“African literature is the future,” wrote Ben Okri, the well-known Nigerian poet and novelist, in an essay on the Brittle Paper website. “Once upon a time, to be considered part of African literature, it had to be published in series dedicated to African writers. Today, for all the best publishing houses, having an African writer in their catalog has become a must“. This attention of the publishing world – in particular of the Anglo-Saxon and Francophone ones – for the writers of the continent is tangible, and in recent months has resulted in an avalanche of very prestigious awards, in several languages.
Let’s start with the Francosenegalese David Diop, who this summer made a name for himself by winning the International Booker prize thanks to the English translation of his Soul brothers (Neri Pozza 2019), on the Senegalese soldiers who fought in Europe in the First World War, already awarded with the Kourouma prix and the European Witch. Then in October the news arrived that it lit a beacon on an area of the world so far little traveled by bibliophiles: Abdelrazak Gurnah, a Tanzanian from Zanzibar, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. As is often the case, he had never been a favorite, much to the disappointment of book distributors in the Anglo-Saxon world, who had only very few copies of his novels available at the time of the announcement. He was not known even in Tanzania, as the Tanzanian columnist Elsie Eyakuze explains, nor in Arab countries, despite the fact that the author and his novels are part of a world between Africa and the Arabian peninsula.
After Gurnah it was a crescendo. On 21 October the Mozambican Paulina Chiziane, who in 1990 was the first woman to publish a novel in her country, obtained the most important Lusophone literary recognition, the Camões prize (which with its one hundred thousand euros is one of the richest in the world) . The next day, at the Geneva book fair, Congolese Blaise Ndala won the Kourouma prize (for a work from sub-Saharan Africa) for the novel In the belly of the Congo, which tells of the “Congolese village” set up at the 1958 Universal Exposition in Brussels, right next to the newly formed structure of the Atomium. And then again: the Senegalese writer Boubacar Boris Diop, author among others of Rwanda. Murambi, the book of bones (editions e / 0 2004), received the prestigious Neustadt prize 2022 on October 26, awarded every two years by the University of Oklahoma’s World Literature Today magazine. Fifty thousand dollars and a replica of a silver-coated eagle quill to recognize the literary merits of the entire work of an author or author. In the same days in Germany the Zimbabwean writer and director Tsitsi Dangarembga, already winner of the Pen Pinter prize in June, was awarded the Peace Prize of the German publishers. Dangarembga was already nominated for the Booker prize last year for the novel This mournable body, together with the Ethiopian writer Maaza Mengiste, author of the Shadow king (Einaudi 2020).
Secret memories and promises
But that’s not all. On November 3, a Senegalese writer from 1990 won the most prestigious and oldest literary prize in France, the Goncourt (just ten euros, but with the assurance of stellar fame and sales). Mohamed Mbougar Sarr has imposed himself with his novel The most secret memory of men (edited by Philippe Rey, out in Italy for editions e / 0). This is not an insignificant statement because Sarr is the second youngest winner, and the first originally from sub-Saharan Africa. The book is inspired by the story of the Malian writer Yambo Ouologuem, winner of the Renaudot prize in 1968 with an epochal novel The duty of violence and then disappeared from circulation. On the same day, the South African Damon Galgut with the novel The promise (recently released for editions e / 0) stole the illustrious Booker prize from competitors, including Somali-British Nadifa Mohamed. The “promise” of the title is that made by a white woman in 1985 to give the black maid the family home, a promise that in the context of apartheid is in itself unrealizable. Receiving the award, Galgut commented: “It has been a great year for African writers. I accept this recognition in the name of all the told and untold stories, of the known and lesser known writers and writers of the incredible continent to which I belong ”.
In his essay Ben Okri wrote that African literature is conquering the world. And he was right. He is conquering it with very talented authors and authors, who have often had the opportunity to train and dedicate themselves to this profession abroad, in Europe and in the United States, and who therefore look at the continent with a certain detachment. Okri speaks of an “African” sensibility, at the same time conservative, lover of tradition, and innovative, disruptive. In addition to this gaze, African narrators have at their disposal a wealth of stories and characters to rediscover and re-tell, such as that of the Malian writer reimagined in the pages written with great verve by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, or that of skirmishers Senegalese who fought for France described by Diop, or that of women’s resistance to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in the novel by Maaza Mengiste. But I would also like to mention the attempt – actually not very successful – made by Zimbabwean Petina Gappah in Beyond the darkness (Guanda 2020) to tell the journey of the body of the explorer David Livingstone from the point of view of the Africans who accompanied him. The rewriting of certain episodes of African history often brings with it a sharp critique of colonialism, which earned Gurnah the Nobel Prize.
“The stories of the global South question the power structures on which a world that was built with imperialism, the slave trade, colonialism and racism that still exists today is based,” said the author. Tsitsi Dangarembga in an interview with Deusche Welle radio. In a post-pandemic world, of the Black Lives Matter and MeToo movements, the foundations of that world are shaking more than ever. And more than ever, as the title of a well-known novel by NoViolet Bulawayo says, new names are needed.
Identity in the mirror
The hope for the future is that the international success of African authors can increase publishing and the number of readers on the continent as well. In some countries, such as Nigeria, South Africa or Kenya, there are thriving sectors, driven by quality publishing houses, solid authors and cutting-edge literary magazines. But in many other parts of the continent, books don’t have an audience, because they are too expensive or there are simply no people who print them. Elsie Eyakuze in her article on Gurnah also talks about censorship and about a state, the Tanzanian one, willing not to recall episodes of the past that could conflict with its nationalist propaganda. Having originated in Zanzibar and then went into exile in the UK, Gurnah is a Tanzanian unlike many others. By winning the Nobel Prize, writes the journalist, “Gurnah has done a great favor to our country, and to Africa in general. It complicated things. It forced us to talk about who we are and who we are not. How we got here and where we want to go. Of the bad state of our literature, of memory, of how it is transmitted, and of the tyranny of official history ”.
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