowns herself. Anowa represents the modern woman who likes to make her own decisions and live life as per her choice. An additional conflict is that although a tribal woman, she has the traits of a city-bred. Her attitude leads to her destruction.
Anowa published in 1970. It is based on a traditional Ghanaian tale of a daughter who rejects suitors proposed by her parents, Osam and Badua, and marries a stranger who ultimately is revealed as the Devil in disguise. The play is set in the 1870s on the Gold Coast, and tells the story of the heroine Anowa's failed marriage to the slave trader Kofi Ako. The play has a unique trait where a couple, an old man and an old woman, play the role of the Chorus. They present themselves at crucial points in the play and give their own views on the events in the play. Anowa's attitude of being a modern independent woman angers Kofi Ako. He requests her to be like other normal women. Anowa lives in a hallucinated world and the sorrow of not bearing a child depresses her. Her rich husband, now frustrated with his wife asks her to leave him. Anowa argues with him and finds out that he had lost his ability to bear children and the fault was in him and not in her. This disclosure of the truth drives Kofi Ako to shoot himself and Anowa drowns herself. Anowa represents the modern woman who likes to make her own decisions and live life as per her choice. An additional conflict is that although a tribal woman, she has the traits of a city-bred. Her attitude leads to her destruction.
Comedy of menace is the body of plays written by David Campton, Nigel Dennis, N. F. Simpson, and Harold Pinter. The term was coined by drama critic Irving Wardle, who borrowed it from the subtitle of Campton's play The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace, in reviewing Pinter's and Campton's plays in Encore in 1958. (Campton's subtitle Comedy of Menace is a jocular play-on-words derived from comedy of manners—menace being mannerspronounced with somewhat of a Judeo-English accent.)
Buchi Emecheta
Florence Onyebuchi "Buchi" Emecheta OBE (21 July 1944 – 25 January 2017) was a Nigerian-born British novelist, based in the UK from 1962, who also wrote plays and autobiography, as well as work for children. She was the author of more than 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979).
Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education gained recognition from critics and honours. Emecheta once described her stories as "stories of the world…[where]… women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical." She has been characterised as "the first successful black woman novelist living in Britain after 1948".
She began writing about her experiences of Black British life in a regular column in the New Statesman, and a collection of these pieces became her first published book in 1972, In the Ditch. The semi-autobiographical novel chronicled the struggles of a main character named Adah, who is forced to live in a housing estate while working as a librarian to support her five children. Her second novel published two years later, Second-Class Citizen (Allison and Busby, 1974), also drew on Emecheta's own experiences, and both books were eventually published in one volume by Allison and Busby under the title Adah's Story (1983).
From 1965 to 1969, Emecheta worked as a library officer for the British Museum in London. From 1969 to 1976 she was a youth worker and sociologist for the Inner London Education Authority, and from 1976 to 1978 she worked as a community worker in Camden, North London, meanwhile continuing to produce further novels with Allison and Busby – The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977), The Joys of Motherhood (1979) and Destination Biafra (1982) – as well as the children's books Titch the Cat (1979) and Nowhere To Play (1980).
The Bride Price is a 1975 novel (first published in the UK by Allison & Busby and in the USA by George Braziller) by Nigerian writer Buchi Emecheta. It concerns, in part, the problems of women in post-colonial Nigeria. In the city of Lagos, the Ibo Aku-nna and her brother, Nna-nndo, bid farewell by their father Ezekiel, who says he is going to the hospital for a few hours – their mother, Ma Blackie, is back home in Ibuza, performing fertility rites. It becomes apparent that he is much sicker than he let his children know, and he dies three weeks later. They have the funeral the day before Ma Blackie arrives; she takes them back to Ibuza with her, as she now becomes the wife of Ezekiel’s brother. The family is problematic in Ibuza – Ma Blackie has some of her own money, and so her children receive much more schooling than other children in the village, particularly the children of her new husband’s other wives. Aku-nna is blossoming, though she is thin and passive, and starts to attract the attention of young men in the neighborhood, though she has not yet started to menstruate. Her stepfather Okonkwo, who has ambitions of being made a chief, begins to anticipate a large bride price for her. Meanwhile, she has begun to fall for her teacher Chike, who in turn has developed a passion for her. Chike is the descendant of slaves – when colonization started, the Ibo often sent their slaves to the missionary schools so they could please the missionaries without disrupting Ibo life, and now the descendants of those slaves hold most of the privileged positions in the region. Chike’s inferior background means it is unlikely that Okonkwo will agree to let him marry Aku-nna, although his family is wealthy enough to offer a generous bride price. When Aku-nna begins menstruating – the sign that she is now old enough to get married – she at first conceals it in order to stave off the inevitable confrontation. When she finally reveals that she has her period, young men come to court her and Okonkwo receives several offers. One night, after sh
Florence Onyebuchi "Buchi" Emecheta OBE (21 July 1944 – 25 January 2017) was a Nigerian-born British novelist, based in the UK from 1962, who also wrote plays and autobiography, as well as work for children. She was the author of more than 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979).
Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education gained recognition from critics and honours. Emecheta once described her stories as "stories of the world…[where]… women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical." She has been characterised as "the first successful black woman novelist living in Britain after 1948".
She began writing about her experiences of Black British life in a regular column in the New Statesman, and a collection of these pieces became her first published book in 1972, In the Ditch. The semi-autobiographical novel chronicled the struggles of a main character named Adah, who is forced to live in a housing estate while working as a librarian to support her five children. Her second novel published two years later, Second-Class Citizen (Allison and Busby, 1974), also drew on Emecheta's own experiences, and both books were eventually published in one volume by Allison and Busby under the title Adah's Story (1983).
From 1965 to 1969, Emecheta worked as a library officer for the British Museum in London. From 1969 to 1976 she was a youth worker and sociologist for the Inner London Education Authority, and from 1976 to 1978 she worked as a community worker in Camden, North London, meanwhile continuing to produce further novels with Allison and Busby – The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977), The Joys of Motherhood (1979) and Destination Biafra (1982) – as well as the children's books Titch the Cat (1979) and Nowhere To Play (1980).
The Bride Price is a 1975 novel (first published in the UK by Allison & Busby and in the USA by George Braziller) by Nigerian writer Buchi Emecheta. It concerns, in part, the problems of women in post-colonial Nigeria. In the city of Lagos, the Ibo Aku-nna and her brother, Nna-nndo, bid farewell by their father Ezekiel, who says he is going to the hospital for a few hours – their mother, Ma Blackie, is back home in Ibuza, performing fertility rites. It becomes apparent that he is much sicker than he let his children know, and he dies three weeks later. They have the funeral the day before Ma Blackie arrives; she takes them back to Ibuza with her, as she now becomes the wife of Ezekiel’s brother. The family is problematic in Ibuza – Ma Blackie has some of her own money, and so her children receive much more schooling than other children in the village, particularly the children of her new husband’s other wives. Aku-nna is blossoming, though she is thin and passive, and starts to attract the attention of young men in the neighborhood, though she has not yet started to menstruate. Her stepfather Okonkwo, who has ambitions of being made a chief, begins to anticipate a large bride price for her. Meanwhile, she has begun to fall for her teacher Chike, who in turn has developed a passion for her. Chike is the descendant of slaves – when colonization started, the Ibo often sent their slaves to the missionary schools so they could please the missionaries without disrupting Ibo life, and now the descendants of those slaves hold most of the privileged positions in the region. Chike’s inferior background means it is unlikely that Okonkwo will agree to let him marry Aku-nna, although his family is wealthy enough to offer a generous bride price. When Aku-nna begins menstruating – the sign that she is now old enough to get married – she at first conceals it in order to stave off the inevitable confrontation. When she finally reveals that she has her period, young men come to court her and Okonkwo receives several offers. One night, after sh