#Zambian Literature

[fragilepromise]

by kayo chingonyi

[rhetoricandlogic]

‘The Old Drift’ Is a Dazzling Debut Spanning Four Generations

By Dwight Garner

March 25, 2019

Namwali Serpell’s audacious first novel, “The Old Drift,” is narrated in small part by a swarm of mosquitoes — “thin troubadours, the bare ruinous choir” — who declare themselves “man’s greatest nemesis.”

They’re a pipsqueak chorus, a thrumming collective intelligence, a comic and subversive hive mind. They are here to puncture, if you will, humanity’s pretensions.

“The Old Drift” is an intimate, brainy, gleaming epic, set mostly in what is now Zambia, the landlocked country in southern Africa. It closely tracks the fortunes of three families (black, white, brown) across four generations.

The plot pivots gracefully — this is a supremely confident literary performance — from accounts of the region’s early white colonizers and despoilers through the worst years of the AIDS crisis. It pushes into the near future, proposing a world in which flocking bug-size microdrones are a) fantastically cool and b) put to chilling totalitarian purposes.

Serpell’s mosquitoes observe the dozens of wriggling humans in this novel, and they are distinctly unimpressed. We were here before you, they imply. We will be here long after you are gone. In the meantime, thanks for the drinks.

The reader who picks up “The Old Drift” is likely to be more than simply impressed. This is a dazzling book, as ambitious as any first novel published this decade. It made the skin on the back of my neck prickle.

Serpell seems to want to stuff the entire world into her novel — biology, race, subjugation, revolutionary politics, technology — but it retains a human scale. It is filled with love stories, greedy sex (“my heart twerks for you,” one character comments), pot smoke, comedy, inopportune menstruation, car crashes, tennis, and the scorching pleasure and pain of long hours in hair salons.

Serpell is a Zambian writer; she was born in that country and moved to the United States with her family when she was nine. She teaches literature at the University of California, Berkeley.

There’s a vein of magical realism in her work — one woman cries almost literal rivers, another has hair that covers nearly her entire body and that grows several feet a day — that will spark warranted comparisons to novels such as Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children” and Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”

Serpell does not try to charm her readers to death. Her men and women are not cute (except, sometimes, to each other), and they are not caricatures. Even the most virulent racists in “The Old Drift” aren’t one-dimensional.

Serpell is a pitiless and often very funny observer of people and of society. She describes polo as “that strange game that seems like a drunken bet about golf and horse riding.” A man on a leather sofa is commended for “expertly unlocking that complex apparatus — a clothed woman.”

She offers this definition of “history”: “the word the English used for the record of every time a white man encountered something he had never seen and promptly claimed it as his own, often renaming it for good measure.”

Here she is on a young white woman in Zambia: “She seemed both weak and imperious, helpless yet haughty. In a word: British.”

This is a matrilineal epic. It is packed with grandmothers, mothers, daughters. They are hardly placed on pedestals or lit by false, ennobling, autumnal light. They’re all struggling. Some drop out of school, steal or dabble with skin-whitening creams. Some open businesses, others turn to prostitution. Still others turn to protest. Nearly all are hoping to find love and, in the interim, to avoid being raped.

This book is intensely concerned with women’s bodies. Dissertations will surely be written about the multiple meanings of hair in this novel. We’ve learned too much from male writers about what it’s like to walk the planet guided and plagued by one’s reproductive apparatus. This novel, with wit and sensitivity, flips and revises that familiar script.

One young woman gets her period on her wedding day. Her friends, her family, the many guests — they’re all here. “All she wanted,” Serpell writes, “was to be at home in bed, curled in a ball, alone and quietly bleeding.”

Serpell is keenly interested in olfactory information. She lingers on people and places and scent. In one scene, a blind woman smells eucalyptus and knows she is nearly home. In another, a mother dislikes her daughter’s “new teenagery smell,” described as “a melony-lemony-biscuity scent that Adriana found both puerile and daunting.”

The plot of “The Old Drift” is not simple to unpack. The book begins, at the start of the 20th century, at a colonial settlement on the banks of the Zambezi River called the Old Drift. A dam is being constructed that will change many lives, a dam that some will wish to bring down.

The first women we meet, beginning around 1940, are: Sibilla, a white girl so unusually hirsute that at one point later in life she will be referred to as “an NGO for hair”; Agnes, a “pale, mad” and blind British girl who marries a black professor and engineer; and Matha, a bright girl whose prospects collapse after she becomes pregnant. She is this novel’s copious weeper, “the heartbreak queen of Kalingalinga.”

We get to know their daughters. One operates “Hi-Fly Haircuttery & Designs Ltd” (and perhaps a shadier business); another is a stewardess who once had artistic ambitions. One of these daughters has a long affair with a doctor who is working on a vaccine for H.I.V.

About a potential vaccine, we get shrewd snippets of dialogue like this one: “‘Beta version,’ Naila scoffed. ‘They should just say black version. They’re testing it on us.’”

The third generation goes on to work on microdrones, on further AIDS research and on political protest, seeking redress for the wrongs of history. One character also works on the vexing future of wearable technology — digital beadlike chips, implanted into the skin, that with the help of permanent tattoos of conductive ink turn one’s hands into approximations of smartphones.

“Government is controlling us,” one character says near the end of the novel. “And the worst part is — we chose this. We held our hands out to them and said PLEASE BEAD US!”

Serpell carefully husbands her resources. She unspools her intricate and overlapping stories calmly. Small narrative hunches pay off big later, like cherries coming up on a slot machine.

Yet she’s such a generous writer. The people and the ideas in “The Old Drift,” like dervishes, are set whirling. When that whirling stops, you can hear the mosquitoes again. They’re still out there.

They sound like tiny drones. They sound like dread.

[connectza]

#Friday - Kayo Chingonyi wins 2018 Dylan Thomas Prize

The Zambian-British writer Kayo Chingonyi’s exploration of black masculinity in his debut poetry collection Kumukanda has won him the £30,000 Dylan Thomasaward.

The Swansea University International Dylan Thomas prize is awarded each year for the best literary work by an author aged 39 or under – the age the beloved Welsh poet was when he died. Chingonyi, who is 31, is the first British poet to win the genre-straddling award, which has gone in the past to Max Porter’s novel Grief Is the Thing With Feathers and Fiona McFarlane’s short-story collection The High Places.

Read more

[marjanefan]

Bewitched, bothered, bewildered- thoughts on‘The trial of Elizabeth Gadge’

’The trial of Elizabeth Gadge’ remains one of the most underrated and under discussed episodes of ‘Inside No.9’. However Reece Shearsmith has said on several occasions that this is one of his favourite episodes and there is much in the episode to enjoy and discuss

The episode concerns the trial of Elizabeth Gadge (Ruth Sheen- more of whom later) for witchcraft in the village of Little Happens at some point of the mid seventeenth century. The trial is overseen by local magistrate Sir Andrew Pike (brilliantly played by David Warner) who has summoned witch finders Mr Warren (Reece Shearsmith) and Mr Clarke (Steve Pemberton)

Please be aware this essay contains spoilers for the episode

NB spoilers for episode below

Before discussing the episode It is worth first looking at why the Seventeenth century was the peak period of witch trials in England, as it was in Europe (and North America later). The reason for this has been argued to be due to the religious and socio-political upheavals of the Reformation, counter reformation and resulting wars of religion and the beginnings of what we understand as the ‘nation state’ of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is worth noting witch trials in England became more common after James I came to power. James I as James VI of Scotland had a fascination with supposed witchcraft, setting up a royal commission into witchcraft, personally overseeing the torture of suspected witches and writing the Daemonologie in 1599 (As an aside-there is an interesting link here to another Inside No.9 episode ‘The Understudy’ which references ‘Macbeth’. Shakespeare included the characters of the three witches and references to witchcraft to specifically appeal to James I). It does not take a psychologist to read that James I’s fascination with /fear of witches may have stemmed from his issues with his mother Mary Queen of Scots because of her Catholic faith and her portrayal as a dangerous woman due to her alleged involvement in the murder of James’ father and the threat that she might one day try and reclaim her throne from James. There has been an argument that one of the factors in the amount of witch trials and number of women convicted in Scotland and England during the period was a result of anxiety around female power after the reigns of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots (and indeed Catherine de Medici in France). Almost 90 % of those executed for witchcraft in England were women- higher than any other European country. Of course it is no coincidence that witch trial numbers were at their highest during the period of the English Civil war and Commonwealth with their social traumas and religious disruptions. As someone with a keen interest in the history of witchcraft Reece Shearsmith would be aware of all of this and it shows in the care and attention to detail in the script. Shearsmith noted that it was predominantly women’s life that were on the line in a recent Guardian article about the inspirations for the episode where he also noted that the inclusion of Snowflake the mouse in the episode was also inspired by reading accounts of these trials.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/apr/24/inside-no-9-bbc-steve-pemberton-reece-shearsmith-inspirations

This may be why seventeenth century witch trials (and witch anxiety) have proved a fruitful source for art during periods of trauma and political repression in the twentieth century. There are the example of Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’ which uses the Salem witch trials to explore McCartyism and Carl Theodore Dreyer’s ‘Day of Wrath’ which uses the backdrop of seventeenth century witch trials to explore the Nazi occupation of Denmark and oppression of women. The motives and attitudes of those who accuse and punish suspected witches are put on trial as much the accused. This tradition continues with recent films such as the extraordinary 2017 Zambian film ‘I am not a witch’ which explores the ways women and girls around the world still have to deal with accusations of witchcraft and the resulting violence and oppression (as an aside the film also uses humour and surrealism to tackle this topic).

Two particular films have undoubtably had an influence on ‘The Trial of Elizabeth Gadge’. The first is the 1968 Hammer film ‘Witchfinder general’ starring Vincent Price as the real-life witch hunter Matthew Hopkins. It is revealed Mr Warren’s first name is Matthew, which must be a reference to the film. Like Hopkins, Mr Warren enjoys his work as a witch finder both because it brings him great power over others along with financial gain. Indeed the whole episode pays tribute to the folk horror genre of late 60s early 70s British cinema which both Pemberton and Shearsmith have spoken of as a major influence on their work over their careers. Another film which also has an influence is the 1922 Danish film ‘Haxan’ which Reece Shearsmith has narrated live on more than one occasion. He discussed the film and it’s influence on the episode in a 2018 Guardian article (linked below). One interesting feature of this film is that it uses humour to explore the ridiculous nature of belief in witchcraft. Shearsmith picked up and comments on this.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/apr/08/reece-shearsmith-league-of-gentlemen-interview

Elizabeth Gadge fits the narrative we have had passed down about who the majority of victims of witch trials are. She is an elderly woman who has become ‘surplus’ in her society and an inconvenience to her family , particularly her son in law Thomas Nutter (Jim Howick). She has had to resort to selling herself to Richard Two Shoes (Paul Kaye) in order to pay the rent her son in law insists on charging her. In spite of all this she conducts herself with great dignity during her trial and manages to stand up to Mr Warren making a joke about his beard resembling a woman’s private parts much to the amusement of the court room. Her pleas to both her daughter and Richard Good Shoes to try and save her are genuinely affecting. Ruth Sheen delivers a terrific performance. Reece Shearsmith related in the recent Guardian article she was specifically chosen for the part, and that her performance makes the audience care about her fate.

While the tone of the courtroom scene are played as comic, the scene of Mr Warren’s interrogation are harrowing and illustrate that accusations of witchcraft, however ridiculous they are to us today, led to horrific violence against of thousands of innocent people (these scenes remind me personally of the scenes of the torture of Herlof's Marte in ‘Day of Wrath and of the elderly woman in ‘Haxan- a scene Reece Shearsmith commented on in the Guardian article).

The episode also suggests another reason, not often explored in scholarly literature, for witch trials. Namely entertainment and some sort of attention and distraction from the boredom and drudgery of life in these times. Sir Andrew Pike expresses delight that the trial has brought attention to Little Happens and that the neighbouring town of Much Happens will be envious. He also is pleased the trial could be ‘bigger than Pendle’ (a reference to the infamous Pendle witch trial of 1612). Sir Andrew takes an unhealthy pleasure in proceedings, lapping up the attention and the power he has been given over the life of an elderly woman. He even suggests extending proceedings by trying to accuse Elizabeth Gadge’s daughter. He goes from sentencing Elizabeth to death to advertising tickets for her burning without missing a beat. George Waterhouse, Richard Two-Shoes and Thomas Nutter are all shown to be selfish (and abusive) with their own reasons for wanting Elizabeth out of the way.

Reece Shearsmith obviously enjoyed portraying Mr Warren and he manages to show him as ridicious and vain while being incredibly dangerous and cruel that makes him a truly chilling character. His performance here is one of the most underrated in the series.

One question that I want to explore is why does Elizabeth Gadge kill Mr Clarke after he saves her. Steve Pemberton gives a tremendous performance as Mr Clarke, subtly conveying both his growing distain and concern about the system he is part of and at Mr Warren's behaviour (Reece Shearsmith gave particular praise for Steve's performance on the soundlcoud commentary of the episode and at the BFI screening with Steve returning this praise for Reeces performance as Mr Warren). Mr Clarke may come to realise that the work he is involved leads to the torture and killing of innocent people and how dangerous Mr Warren is. But he himself has benefitted from this system. as he notes. Rather than properly confront and address this system, he chooses to leave it in place and kill his colleague (who presumably was also a good friend at one point as his final words to Mr Warren reveal). He behaves in a highly self -righteous manner about it, asserting he has rid the world of a great evil. He also ensures he gets paid for the trial (I accept he gives Mr Warren’s fee to Elizabeth Gadge). It could be said he portrays himself as a ‘male saviour’ to Elizabeth, underestimating her agency. In his own way, Mr Clarke enjoys the power he has over Elizabeth’s life and sees her as someone who things are done to (even if it is apparently saving her life) just as much as Mr Warren and Sir Andrew. No wonder Elizabeth enjoys dispatching him.

But not only does Elizabeth Gadge avenge herself on Mr Warren and Mr Clarke, she also avenges herself on the village that put her on trial. Her final act before departing is to use the flames from Mr Warren’s pyre to set fire to the gathered crowd and the village. For me the end of this episode could almost said to be an act of vengeance not just on behalf of all the many accused characters (usually female) who usually end up killed in these stories but on behalf of all those killed in the witch trials of this period. This witch was not for burning.

Finally I just want to praise Yves Barre for his wonderful costumes for this episodes. He manages to convey the class system within Little Happens (with Sir Andrew and George Waterhouse being better dressed than most of the village) and his gorgeous costumes for Mr Warren and Mr Clarke convey how well they have done out of being witch hunters financially (their clothes are obviously well made with expensive materials and trimmings) while conveying their ideological commitment (their clothes are black and austere).

As has been noted 'The trial of Elizabeth Gadge' suffered from being the episode that directly followed onn from 'The 12 days of Christine'. However as I have hopefully shown it is an episode which continues in a fine tradition of exploring the witch trials of the seventeenth century and which brings something new and thought provoking to this tradition

[dillydedalus]

what i read in july

THAT’S MORE LIKE IT aka i’m finally out of the (relative) reading slump for good & my bro james joyce was there

men explain things to me, rebecca solnit the original mansplaining essay is great, and still scarily relevant; the others in this collection (most on feminist issues) are also quite good; some aspects are a bit dated & problematic so be aware of that. 2.5/5

erschlagt die armen!, shumona sinha (tr. from french, not available in english) short but very impactful novella about a young french woman, originally from india, who works as an interpreter in the asylum system and becomes more & more broken by this system of inhumane bureaucracy and suffering, until she snaps and hits a migrant over the head with a wine bottle. full of alienation and misery and beautiful but disturbing language - the title translates to ‘beat the poor to death’ so like. yeah. 3.5/5

fire & blood: a history of the targaryen family I, george r r martin look, it’s a 700-page-long fake history book about a fictional ruling dynasty in a fictional world, and i’m just That Obsessed & Desperate about asoiaf (and i don’t even care about the targs That Much). anyway, now i know more about the targs than any ruling family from, you know, real history, which is like, whatever. this is pretty enjoyable if you are That Obsessed, although i will say that some bits are much better than others (there are some dry dull years even in everyone’s fav overly dramatic dragon-riding incest-loving family) and the misogyny really is. a lot. too much. way too much. BUT i did really like Good Best Queen Alysanne (her husband king joe harris is alright too i guess) and i found my new westerosi otp, cregan stark/aly blackwood, who both have Big Dick Energy off the fucking charts. 3.5/5 (+0.5 points for cregan and aly’s combined BDE)

the old drift, namwali serpell hugely ambitious sprawling postcolonial nation-building novel about zambia, told thru three generations of three families, as well as a chorus of mosquitoes (consistently the best & smartest parts). there is A LOT going on, in terms of characters, of plot points, of references to history (the zambian space programme) and literature (finally my knowledge of heart of darkness paid off) and thematically, and honestly it was a bit too much, a bit too tangled & fragmented & drifty, and in the end i probably admire this book more than i liked it, but serpell’s writing is incredibly smart and funny and full of electrical sparks 3.5/5

a severed head, iris murdoch the original love dodecahedron (not that i counted). iris murdoch is fucking WILD and i love her for it. this is a strange darkly funny little farce about some rich well-educated londoners and their bizarre & rather convoluted love lives. not as grandiosely wild as the sea the sea, but fun nevertheless. 3/5

midnight in chernobyl, adam higginbotham jumping on the hype bandwagon caused by the hbo series (very weird to call the current fascination with chernobyl a hype bandwagon but you know). interesting & well-written & accessible (tho the science is still totally beyond me) & gets you to care about the people involved. lots of human failure, lots of human greatness, set against the background of the almost eldritch threat of radioactivity (look up the elephant foot & see if you don’t get chills), and acute radiation syndrome which is THE MOST TERRIFYING THING ON EARTH . 3.5/5

normal people, sally rooney honestly this is incredibly engrossing & absorbing once you get used to how rooney completely ignores ‘show don’t tell’ (it works!), i pretty much read the whole thing in one slow workday (boss makes a dollar, i make a dime so i read books on my phone on company time, also i genuinely had nothing to do). i also think rooney is really good at precisely capturing the ~millenial experience in a way that feels very true, especially the transition from school to uni. BUT i really disliked the ending, the book never engages with the political themes it introduces (esp. class and gender) as deeply as it could and the bdsm stuff never really gets TIED UP LOL. so overall idk: 3.5/5

störfall: nachrichten eines tages, christa wolf quiet reflective undramatic little book narrated by a woman waiting to hear about the outcome of her brother’s brain surgery on the day of the catastrophe at chernobyl - throughout the day she puts down her thoughts about her brother and the events unfolding at chernobyl, as well as the double uncertainty she is trying to cope with. really interesting to read such an immediate reaction to chernobyl (the book came out less than a year after chernobyl). 2.5/5

the man in the high castle, philip k dick it was fine? quick & entertaining alternative history where the axis powers win the war, some interesting bits of worldbuilding (like the draining of the mediterranean which was apparently a real idea in the early 20th century?) but overall it’s just felt a bit disjointed & unsatisfying to me. 2.5/5

fugitive pieces, anne michaels very poetic & thoughtful novel about the holocaust, grief, remembrance & the difference between history and memory, intergenerational trauma, love, geology and the weather. i’m not sure how much this comes together as a novel, but it is absolutely beautifully written (the author is a poet as well) and very affective. 3.5/5

american innovations, rivka galchen short collection of bizarre & often funny short stories about neurotic women whose furniture flies away, or who grow an extra breast, or who are maybe too occupied with financial details. very vague & very precise at once, which seems to be the thing with these sort of collections. 3/5

fool’s assassin (fitz & the fool #1), robin hobb YAASS i’m back in the realm of the elderlings!!! i thought this was one of the weaker installments in the series - i still enjoyed it a lot, and Feelings were had, but it just doesn’t quite fit together pacing-wise & some of the characterisation struck me as off (can i get some nuance for shun & lant please?) and tbh fitz is at peak Selfcentred Dumbass Levels & it drove me up the fucking wall. molly, nettle & bee deserve better. still, completely HYPE for the rest of the trilogy. 3.5/5

JAMES JOYCE JULY

note: i decided not to read dubliners bc it’s my least fav of joyce’s major works & too bleak & repetitive for my mood right now AND while i planned not to reread finnegans wake bc……. it’s finnegans wake…. i kinda do want to read it now (but i also. really don’t.) so idk yet.

a portrait of the artist as a young man, james joyce y’all. i read this book at least once a year between the ages of 15 and 19, it’s beyond formative, it is burnt into my brain, and reading it now several years later it is still everything, soaring and searing (that searing clarity of truth, thanks burgess) and poetic and dirty, and stephen is baby, and a pretentious self-important little prick and i love him & i am him (or was him as only a pretentious self-important teenage girl reading joyce can be him - because this truly is a book that should be read in your late teens when you feel everything as intensely and world-endingly and severely as my boy stephen does and every new experience feels like the world changing). anyway i love this book & i love stephen dedalus, bird-like, hawk-like, knife-blade, aloof, alienated, severe and stern, a poet-priest-prophet if he could ever get over himself, baby baby baby. 5/5

exiles, james joyce well. there’s a reason joyce is known as a novelist. this is….. a failed experiment, maybe. a fairly boring play about an adulterous love-square and uh… love beyond morality and possession maybe??? about how much it would suck for joyce to return to ireland??? and tbh it’s not terribly interesting. 2/5

travesties, tom stoppard a wild funny irreverent & smart antic comedy inspired by the fact that during ww1, james joyce, lenin, and dadaist tristan tzara were all in neutral zurich, more or less simultaneously; they probably never met, but in this play they do, as dadaist poetry, socialist art critique, and a james joyce high on his own genius & in desperate need of some cash while writing ulysses, AND the importance of being earnest (joyce is putting on a production of it) all collide in the memories of henry carr, who played algernon & later sued joyce over money (tru facts). not my fav stoppard (that’s arcadia) but it’s funny & fizzy & smart & combines many many things that i love. 4/5 

ulysses, james joyce look i’m not really going to tell y’all anything new about ulysses, but it really has everything, it’s warm & human(e) & cerebral & difficult & funny & sad & healing & i always get a lot out of it even tho there’s bits (a lot of them) i’ll never wrap my head around. ultimate affirmation of humanity or whatever. also stephen dedalus is baby. 5/5

dedalus, chris mccabe the fact that this book (sequel to ulysses about what stephen dedalus might have done the next day) exists and was published ON MY BIRTHDAY is proof that the universe loves me. 

anyway this is very very good, very very clever, extremely good at stephen (less good at bloom but his parts are still good), engages w/ ulysses, portrait & hamlet (& others) very cleverly & does some cool meta and experimental shit. y’all it has stephen talking to a contemporary therapist about how he’s stuck in joyce’s text which is all about joyce & very little about whoever stephen is when he’s not joyce’s alter ego/affectionate but slightly amused look at younger self and ithaca is an interview w/ the author about how his relationship to his dad influenced his response to ulysses and I’M INTO IT. the oxen of the sun chapter replaces the whole ‘gestation of english prose’ w/ just slightly rewriting the first pages of about 10 novels published between ulysses and now & it does lolita w/ “bloom, thorn of stephen’s sleep, light in his eyes. his sire, his son’ and i lit. screamed. anyway i don’t want to give this 5 stars (yet) bc i think some of the experimental stuff ended up a bit gimmicky & didn’t add that much to the text but fuck. that’s my boy & i want to reread it right now. 4.5/5 ALSO it’s a crime no literary weirdo woman has written ‘a portrait of the artist’s sister’ about delia ‘dilly’ dedalus, shadow of stephen’s mind, quick far & daring, teaching herself french from a 3rd hand primer while her father drinks the nonexistent family fortune away and her older brother is getting drunk on a beach & starting fights w/ soldiers bc he’s a smartarse

[thesweetblossoms]

Floating Marigolds

🌵Today we hiked Tom Thumb trail, which is a beautiful and intoxicating walk on the McDowell Mountains, a half hour away from our apartment in Scottsdale. My memories of the walk are raw and ethereal, steeped in natural wonder and energy, as potent as the fresh snowy white, shimmering morsels of quartz stone, I found on the trail and as delicate as the many clementine orange, tiny, charming butterflies I saw flitting, gliding, rising and falling in gentle waves along the pink sandy earth, the butterflies, appearing like floating marigolds, twirling through jojobas, acacias, teddy bear chollas, prickly pear cactus and the gatherings of many dried scarlet, amethyst, bleached gold and chocolate tinted grasses. We walked along an uncultivated and wild desert with the shadows and sparkles dancing off the ridge of steely gray mountains, the light catapulting from wiry, needle embedded, hardy succulents and feathery clumps of grasses, trailing cautiously over the stumps of dried ocotillos, as the rushed breezes joined nature as it conducted the nimbus clouds, early October sunlight, far off late summer hurricane winds, nectar gathering bees and palpable dust into a beguiling symphony. Rattlesnakes, tarantulas, javelinas, scorpions and other desert dwellers are spotted on this trail. While, I was curious to see the natural inhabitants of such a cosmically and scenically charged terrain, I was grateful not to encounter any lethal fauna. While hiking along, I felt a slightly sinister energy, a nuance and awareness that the groves of chollas, slumbering mesquite trees, the serpentine and the web weaving habitué of the land, did not appreciate, humans ascending to their territory. Yet, being in uninimitable and unhindered natural manifestations, away from man made structures, traffic lights and manicured landscapes, in an open area, has a consciousness altering quality of change, or shifting borders between reality and illusions, of time moving and shaping the physical world, of the future cascading closer and of sudden insights and visions. As my husband trotted ahead, always a few stretches before me, yet close enough so we do not lose each other, I called out as he entreated me to hurry along. “I’m only a few steps behind.”, the words echoing through mystical, mysterious and impenetrable time and space.

Heretofore, my style has been predictable, often veering into the realm of slightly boring, thus, I am attempting to define it, such that it might inspire novel ways to translate my emotions, personality and subtle consciousness, into the way I present my self, with attire and jewelry. As I was born on the seventh of July, the number seven holds immense luck and possibility, and I consider it a charm and constant reminder of the magical nature of reality. The seven elements of my style would include romantic, feminine, mysterious, bohemian, poetic, classic and simple.

I tend to reach timelessly for white, nude or pale pink shirts, blouses and tops with skinny blue/black jeans, or black or navy shorts, I possess a cast of navy, emerald, white, camel, misty gray, mustard yellow, varied hues of pink and a few royal purple tinted dresses, I vary these, by sprinkling in a few petite floral patterned or striped pieces. My jewelry, consists of pearl, emerald or diamond studs or a pair of very thin gold hoops, I wear my engagement ring every day, with a combinations of a simple pearl ring I inherited from my grandmother, a minimal rose quartz band, or a ring with seven, small Zambian emeralds, I also wear my black Hermès watch, with pearl or brass bracelets. I tend to wear either nude high-heel sandals or pink, navy blue or leopard print ballet flats. In the mornings, dressing myself is a cherished ritual, I enjoy the unplanned nature and the momentous act of going through my collection of apparel, scarfs, shoes, belts and purses to help me gauge both the mood of the day and my own particular sensibility. I remind myself often, to look more carefully at the contents of my closet, rather then to miss details that might highlight a look, idea, or expression more powerfully and clearly, perhaps noting how one of my pink cardigans may be worn with thin spaghetti strapped dresses for work, or how a black piece with pearls would be both appealing and require scant thought on the days I am running late.

Here are a few insights into the elements of my style:

Romantic ambiances include, slowly opening cosmos petals, smoky Egyptian musk incense, a slow whirling fan and a window open with white curtains flapping softly, carrying notes of honeysuckle and jasmine. On days that I skew particularly romantic, I might leave my hair in loose waves, wear a pink dress as pale as a flushed cream rose and eat an almond croissant with dark vanilla coffee.

While, the feminine energies permeate my experience of reality, with attenuating garden blossoms, of noticing the golden light on miniature ivory roses, or of creating a handmade avocado toast with extra squeezes of lime and pink salt drifting like dawn mist on the pale green sea crowned with freshly torn basil, or of a tying a pleasingly floral patterned black and white silk scarf around a high ponytail.

The elements of mystery, heighten the charm and increase curiosity, such as when I deliberately button up my white cotton shirt, over a peach pink bralette, or when I move to reveal, the glimmering sparkles of minimal pearl or brass bracelets, under the long sleeves of a nude toned chiffon dress. The nuances of mystery linger especially poignantly, in the study of contrasts, of wearing a tight bun with a free, flowing, unrestricted dress or styling long, loose, tresses with a tight, caramel lacy blouse and charcoal skinny jeans. In evoking mystery, I try to imagine a poetess in a summer garden, listening to the songs of the pastel nectarine, dawn pink and blood orange stained dahlias that only she can hear, or of the perfume of blossoming foamy white roses, drifting quietly from the garden, on a night of a charged secret, rendezvous by a rollicking, capricious and lighthearted sea.

My bohemian temperament stems from my desire to grow wildflowers, to cut a few for a tiny vintage vase, to wear vibrant coral, burnt sienna, incanted jade green and white cotton dresses with gold hoops, to spray rose and jasmine mist, to burn palo santo, to light a few tea light candles to saturate darkened rooms with pools of starlight, to dwell among old books, houseplants and fairy lights, to read French literature, to dance on a frayed lilac and silver Persian carpet, write about light, memories, emotions and flowers, drink chamomile tea, remain awake dangerously late to read, do yoga, to traipse into reveries, of Paris in the rain, of picnics with artists in a field of poppies and of carelessly swimming in a painterly vanilla and frangipani grove by the sea.

A poetic nature stems from an inclination to glimpse at the heart rendering pain and beauty in any moment, of the perfume of the tuberose strung canopy on a wedding night on a lush hill overlooking a misty winter bay, of an accidental snapping on a beloved string of pearls on the road to California, of ink stained hands and gardeners nails, of rubbing coconut, jasmine and ylang ylang oil over freshly lavender soaped skin, of never having too many lace, silk or chiffon dresses, or of enthusiastically wearing scarfs and wraps during pumpkin spice latte season in the desert.

Classic elements evoke a timeless sensibility and appeal, it appears in my life when I choose objects and pieces that occur whimsically and beguilingly in nature, such as by wearing pearls, turquoise, or rose quartz, from wearing natural fabrics such as silk or cotton, or choosing the cuts of cloth that have yet to be rendered dated, such as shift dresses, pea coats, white button down shirts, shirt dresses accompanied with brightly hued ballet slippers or nude wedges. It translates into the style of my home in the faint whispers from my collection of old English literature books by M. Somerset Maugham, Oscar Wilde, Daphne Du Maurier and more, or in my curated blue and white china collections, or a massive hoard of natural linen napkins, in piles of soft, cashmere, kanthas or Turkish blankets, in botanical and seaside art and paintings, in natural, raw wood furniture, lambs wool rugs, hand made ceramics and more.

The charm of simplicity is noticing the details, so that one may curate and disregard extraneous elements that diminish the purest forms and shapes. Nature is often my muse when I attempt to simplify my thoughts, ideas, design, fashion or lifestyle; for nature reminds us that most beautiful things are generally free, indelible in our memories, is measured in joy rather than in time, yet often taken for granted, such as the unadorned blue and white of the sky, or the emerald light in a green forest, or the rows or ivory roses, mixed with pots of lavender and faded pink geraniums lining a driveway, or of the dual purposes of perfume and glow inherent in a single bottle of coconut oil, in pearl earrings and a blush pink silk dress, or of the wondrous ecstasy of a storm halfway between midnight and the first light, with the windows open, the hurried gales, intense strikes of lightning, lashing rain and felonious thunder, carrying us though the night like a ship in a tempest ridden sea, the earth rollicking and dancing through myriad reveries, while our souls are set adamantly free in way that only occurs while we sleep, the unexplainable darkness of reality, temporarily stayed, by the poetic grace and shimmering excitement of the desert during a rainstorm many hours before the sunrise. Very often, I try to renegotiate my desire for variety, complexity and maximalism with an equally painful inclination for those entities that exult in plainness, such as crisp toast with butter, or a French braid with red lips, or of seashell, poetry book and rose quartz collections, or of rosewater mist and candle lit yoga, or the tantalizing pairing of a cup of green tea and a blanket.

The most salient concern in armoring myself for date nights, errands, visiting garden stores, bookstores, coffee shops or to the law firm, is how a garment makes me feel; how a vivid peach dress with a lilac cardigan may help ameliorate anxiety on Monday, or how a midnight blue shirt dress might assist me on days, I need to refocus my energies on my ongoing projects or how a white peasant blouse, dangling earrings and faintly pink jeans, anoints a lighter mood and gypsy vibes to a mellow Wednesday. Yet, another lens to view my style is through the experiences I hope to have, so I might collect a scandalous amount of pale pink chiffon dresses, for dancing as the clock strikes midnight in a lantern scattered garden in Marrakech, dewy with the perfume of orange blossoms, thick groves of tuberose, calla lilies, cypresses and palms, or a camel sheath with pearls for investor meetings in steely fortresses, or a emerald silk mini dress for an afternoon of visiting art galleries and antique stores while visiting by husbands family home in Connecticut. But the truest way we adorn ourselves are through the little pinpricks of gathered light, accumulated fires and entrapped breezes that we patiently fasten, insert or slide on as final, lingering touches, maybe it is the the diamond tear shaped earrings given by your mothers best friend for your engagement, a delicate lavender rice pearl bracelet found on a trip to Sedona, opal stud earrings reminding you of the ones your parents gave you as a gift on your 12th birthday, the original opals likely in safe in a bank deposit box in Toronto or Dhaka, or the vintage emerald ring you brought for yourself to break the webs of ennui in those mind numbingly plebeian routines annotated by the music of tiny silver anklet bells. For, there is yet explained magic and deeply alchemical poetry impressed upon the gems, stones and minerals that we find along our journey, some inherited, others gifted and a few collected on our own, these are mesmerizing and solid reminders that we linger among stars, that we are as fragile as plum blossoms in the path of an impatient may gale, that the light entrances even the most sleeping entities, that the cracks make the gem even more beautiful, that strength arises from beauty and vice versa and that there are memories, whispers, passionate entreaties, unanswered prayers, surreptitious reveries, twinkling laughter and bespoke tears embedded in the earthly realm, translated so bewilderingly and delightfully into our bracelets and other charms.

I noticed that when a pillar candle burns down so that the wick dances incandescently in a hollow grove, flickering hypnotically in a cave of melted wax with the tower edged and traced by times retreat, the color of the candle is revealed through the fire, as it jumps, scales and tongues the darkened room, it pulses like heartbeats from another realm, it rhymes, riddles and casts the space with a forgotten memory, a distant wish, or an unknown song, it heightens the emotion, of the bitterness of our dwindling lease on time and of the sweetness of its term. The glow reminds us to notice the light impressions whenever we have a chance, for even when the moonlight hits the blossoming Texas sage it reveals further regarding beauty, magic, fragility, impermanence and joy. The candle flame is starlight lingering in our midst, intoxicating in its danger, eviscerating in its power and captivating as it burns the dust, the unheard music and the reality veiling air to offer us its light.

I realize that perhaps the small butterflies I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, written a week ago, may have already travelled along their wild desert mountain paths, imbibing honey from the prickliest-flowering succulents, seeping in the orchestra of sun light chased by the moon, having ecstatically ridden the autumnal breezes, on their way to appearing again far away as earthly marigolds. The same way every tear turns into a leaf and every joy into a flower. 🦋

[hungrymimigarfield]

Afronauts (Week 9)

Afronauts is a short film directed by Frances Bodomo who is a Ghanaian filmmaker. The film was very successful as it is officially selected at the Sundance Film Festival, it was featured in the Whitney Museum of American Art, and was reviewed by the New York Times.

Afronauts is a journey back in time and a peak into the future, it tells a hidden based on a true story of Zambian people who tried to reach to the moon first before the beating the United States. Even though it was made with a small budget, the film still extremely visually mesmerizing and is in black and white. According to an exact definition of Afrofuturism from dictionary.com, it means “a cultural movement that uses the frame of science fiction and fantasy to reimagine the history of the African diaspora and to invoke a vision of a technically advanced and generally hopeful future in which Black people thrive: this movement is expressed through art, cinema, literature, music, fashion, etc.” The short film Afronauts was inspired by a true story about this schoolteacher named Edward Makuka Nkoloso who attempted to start a space program in Zambia in the early in 1960s. Bodomo took inspiration from this historical anecdote and tried to offer speculative histories of the Cold War space race and the decolonization of the African continent. Bodomo said once in an interview with NYU “When you’re outside the grand narrative of history, to get in by playing the game is futile. You have to poke holes in the game. Leave cracks in it, open it up, redefine it.”

[khalilhumam]

Introducing the Girl’s Education Policy Index

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/introducing-the-girls-education-policy-index/

Introducing the Girl’s Education Policy Index

*/ In this blog we preview a new measure of country effort to improve girl’s education—The Girl’s Education Policy Index. Education for girls is hailed as one of the best investments in development by politicians, activists, and celebrities alike. The investment case is supported by numerous studies examining the positive impacts of girls’ education across contexts, linking it to better child health, higher labour market participation, and reduced child marriage. Progress toward girls’ educational outcomes is generally measured through enrolment rates and learning levels. However, there is little systematic data on the policies that are conducive to more and better education for girls. In this blog we preview and invite input on the new Girl’s Education Policy Index: a curated set of indicators to measure the policy effort of countries, which governments control, rather than their education outcomes, which are measured in other ways. By highlighting different countries’ specific strengths and weaknesses, we can identify where and which policy efforts governments and donors can take to most effectively deliver better outcomes for girls. Our data and provisional results are here. As we develop the index, we welcome your comments and feedback on how it can be improved.

The index

The index assesses effective policies on five components: spending on education, sexual health, safety, labour market opportunities, and role models. Each of the 18 indicators has been selected based on three criteria: (1) having some empirical evidence that it matters for girl’s schooling, (2) being a policy measure that governments can directly address, and (3) having comparable data across a large number of countries.

Table 1. Components and indicators

Category   Indicator 1. Financial Barriers 1.1 Government expenditure on education per child (% of GDP per capita) 1.2 Fees to attend school 1.3 Incentives for girls to attend school (cash transfers) 2. Sexual & Reproductive Health 2.1 Ban on child marriage 2.2 Legal restrictions on the availability of contraception 2.3 Laws mandate sexuality education in schools 2.4 Separate toilets and sanitation facilities 3. Child Safety 3.1 Programs to reduce violence by school staff 3.2 National action plan to reduce violence in schools 3.3 Ban on corporal punishment 4. Labour Market Opportunities 4.1 Does the law mandate nondiscrimination based on gender in employment? 4.2 Does the law mandate equal remuneration for work of equal value? 4.3 Does the law prohibit discrimination by creditors on the basis of sex or gender? 4.4 Is sexual harassment of women explicitly prohibited in the workplace? 5. Role Models 5.1 % Female primary teachers 5.2 % Female secondary teachers 5.3 % Female public sector workers 5.4 Quotas for female parliamentarians

We road tested the index as currently constructed to see what preliminary insights it could offer on countries’ policy efforts on girls’ education with the indicators as we have laid out below. The top countries are primarily rich Western European countries, although not necessarily the ones that typically top development rankings. Kenya stands out as a lower-middle income country that ranks 18th globally, thanks to high scores on each of the five subcomponents. Drilling down into the detailed indicators, Kenya spends a below average share of GDP per capita on education per child (14 percent, compared to a global average of 20 percent), but has no tuition fees for primary or secondary school, has a high minimum age of marriage for girls (18), no legal restrictions on access to contraception, put policies and plans in place to reduce violence in schools, has laws guaranteeing non-discrimination against women at work, and reserved seats in parliament for women. No one region dominates when we look at the top ten performing low- and low-middle-income countries.

Top 20 countries (provisional rankings)

Top 10 Low- and lower-middle-income countries (provisional rankings)

The lowest-ranked countries offer some insight as to where donors might want to prioritise their efforts. Thirteen of the 20 lowest ranked countries are in sub-Saharan Africa. The bottom-ranked country is Somalia, which has low scores across the board: low spending, low access to sexual and reproductive health services, weak child safety rules, weak labour market opportunities for women, and weak role models for girls.

Bottom 20 countries (provisional rankings)

Top countries on each component

Although still a work in progress, the index points to countries that perform particularly well on the indicators we’ve identified. (As we refine the index, these rankings might change.) 1. Financial barriers. The top five countries here are Cuba, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Portugal. They each have no fees for any of primary or secondary school, national cash transfer programmes with wide reach, and spend a large share of GDP per capita on education (per child). 2. Sexual and reproductive health. The top five countries are China, Sweden, Denmark, Bhutan, and Kenya. All have a legal minimum wage of marriage of 18 for girls, and few legal restrictions on access to contraception for girls. 3. Child safety. Twenty-one countries achieve the maximum score for this component, including Thailand, Syria, Sudan, Morocco, and Indonesia. All have programs designed to reduce violence by school staff, funded national action plans to reduce violence in schools, and bans on corporal punishment. 4. Labour market opportunities. Thirty-six countries achieve the maximum score for this component, including Angola, Guinea, Morocco, Philippines, South Africa, Vietnam, and Zambia. All have laws on non-discrimination at work, on equal pay, on equal access to credit, and prohibitions on harassment at work. 5. Role models. The top five countries here are all Eastern and Central European countries: Czech Republic, Latvia, Kyrgyz Republic, Belarus, and Russia. They all have high shares of female teachers and female public sector workers.

Why these indicators?

1. Spending

We can’t escape from the fact that money matters in education. There are always efficiencies to be had, but the best evidence suggests that expanding access costs money. Building new schools where they don’t exist costs money and boosts schooling. A large literature shows that removing school fees increases school attendance and that even relatively low costs can be a barrier to girls attending school. Programs that eliminate cost barriers have shown promising results. To take just one recent example, Ayibor and Chen (2019) find that across 21 African countries, access to free primary school increases average schooling of adult women by 1.4 years. A 2016 rigorous review found that 12 of 15 studies on the effect of cash transfers on girls schooling showed a statistically significant improvements

2. Sexual and reproductive health

Early marriage and pregnancy are key barriers to education for too many girls. Though unpicking causality is hard, instrumental variable approaches suggest that each year that marriage is delayed (due to exogenous factors) leads to an increase in schooling of 30-50 percent of a year. In the index we focus on the legal minimum age of marriage as a measure of policy intent. Minimum age of marriage laws are not enforced in many countries, but there is evidence, for example from Ethiopia and India, that introducing a higher minimum age of marriage can still have an effect even where adherence is not perfect. Access to single-sex bathrooms at school is important for teenage girls. Similarly, access to reproductive health services, and sexual and health education.

3. Child safety

Many girls are kept out of school or may drop out of school because of fears about their safety. Violence in schools is common and one of the main reasons for children to dislike school. Over half of eight-year-olds in India, Vietnam, Ethiopia, and Peru saw a teacher use corporal punishment in the last week. Between one and five percent of teenage girls have experienced sexual abuse at school in many developing countries. As many as one in ten Senegalese and Zambian 15-year-olds have experienced sexual harassment by a teacher.

4. Labour market opportunities

A key driver of girl’s schooling is whether going to school pays off in the job market or not. For example, Heath and Mobarak (2015)show that the opening of garment factories in Bangladesh increased the labour market gains from going to school for girls, resulting in more girls going to school. Similarly, advertising new business process outsourcing jobs in India led to young women delaying marriage and childbirth, and instead getting a job or more education.

5. Role models

It’s not just the availability of job opportunities for women that matters for girls schooling, but girl’s perception of the availability of job opportunities. An obvious place to start is in schools—teaching can be a major source of employment for women, and research also shows that in some places girls do better when they have female teachers, and boys no worse. We also consider whether quotas are in place for female parliamentarians. When village council positions are reserved for women in India, evidence suggests that teenage girls gain higher aspirations and spend less time on household chores.

What is not in the index?

The index is focused on policy action that governments and international partners could plausibly influence. It does not include relevant outcomes, such as changes in social norms. It also focuses on policy actions for which there is internationally comparable data. We do not include important policy issues such as bias in curricula, the availability of modern contraception (as opposed to legal restrictions to access, which is included), or average distance to school, for which such data does not exist for a large sample of countries (Family Planning 2020 collates DHS data on contraceptive use for a large sample of countries, but we do not include this as use is an outcome not a policy. They also collate data on provision but only for a much smaller sample of countries, so we do not include that data either). We recognise that there is a distinction between pure policy actions—for example legislating against child marriage—and "intermediate" outcomes—such as increasing the share of female teachers or number of schools with single sex toilets. In the latter case, we have included them if our judgement is that it is something close to a policy. A particularly important omission are efforts to improve the quality of school—for example whether or not a government has implemented an evidence-based, early grade reading programme. This is important but difficult to measure systematically and compare across countries. The quality of schooling is typically measured through learning assessments—an outcome that is also highly influenced by national income.

Construction of the index

Each indicator is first standardised to mean zero and standard deviation of one, so that they each have equal weight in the index. We then create a score for each component that is the simple average of indicators within the component. At this stage we simply ignore missing data, which is equivalent to assigning the mean value to any country with missing data for an indicator. Further refinement of the index would include a more detailed investigation of likely values for missing data—for example in some cases it may make more sense to assign countries the lowest possible score if data is missing, rather than the average. We then average across the five components for an overall index score. The z-score is then transformed so that each country is shown as a percentage of the best possible score. We omit the smallest countries from the index (those with a population below 100,000 people), as well as countries with all data missing for two or more of the five components (this includes Aruba, Fiji, Guam, Japan, Macao, New Caledonia, Puerto Rico, French Polynesia, and US Virgin Islands).

Validation

Does this index measure anything useful? The justification for the inclusion of individual indicators is primarily through the well-identified experimental and quasi-experimental studies discussed above. However we can also compare the index value across countries with composite measures of education outcomes. We see a strong correlation between the index and Learning Adjusted average Years of Schooling (LAYS) for girls, even after controlling for per capita GDP. We don’t see a correlation with the gap in LAYS between girls and boys, but then several of the indicators we include in the index are expected to help both girls and boys. We also see statistically significant correlations between most of the individual indicators and learning adjusted schooling.

What data are missing? What have we done wrong? Is this useful? Please get in touch with Lee (lcrawfurd@cgdev.org) or Susannah (shares@cgdev.org). Once we've refined our methodology and taken onboard feedback, we'll be publishing the final Index—look for that in the near future. For the full data see this spreadsheet. Once we've refined our methodology and taken onboard feedback, we'll be publishing the final Index—look for that in the near future. Thanks to Masood Ahmed, Ranil Dissanayake, Charles Kenny, and colleagues in the education program for their comments on an earlier draft of this blog post.

[newshour]

Namwali Serpell is a Zambian-born writer and associate professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.

Her first novel, "The Old Drift," comes out next year, but, here, she describes her own story.

There are all these different terms for what an immigrant is in America, when you have the permission to stay.

There's permanent resident, there's resident alien. Immigration officials are really funny with me, because they look at my permanent resident card. And I'm always very anxious about this when I'm at the — I mean, will they let me back in? Can I still be here?

I teach American literature. And I start out all of my courses by saying, you might be wondering why a Zambian citizen and a resident alien of the United States is teaching you the history of American literature. But who better than an outsider to teach you about American literature?

All of the great literature of the U.S. is told through the story of an outsider, Nick Carraway in "Gatsby" or Humbert Humbert in "Lolita."

Being on the outside or being an alien is the condition of being American. And it's a way to see the country from within, but also with a different perspective.

I remember when my parents told me we were moving to the States. My sisters and I were really excited. For me, at age 8, it was a pretty intense shift. I had kids kind of making fun of me, making fun of my hair, making fun of my accent.

I remember very specifically a kid asking me in the cafeteria in fifth grade, what are you, not, who are you, and not what race are you, but what are you? And what she meant was, are you black or white?

I asked my dad, my white father, who's a psychologist. He said: "You're a citizen of the world. You are human."

And that answer was very unsatisfactory. It was only in college that I really started to say I'm black, because, in America, I'm black, and that's how I'm recognized.

I went back for a year to Zambia during high school, which was very difficult. Everyone was like, why do you wear your hair curly and natural? They didn't like the punk rock T-shirts I was wearing or the big sweats and sneaks. I thought I was a skater chick.

People often want to say, you're African. And I'm like, Africa is a huge continent. It's not a country. I feel Zambian, and then I feel American. Those are my identities, even though, technically, I am an alien in this country, and, when I go back to Zambia, I don't exactly fit in there either.

And I realized that I could use this to my advantage, that you could actually leverage being an outsider in order to be the most unique and be the biggest voice in the room, and bring a new perspective to things that everybody else takes for granted.

My name is Namwali Serpell, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on being an alien.

You can find more of our Brief But Spectacular videos online at pbs.org/newshour/brief.

[tkmedia]

Kenneth Kaunda: The Last Giant Of African Nationalism

Spread This NewsBy Gavin Evans – The Conversation KENNETH Kaunda, the former president of Zambia, who has died in hospital in the capital, Lusaka, at the age of 97, was the last of the giants of 20th century African nationalism. He was also one of the few to depart with his reputation still intact. But perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, the standing of the man who ruled over Zambia for 27 years is clouded with ambiguity. The charismatic president who won accolades for bowing out peacefully after losing an election was also the authoritarian who introduced a one-party state. The pioneer of “African socialism” was the man who cut a supply-side deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The nationalist leader known for personal probity planned to give huge tracts of farmland to an Indian guru. The revolutionary who gave sanctuary to liberation movements was also a friend of US presidents. I met him in 1989 when I helped organise a delegation of 120 white South African notables for a conference with the then-banned and exiled African National Congress, which was fighting for the liberation of black South Africans, in Lusaka. “KK”, as he was known, shed tears as he welcomed guests, who included the liberal MP Helen Suzman, known for her defiant opposition to the apartheid government. By then, he’d been president for a quarter of a century and seemed a permanent fixture at the apex of southern African politics. And yet, as it turned out, he was on his final lap. He exuded an image of the benign monarch, a much-loved father to his people, known for his endearing quirks – safari suits, waving white handkerchiefs, ballroom dancing, singing his own songs while cycling, and crying in public. And yet there was also a hard edge to the politics and persona of the man, whose powerful personality helped make Zambia a major player in Africa and the world for three decades. The early years Kenneth David Kaunda was born in Chinsali, Northern Zambia, on October 24, 1924. Like so many of his generation of African liberation leaders, he came from a family of the mission-educated middle class. He was the baby among eight children. His father was a Presbyterian missionary-teacher and his mother was the first qualified African woman teacher in the country. He followed his parents’ profession, first in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia), where he became a head teacher before his 21st birthday. He also taught in then Tanganyika (Tanzania), where he became a lifelong admirer of future president Julius Nyerere, whose “Ujamaa” brand of African socialism he tried to follow. After returning home, Kaunda campaigned against the British plan for a federation of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland, which would increase the powers of white settlers. He took up politics full-time, learning the ropes through working for the liberal Legislative Council member, Sir Stewart Gore-Browne. Soon after, as secretary-general of the Northern Rhodesian African National Congress, he was jailed for two months with hard labour for distributing “subversive literature”. After his release he clashed with his organisation’s president, Harry Nkumbula, who took a more conciliatory approach to colonial rule. Kaunda led the breakaway Zambian African National Congress, which was promptly banned. He was jailed for nine months, further boosting his status. A new movement, the United National Independence Party (UNIP), chose Kaunda as its leader after his release. He travelled to America and met Martin Luther King. Inspired by King and Mahatma Gandhi, he launched the “Cha-cha-cha” civil disobedience campaign. In 1962, encouraged by Kaunda’s moves to pacify the white settlers, the British acceded to self-rule, followed by full independence two years later. He emerged as the first Zambian president after UNIP won the election. The challenges of independence One challenge for the newly independent Zambia related to the colonial education system. There were no universities and fewer than half a percent of pupils had completed primary school. Kaunda introduced a policy of free books and low fees. In 1966 he became the first chancellor of the new University of Zambia. Several other universities and tertiary education facilities followed. Long after he was ousted as president, Kaunda continued to be warmly received in African capitals because of his role in allowing liberation movements to have bases in Lusaka. This came at considerable economic cost to his country, which also endured military raids from the South Africans and Rhodesians. At the same time, he joined apartheid South Africa’s hardline prime minister BJ Vorster in mediating a failed bid for an internal settlement in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in 1975. He attempted the same in South West Africa (Namibia), which was then administered by South Africa. But President PW Botha, who succeeded Vorster after his death, showed no interest. Kaunda helped lead the Non-Aligned Movement, which brought together states that did not align with either the Soviets or the Americans during the Cold War. He broke bread with anyone who showed an interest in Zambia, including Romania’s Nicolai Ceausescu and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, while also cultivating successive American presidents (having more success with Jimmy Carter than Ronald Reagan). He invited China to help build the Tazara Railway and bought 16 MIG-21 fighter jets from the Soviet Union in 1980. African humanism Kaunda’s economic policy was framed by his belief in what he called “African humanism” but also by necessity. He inherited an economy under foreign control and moved to remedy this. For example, the mines owned by the British South African Company (founded by Cecil John Rhodes) were acquired as a result of colonial conquest in 1890. Kaunda’s threats to nationalise without compensation prompted major concessions from BSAC. He promoted a planned economy, leading to “development plans” that involved the state’s Industrial Development Corporation acquiring 51% equity in major foreign-owned companies. The policy was undermined by the 1973 in the spike in the oil price and fall in the price of copper, which made up 95% of Zambia’s exports. The consequent balance of payments crisis led to Zambia having the world’s second highest debt relative to GDP, prompting IMF intervention. Kaunda at first resisted but by 1989 was forced to bow to its demands. Parastatals were partially privatised, spending was slashed, food subsidies ended, prices rocketed and Kaunda’s support plummeted. Like many anti-colonial leaders, he’d come to view multi-party democracy as a western concept that fomented conflict and tribalism. This view was encouraged by the 1964 uprising of the Lumpa religious sect. He banned all parties other than UNIP in 1968 and Zambia officially became a one-party state four years later. His government became increasingly autocratic and intolerant of dissent, centred on his personality cult. But Kaunda will go down in history as a relatively benign autocrat who avoided the levels of repression and corruption of so many other one-party rulers. Julius Nyerere, who retired in 1985, tried to persuade his friend to follow suit, but Kaunda pressed on. After surviving a coup attempt in 1990 and following food riots, he reluctantly acceded to the demand for a multi-party election in 1991. His popularity could not survive the chaos prompted by price rises and was not helped by the revelation that he’d planned to grant more than a quarter of Zambia’s land to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (who promised to create a “heaven on earth”). The trade union leader Frederick Chiluba won in a landslide victory in 1991. The last years Kaunda won kudos abroad for what was considered to be his gracious response to electoral defeat, but the new government was less magnanimous. It placed him under house arrest after alleging a coup attempt; then declared him stateless when he planned to run in the 1996 election (on the grounds that his father was born in Malawi), which he successfully challenged in court. He survived an assassination attempt in 1997, getting grazed by a bullet. One of his sons, Wezi, was shot dead outside their home in 1999. The 1986 AIDS death of another son, Masuzgo, inspired him to campaign around HIV issues far earlier than most, and he stepped this up over the next two decades. After Chiluba’s departure, he returned to favour and became a roving ambassador for Zambia. He reduced his public role following the 2012 death of his wife of 66 years, Betty. Kaunda will be remembered as a giant of 20th century African nationalism – a leader who, at great cost, gave refuge to revolutionary movements, a relatively benign autocrat who reluctantly introduced democracy to his country and an international diplomat who punched well above his weight in world affairs. Read the full article

[writingguide003-blog]

Fresh voices: 50 writers you should read now

New Post has been published on https://writingguideto.com/must-see/fresh-voices-50-writers-you-should-read-now/

Fresh voices: 50 writers you should read now

Which debut novel should you reach for this spring? Heres our guide to the most exciting voices in fiction, politics, SF, graphic novels and more

Fiction

Ruthlessly beady eye Sally Rooney. Photograph: Richard Saker for the Observer

Sally Rooney Irish writer was just 26 when her debut Conversations With Friends took the publishing world by storm last year. Its a barbed, witty page-turner about being young and fragile in the new Ireland, set in a perilously privileged milieu of performance poetry and small magazines. Narrator Frances is out of her depth, negotiating love, sex, friendship and ambition while trying to maintain a brittle sense of self. Rooney has a ruthlessly beady eye and an effortless comic style. Her second novel, a love story across the class divide called Normal People, will be published in September.

Guy Gunaratne Gunaratne worked as a video journalist reporting on post-conflict zones before writing his blazing polyphonic debut In Our Mad and Furious City, out next month. Set over 48 hours in a north London estate, where the killing of a soldier-boy by a homegrown bredda and the torching of a mosque spark a riot, it reveals London as a conflict zone for its five narrators. These include a would-be grime artist and a teenager resisting Islamic radicalisation, as well as older immigrants from Belfast and the West Indies.

David Chariandy The Canadian writers masterly second novel, Brother, was published in the UK this month. It interrogates family, community and masculinity as it tells the story of Michael and Francis, the sons of a Trinidadian single mother, coming of age in the 1980s in a poor immigrant neighbourhood. We were the children of the help, without futures. In understated, classically beautiful prose it moves towards disaster with the terrible inevitability of a Greek tragedy.

Jessie Greengrass Greengrass published her unusual and wide-ranging short story collection An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It last year; this February she followed it with her first novel Sight , now longlisted for the Womens prize for fiction. Her narrator is agonising over whether to commit to parenthood, looking back on the trauma of her own mothers death and remembering childhood holidays with her analyst grandmother. There are echoes of WG Sebald and Rachel Cusk in this thoughtful, digressive style that swirls together the historical and the personal, but Greengrasss questing intellect and elegant prose are all her own.

Eley Williams Small presses are making a big noise at the moment, and thats down to such brilliant books as Attrib. and Other Stories, which took the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses this month. Williams had been publishing her playful stories in magazines for years, and its no surprise to learn that her PhD was on dictionaries: her stories focus on words and meanings, riddling away at the gaps between thought and speech, sound and silence, lovers and strangers. They

Politics and ideas

Holding up a mirror to contemporary Britain Reni Eddo-Lodge.

Mark OConnell OConnells captivating book about transhumanism and solving the problem of death, To Be a Machine, which saw him navigate some of the stranger byways of Silicon Valley, was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford prize, the Royal Society science book prize and recently the Wellcome prize. Having taken on immortality, the Dublin-based writer is set to tackle the end of the world, in what promises to be a companionable and quick-witted exploration of apocalyptic anxieties.

William Davies One of the most interesting commentators on political ideas, Davies teaches political economy and sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and is the author of two books, The Happiness Industryand The Limits of Neoliberalism. He is as lively discussing Brexit and the culture of the Home Office as he is the current crisis in capitalism. His next study, due later this year, will be Nervous States: How Feeling Took Over the World.

Suzy Hansen The author of the elegant and persuasive Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World, Hansen is based in Istanbul, where she moved from the US following 9/11. Hisham Matar hailed her debut as remarkably revealing a deeply honest and brave portrait of an individual sensibility reckoning with her countrys violent role in the world.

Reni Eddo-Lodge Eddo-Lodges debut book Why Im No Longer Talking to White People About Race, published last year, has recently won the Jhalak prize it was praised by the judges as a clarion call for action, which not only holds up a mirror to contemporary Britain but also serves as a warning. Marlon James called it essential.

James Bridle Bridle is an increasingly talked-about artist and writer who considers the relationship between technology, culture and consciousness. Among the subjects of his art are drones and self-driving cars. His ambitious debut book, New Dark Age, which argues that the digital era is radically shifting the boundaries of human experience, is out in July.

Poetry

A fresh take on urban life Kayo Chingonyi. Photograph: Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images

Kayo Chingonyi Kumukanda, Zambian-born Chingonyis much feted debut, presented a fresh take on contemporary urban life shot through with an appreciation of traditional modes of living and storytelling. He reflects on identity and race, culture and masculinity with a thoughtfulness and lyrical elegance that conveys anger as well as a tender melancholy.

Ocean Vuong Night Sky With Exit Wounds picked up a rare double when it was awarded the TS Eliot prize and the Forward best first collection award. Vietnamese-American Vuongs work nods to both New York-school poets such as Frank OHara close observations of street life, frankness about sex and the historical myth-making of Homer. The Eliot judges hailed the definitive arrival of a significant voice.

Richard Osmond Osmonds job as a wild-food forager makes it unsurprising that his debut collection, Useful Verses, should be such a treasure trove of information. But what gives his poems energy is not just that they exhibit a deft authority on plants and poisons, remedies and roadkill, but that they are equally attuned to human and digital environments. The result is a work that reveals much about the world, both ancient and modern.

Tara Bergin This Irish poets 2015 collection, This Is Yarrow, is a wryly unpredictable set of poems that challenges our familiarity with the world around us. Last years equally intense and funny The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx explores the life and eventual suicide of Karl Marxs daughter, the first translator of Madame Bovary. A rare originality of voice and vision.

Hannah Sullivan The long poems that make up Sullivans debut, Three Poems, are wise and witty, and spaciously unfold an account of a young womans love, disappointment and resilience in New York City, with Heraclitean philosophical musings and autobiographical reflections on birth and bereavement.

Memoir and biography

Compelling topicality and novelty Maggie Nelson. Photograph: Dan Tuffs for the Observer

Paul Ferris Football memoirs rarely produce great literature but Ferriss The Boy on the Shed is a glistering exception, which sets a short career with Newcastle United against the background of a Catholic childhood in a Protestant stronghold of Northern Ireland. Hes witty, emotional and painfully self-revealing. If, as Alan Shearer intimates in the foreword, a second book is on the way, he may turn out to be the new Frank McCourt.

Edmund Gordon How do you tell the life story of a woman who was, by her own admission, a born fabulist? Debut biographer Gordon disentangles myth from truth in The Making of Angela Carter, an elegant and well-judged life of the author.

Kapka Kassabova The Bulgarian-born writer takes a journey through the mysterious region where her home country, Greece and Turkey meet. Borderis a hybrid work that mixes memoir with travelogue as she putters across the land in an old Renault, recording the oral histories of the people she meets and crunching them with what she knows of the deeper past in an attempt to exorcise her own ghosts.

Patricia Lockwood Already beloved for her silly, often filthy verse, Lockwood burst into the almost mainstream with her memoir Priestdaddy, centring on her father: a Catholic priest with five children and a penchant for guns, prog rock and cream liqueur. While her poetry is brilliantly bizarre, Priestdaddy revealed a dazzling new voice that flourishes in a longer form.

Maggie Nelson The compelling topicality and novelty of her subject matter earns Nelson her place.The Argonauts is an uncategorisable book, that animates queer theory through the no-holds-barred story of her own love match with a trans man. Here are pregnancy, birth and family-making as you have never seen them before.

Graphic novels

The Arab of the Future Volume 2: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1984-1985 by Riad Sattouf. Photograph: Two Roads

Kirsten Radtke Imagine Wanting Only This begins with the death of Radtkes uncle Dan from a hereditary heart condition that could kill her and moves through her young life, taking in love, backpacking, loneliness and visits to ruin after ruin. Her memoir is stuffed with fascinating anecdotes and great drawings that show everything from bus-borne squabbles to tight herds of sheep and abandoned cities. It ends in New York, where the 30-year-old illustrator and editor now lives, and this intelligent and passionate work makes you wonder where shell go next.

Hamish Steele Steele works as an animator as well as a comic book artist, and humour and energy bubble through his work. His debut, Pantheon, a savage take on Egyptian myth, was self-published after a Kickstarter campaign before being picked up by NoBrow. His new book, DeadEndia: The Watchers Test, revolves around three amusement park workers and a genuinely haunted house.

Nick Drnaso The Illinois native picked up an LA Times book prize for his excellent 2016 debut,Beverly, a series of sad and lyrical interconnected stories. It sets dysfunctional young Americans against an eerie backdrop of highways, motels and couches, lust and despair pushing up against the clean lines and pastel colours of his artwork. Drnasos latest, Sabrina, follows a US airmans investigation of a missing woman.

Emil Ferris My Favourite Thing Is Monstersemerged to wild applause last year. A brick of a book with something to treasure on every page, it takes the form of the journal of Karen Reyes, a 10-year-old obsessed with drawing, monsters and the fate of a woman who dies in her apartment block. Karen fills the diary with vibrant beasts and the details of her detective work. Ferris makes her humans and monsters leap off the page, and Book 2 (due in August) should be another cracker.

Riad Sattouf Sattouf spent a decade writing for Charlie Hebdo, but only came to the attention of English-speaking readers in 2015, thanks to The Arab of the Future, which follows his childhood as he moves between France (where his mother was born), Syria (where his father was born) and Libya. The whims of Sattoufs increasingly authoritarian father drive volumes one and two, which mix darkness, dry humour and sharp observation. Volume 3 is out in August.

Crime and thrillers

Books that are sharply observed and crackling with energy Joe Ide.

Jane Harper Winner of the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger, Harpers bestselling first novel, The Dry, is both a riveting detective story and a powerful portrait of a small Australian town in the drought-stricken middle of nowhere, riven by poverty and alcoholism. Her second book, Force of Nature, which features the same investigator and concerns an elemental battle for survival in the unforgiving Australian wilderness, lives up to the promise of her stunning debut.

Joseph Knox Sirens, Knoxs debut, is a pungent slice of urban noir featuring disgraced Manchester detective Aidan Waits. Having blotted his copybook by stealing drugs from the evidence room, Waits is forced to go undercover and finds himself deep in a world of ruthless drug barons and corrupt politicians. The start of what promises to be a classic series as proved by the equally vivid and uncompromising follow-up, The Smiling Man.

Joe Ide Set in Long Beach, California, Ides novel, IQ, is the start of a projected series featuring Isaiah Quintabe, a modern day African American incarnation of Sherlock Holmes. We learn his back story derailed in high school when his brother was killed, and turning to crime before realising his true calling as he finds out who is trying to murder a famous rapper. A second outing, Righteous, was published in February; both books are sharply observed and crackling with energy.

Sabri Louatah A bestseller in the authors native France, Savages: The Wedding is the first novel in the Saint-Etienne Quartet. Its the eve of the presidential election, and it looks as if Idder Chaouch is about to become the first Algerian premier. To some, the French Obama holds the promise of a post-racial society based on liberty, equality and fraternity, but not everyone agrees. Exhilarating, sharp-edged, and complex, this is a compelling hybrid of family saga and socio-political thriller.

CJ Tudor In The Chalk Man, 12-year-old narrator Eddie Adams enjoys communicating with his friends using a secret code of chalk figures until a series of anonymous drawings leads to the discovery of a dismembered girl in the woods. Fast-forward 30 years and Eddie receives a visit from an old friend and a drawing of a noosed stick-man arrives in the post. This assured debut is very much in the Stephen King vein creepy with plenty of menace.

Children and young adult

Grisly, child-empowering edge Little Red by Bethan Woollvin.

Bethan Woollvin Little Red, a feminist retelling of Little Red Riding Hood with a grisly, child-empowering edge, won Woollvin the Macmillan Illustration prize in 2014. Her second picture book, a prince-free Rapunzel, features the same mixture of stark black and white and a single colour. Her words share this lack of obfuscatory prettiness, a deadpan, terse narrative voice complementing her sharp illustrative style. Look out for her forthcoming Hansel and Gretel.

Joseph Coelho Overheard in a Tower Block, Coelhos newest poetry collection, was longlisted for the 2018 Carnegie Medal. Arguing parents become electrical forces or duelling knights; the bin-chute mouth of a block is fed the stuff of its residents lives. Rich with metaphor and secret meaning, his poetry is deeply welcoming, and his sensibility is both mythic and urban; his freed Prometheus, unearthed from eons of eagle droppings, hears the god-whisper of a city, the electric thrum of buildings, the digital hiss of a new world.

David Solomons The Scottish screenwriter represents the best in contemporary comic writing for children splendidly zany, full of irresistible trivia,but never scrimping on the emotional undertow that ensures longevity and heart. His first book for children, My Brother Is a Superhero, is subtitled I could have been one too, except I needed a wee; the story of comic geek Luke and his older brother Zack, unfairly given superpowers by a visiting alien, it won the Waterstones prize for childrens fiction in 2016, and its two sequels have since been flying off the shelves.

Lucy Strange The Secret of Nightingale Wood, Stranges debut novel for age 8-12, is set just after the first world war, and features Henry, a determined heroine grieving her brothers death, protecting her younger sister Piglet, and contending with sinister doctors who conspire to commit her mother to an asylum. Strange elegantly blends a sense of period with compelling emotion and excitement. Her new novel, Our Castle by the Sea, is due in November.

Tomi Adeyemi The Nigerian American authors debut, Children of Blood and Bone, has generated considerable excitement, with film rights already sold. The first in a trilogy, this ambitious book is told from three perspectives; central is that of Zlie Adebola, who takes on the monarchy in a bid to restore magic to the world of Orisha.

Literature in translation

Brilliant evocations Maylis de Karangel.

Maylis de Kerangal Winning last years Wellcome prize for Mend the Living, her brilliant evocation of a day in the life of a heart as it is rushed from one body to another, should raise the French authors profile, but as yet only two of her novels have made it into English. In both she makes character subservient to scenario, whether dealing with coronary transplant staff or workers on a six-lane suspension bridge in a fictional US town.

Samanta Schweblin Argentinian Schweblins brilliant and terrifying debut, Fever Dream, unfolds like a hallucination. A sick woman is confronted with a revenant child in a dialogue that combines the superstitions of a rural society with fears about agricultural abuse by big business, in a novel that was shortlisted for last years Man Booker International prize.

Olga Tokarczuk This time last year, the Polish novelist was the biggest star youd never heard of, but Flights put her on the map. This dazzling novel of fragments makes a passionate plea for connectedness through stories that somersault through time and space. Her back catalogue is now being published, with the Blakean Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead due this year, followed by her historical epic, The Books of Jacob, one of the biggest literary bestsellers in Polish history.

Andrs Barba After surviving the car accident that killed her parents, a wounded and traumatised seven-year-old girl is sent to an orphanage with her only surviving friend, a doll apparently brought to life by her distress. In Such Small Hands, Barba plays with the conventions of the ghost story to create a powerful fable of the malice and the erotic power play of children too young to put their fears into words.

Ahmed Saadawi Absurdist morality fable meets horror fantasy in Frankenstein in Baghdad, as a victim of sectarian violence is brought back to life in the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq. Saadawi unspools an apparently endless causal chain of folly, corruption and tribalism.

Science and nature

Witty and elegant Cordelia Fine. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

Eugenia Cheng The mathematician remembers the day her mother first told her about graphs she felt as if her brain was contorting, and its a feeling she still gets when doing research. Its one her readers can share. Beyond Infinity begins with an energetic exposition of endlessness, before exploring the mathematical territory the concept opens up with the help of iPods, snorkelling and Winnie-the-Pooh. The Art of Logic is due in September.

David George Haskell On a cold January hike in 2004, Haskell, a biologist, found himself confronted with a choice. He could carry on writing scientific papers, following his enthusiasm for poetry and meditation on the side, or he could bring these interests together. The result was The Forest Unseen, a lyrical account of the year he spent returning to that very spot. His 2017 book The Songs of Trees explores the interconnectedness of nature through portraits of 12 individual trees.

Lindsey Fitzharris Fitzharriss hugely entertaining debut Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us

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Zed Book Expo 2018 hosted in Lusaka, Zambia.

Zed Book Expo 2018 hosted in Lusaka, Zambia.

The Zed Book Expo 2018 was hosted in Lusaka, Zambia with readings by Kafula Mwila and Luka Mwango featuring on May 26, 2018. The event theme was “Keep literature alive, educate the world.”

The Zed Book Expo is an annual event organised by Concept Developers Initiative and Southern writers bureau in partnership with Zambian Association of Literacy and Unza Radio. The idea was to bring together…

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Meena Kandasamy – No Credit Info

Emily Ruskovch – Credit: Boone Rodriguez

Carmen Maria Machado – Credit: Tom Storm Photography

Ayobami Adebayo – No Credit Info

Sally Rooney – Credit: Jonny l Davies

Fiona Mozley – No Credit Info

Gabriel Tallent – Credit Alex Adams Photography

Kayo Chingonyi – Credit: Naomi Woddis

Gwendoline Riley – Credit: Adrian Lourie Writer Pictures

Eley Williams – Credit: Idil Sukan

   SHORTLIST ANNOUNCEMENT: 27th March 2018

WINNER’S ANNOUNCEMENT: 10th May 2018

IDTP LONGLIST

 NOVELS

AYỌ̀BÁMI ADÉBÁYỌ̀ (NIGERIA)

LISA MCINERNEY (IRELAND)

FIONA MOZLEY (UK)

GWENDOLINE RILEY (UK)

SALLY ROONEY (IRELAND)

EMILY RUSKOVICH (USA)

GABRIEL TALLENT (USA)

MEENA KANDASAMY (INDIA)

SHORT STORIES

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO (USA)

ELEY WILLIAMS (UK)

POETRY

KAYO CHINGONYI (ZAMBIA)

JAMES WOMACK (UK)

   The Swansea University International Dylan Thomas Prize returns for its 10th edition in 2018, commemorating 65 years since the death of Wales’ most lauded writer Dylan Thomas. Worth £30,000, it is one of the UK’s most prestigious literary prizes as well as the world’s largest literary prize for young writers. The shortlist of six will be announced on 27th March, and the winner will be announced on 10thMay.

Awarded for the best published literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or under, the Prize celebrates the international world of fiction in all its forms including poetry, novels, short stories and drama. The prize is named after the Swansea-born writer, Dylan Thomas, and celebrates his 39 years of creativity and productivity. One of the most influential, internationally-renowned writers of the mid-twentieth century, the prize invokes his memory to support the writers of today and nurture the talents of tomorrow.

This year’s longlist of 12 books comprises eight novels, two short story collections, and two volumes of poetry. Included in the female-dominant international longlist are Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction winner and Irish novelist, Lisa McInerney; the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, Sally Rooney; Zambian-born poet and Geoffrey Dearmer Prize recipient, Kayo Chingonyi; and one of India’s most prominent women’s rights and anti-caste activists, novelist Meena Kandasamy.

Last year, Australian writer Fiona McFarlane won The Swansea University International Dylan Thomas Prize for her highly-acclaimed collection of short stores, The High Places.

Chaired by Professor Dai Smith CBE, Emeritus Raymond Williams Research Chair in the Cultural History of Wales at Swansea University, and historian and writer on Welsh arts and culture, this year’s judging panel also features: Founder and Director of the Jaipur Literature Festival, Namita Gokhale; winner of the inaugural International Dylan Thomas Prize novelist and playwright, Rachel Trezise; poet, translator, and scholar, Professor Kurt Heinzelman; and author and Founder of London Short Story Festival, Paul McVeigh.

Professor Dai Smith CBE, said: “This year’s longlist demonstrates the originality and literary excellence of work being produced by young writers from around the world. Featuring prose and poetry from new and established authors, this is an intriguing and scarily good longlist! The judges now have a very difficult job, but we can be certain that we will have an exceptionally strong shortlist of six stunningly gifted authors.”

The shortlist of six books will be revealed on 27th March. The winner will be announced on Thursday 10th May at Swansea University’s Great Hall, in the run up to International Dylan Thomas Day on 14th May which will commemorate 2018 being 65 years since Dylan Thomas’ death. On 8th May the shortlisted authors will give readings of their books up for the prestigious award at a ticketed event at the British Library.

The shortlisted authors will also participate in the DylanED programme, an initiative set up by Swansea University in conjunction with the prize to engage young people with international literature and Wales’ rich cultural history. The shortlist is directly involved in the programme that runs all year round, and authors have previously done workshops with local college students, given readings and talks at local schools, and given masterclasses at the University. Since 2016 Welsh students are invited to review books from the shortlist for the DylanED Book Review Competition and will present their winning reviews at a special winner’s ceremony in front of the shortlisted authors.

  If you enjoyed the blog please leave a like and a comment. We would love it if you could share it on Twitter & Facebook.  It really helps us to grow.  Thanks so very much.

You can also connect with us on social media:- Twitter Instagram Facebook 

    #BookNews : International Dylan Thomas Prize, sponsored by @SwanseaUni #Books @midaspr    SHORTLIST ANNOUNCEMENT: 27th March 2018 WINNER’S ANNOUNCEMENT: 10th May 2018 IDTP LONGLIST  NOVELS AYỌ̀BÁMI ADÉBÁYỌ̀ (NIGERIA)

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NEWS: Upcoming Events at the Burgess Foundation (May 2017)

Look out for events celebrating the 100th birthday of Anthony Burgess, marked ‘Burgess 100’ below.

Our website is the hub for Burgess 100 activities, including the Burgess Memories Project, in which  writers, musicians, artists and politicians who knew Burgess share their reminiscences. If you’d like to contribute, or would like to know more about the project, please contact Graham Foster at graham@anthonyburgess.org

We are opening up the archive in a virtual exhibition on the Burgess 100 website. Object of the Week sheds new light on rare and little-seen archival objects, including manuscripts, photographs, music, books and more.

#Burgess100

Exhibition: Cartomancy – Anthony Burgess and the Tarot

Open weekdays 10am-4pm, and in the evenings during events FREE Anthony Burgess was fascinated by the possibility of predicting the future. Drawing on previously unseen material from the Burgess Foundation collections, this exhibition explores Anthony Burgess’s creative relationship with dreams, horoscopes – and the mysteries of the Tarot.

Burgess 100 at the Manchester International Festival

The World Was Once All Miracle

Tuesday 4 July 2017, 7:30 Bridgewater Hall, Manchester ￡16-38

The World Was Once All Miracle is a special concert celebrating Burgess’s words and music. For MIF17, acclaimed composer Raymond Yiu has set text from six Burgess poems into a major symphonic song cycle to be given its world premiere on Tuesday 4 July. The piece will be performed by baritone Roderick Williams and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, who will also perform Beethoven’s Symphony No.8. and the European premiere of Burgess’s Symphony in C.

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No End to Enderby

Friday 30 June – Sunday 16 July 2017 The Whitworth, Manchester FREE

Director Graham Eatough and artist Stephen Sutcliffe pay tribute to Anthony Burgess in an installation which blends visual art and film drama. No End to Enderby is centred on two new films inspired by Burgess’s ‘Enderby’ series: Inside Mr Enderby, in which a school trip travels back in time to pay desultory homage to the title character, a dead poet; and The Muse, in which a young historian journeys to a parallel universe to investigate whether Shakespeare wrote everything credited to him. These films are presented with some of the original sets from the Manchester shoot.

More Info

  RedEye: Lightbox Launch

Wednesday 3 May 2017, 6:30pm

FREE

To celebrate the launch of Lightbox 2017-18, photography network Redeye has asked previous Lightbox participants to share their experiences of the course. This event is an opportunity for prospective applicants to learn more about the course content and have any questions answered before applying.

Lightbox is a year-long course that aims to launch or develop the careers of the best emerging photographers. It is aimed at photographers who already have a high standard of photography and are keen to experiment and develop their work further. Speakers at this event include:

> emerging photographers Richard Stout and Karen Rangeley, selected by an expert judging panel during last year’s Lightbox. Their practices range from the constructed image to documentary.

> Tristan Poyser, Peter Barker and Simon Bray from the Strand Collective, a group of seven photographers that came together during last year’s Lightbox. Their Second Skin exhibition debuted at the Brighton Photo Fringe Festival 2016.

Book Your Place

  Concert: The Tom Barber Trio & The Adlib Quartet

Friday 5 May 2017, 7:30pm

￡3

The innovative jazz group The Tom Barber Trio, formed at the University of Manchester, are joined by the Adlib String Quartet to perform some of the trio’s original compositions and arrangements written specially for this occasion.

The young trio comprises Tom Barber on keys and trumpet, Thomas Betts on bass, and Joshua Mellard on drums and trumpet.

They have brought contemporary jazz to venues such as Antwerp Mansion and the Southport Jazz Club. Influences include Nina Simone, Laura Caviani, Esperanza Spalding and Kendrick Lamar.

Tickets available on the door.

Chris T-T: 20th Anniversary ‘Best Of’ Concert

Saturday 6 May 2017, 7:30pm ￡12

His infamous Manchester jinx finally overcome, acclaimed radical alt-folk singerChris T-T returns to the city for a solo ‘Best Of’ concert to mark his 20th anniversary making music. This will be a seated concert in the beautiful International Anthony Burgess Foundation, including songs on Burgess’ own baby grand piano.

“Outstanding, indispensable genius. A modern-day William Blake. Music so unfettered it never had mornings to slip.” Sunday Times (Top 5 Album Of The Year twice)

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  Discussion and Concert: Exchange New Music Forum

Sunday 7 May 2017, 3:00pm FREE

This edition of the ~Exchange New Music Forum explores OCEAN, an immersive performance event recently created for the Victoria Baths by geode (Elizabeth Ditmanson & Gavin Osborn – pictured above). The creators will be in discussion with OCEAN performers The Vonnegut Collective. There will also be the premiere of new work Vial by Elizabeth Ditmanson for ensemble, video and electroacoustic sound.

geode is a collaborative practice encompassing multimedia installations, mixed-media performance and sound art. The Vonnegut Collective is a chamber ensemble based in Manchester, formed in 2014 by two members of the BBC Philharmonic.

Elizabeth Ditmanson is a composer, sound artist and amateur photographer who has worked with Trio Atem, Psappha and the Manchester Confucius Institute.

This event is free and runs from 3pm until 8pm. Discussion take place from 3pm, with performances starting at 7pm.

Literature: Ocean Vuong & Kayo Chingonyi

Tuesday 9 May 2017, 7:00pm ￡8/￡6 concs.

Manchester Literature Festival and the Burgess Foundation are delighted to welcome two of the most promising debut poets of a generation to the city for an extraordinary evening of poetry and reflection on desire, conflict and cultural upheaval.

Night Sky with Exit Wounds from young Vietnamese American poet, Ocean Vuong, has already won many accolades in the US and explores the most profound of subjects: love, loss and grief with visceral passion. Zambian-born British based poet Kayo Chingonyi’s first full length collection Kumukanda features innovative and urgent lyrics on race, masculinity, identity and music. The evening will be hosted by Andrew McMillan, author of the multi-award winning debut collection Physical.

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  Talk Series: 4×4 2017

Weekly between Wednesday 10 and Wednesday 31 May 2017, 5:30pm FREE

4×4 Manchester is a series of talks held every Wednesday in May. 4 speakers are invited to talk each week for 15 minutes each. The session ends with a lively audience debate.

4×4 Manchester wants to challenge how you think about your discipline be that architecture, art, music, urban design, planning etc etc. This will not be architects talking about their new buildings or an author promoting their new book; 4×4 wants to promote a real debate about the state of our cities, stimulated by interesting, diverse and provocative speakers.

The themes for the four weeks are as follows:

May 10: Tolerant

May 17: Safe

May 24: Welcoming

May 31 – Radical

More Info

  Film Screening: Shutter Island

Thursday 11 May 2017, 6:30pm FREE

University of Manchester’s Science and Entertainment Lab have teamed up with film scholars at the University of East Anglia to host a brand new film series in the spring of 2017.  This screening of Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese, 2010) is the fourth in the Demons of the Mind series which tackles difficult questions regarding causes, symptoms, and treatments of mental illness and contribute to our understanding of what it’s like to experience psychological disturbances.

How do films portray psychological trauma and mental disorders? Why are filmmakers and audiences fascinated by characters with unusual and severe psychological disturbances? In what sense does the medium of film reflect and shape our understanding of clinical conditions such as bipolar depression, schizophrenia, and mass psychogenic disorders (hysteria). What do films focusing on mental illness tell us about notions of mental health and wellbeing?

These events are free and open to the public – no booking required. At each film screening an expert speaker will provide a brief introduction at 6.30pm and then lead a post-screening discussion with the audience. The evening will include an opening reception from 6.00pm where drinks will be available for purchase.

Concert: W.H. Lung

Friday 12 May 2017, 8:00pm ￡7

The hotly tipped W. H Lung’s first ever live gig will be at the Burgess Foundation. The performance marks the release of their debut 10′ single ‘Inspiration! / Nothing Is‘ on Melodic Records, recorded at The Nave in Leeds.

“Inspiration is completely gripping with a hypnotic intensity, barely stopping to take a breath. It’s seven and a half minutes or pure psych-pop perfection, with chiming guitars, and is packed with groove and hooky riffs.” – GetIntoThis.co.uk

This is the start of a series of live dates that sees the Manchester trio play the Blue Dot Festival, End Of The Road Festival and the Liverpool International Festival Of Psychedelia.

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  Concert: Matana Roberts presents Coin Coin Chapter Three

Sunday 14 May 2017, 8:00pm ￡10

Matana Roberts is an internationally renowned composer, band leader, saxophonist, sound experimentalist and mixed-media practitioner. Roberts works in many contexts and mediums, including improvisation, dance, poetry, and theatre.

She is perhaps best known for her acclaimed Coin Coin project, a multi-chapter work she has described as “panoramic sound quilting”. Roberts aims to expose the mystical roots and channel the intuitive spirit-raising traditions of American creative expression from jazz to noise, opera and spoken word, taking on history, community, storytelling and political expression.

River run thee, the third chapter of Coin Coin, was released on Constellation in 2014. It finds Roberts constructing a sound art tapestry from field recordings, loop and effects pedals, and spoken word recitations, alongside her saxophone and singing voices. It unfolds as an uninterrupted album-length flow, this time in what Roberts calls “a fever dream” of sonic material, woven in surrealist fashion.

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  Literature: Uncanny Stories About Birds with Nicholas Royle and Nicholas Royle

Tuesday 16 May 2017, 7:00pm FREE

Myriad and the Manchester Writing School are co-hosting a special evening to celebrate two extraordinary writers who happen to share not only a name and a profession but also a love of birds.

Sometimes confused with one another, even by themselves, Nicholas Royle (author of Quilt and other works) and Nicholas Royle (author of First Novel and other works) talk about their shared interest in birds, stories and the uncanny, and read from their new books: An English Guide to Birdwatching and Ornithology.

Burgess 100: M/F – The Concert

Friday 19 May 2017, 7:30pm ￡6

A concert of brand new music inspired by Anthony Burgess’s novel M/F, a book that deals with riddles, delinquency, incest and talking birds. Four composers will present specially commissioned work for violin, cello, flute, clarinet, percussion, with spoken word and visuals.

M/F tells the story of a college drop-out who sets out on a pilgrimage in which he meets a repulsive doppelganger, an ugly sister, a lion-faced man, a bird-whisperer and many shocking discoveries. Burgess’s use of language is at its most ambitious in M/F: the story is a roller-coaster ride with the taboo subject of incest at its core.

The composers taking on this challenge are: > Shaun Davies, a guitarist and a newcomer to contemporary classical composition. He draws his influences from jazz, metal, 20th century/modern classical and film-score. > Anna Disley-Simpson, a BBC Proms Inspire winner in her second year at the RNCM. She is currently writing for the European Union Chamber Orchestra and has had her work played at Tate Britain. > William KZ Hearne, a third-year RNCM student with a keen interest in acoustic and electronic performance. > Philip Rousiamanis (pictured), performance artist and founder of the White Noiz Ensemble, and violinist for the Lux quartet. He has written for short films and has worked with dancers, actors, poets and visual artists.

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  The Burgess Foundation Cafe

Weekdays, 10am-3pm

The Burgess Foundation Cafe is open weekdays from 10am-3pm. The cafe is a relaxed space where you can work, read, chat and drink great coffee. Soups and cakes are made daily. We are proud to use locally sourced and organic ingredients. You can also take advantage of our free WiFi, and browse the bookshop.

[jomwila]

Zambian Translators International (ZTI) is a Specialized Translation Company which deals in the following languages: English to Bemba, Nyanja, Kaonde, Lozi, Tonga, Luvale and Lunda as well as from these languages to English. Are you a Translator looking for a place to use your skills to make some cash, then you are in the right direction. Self-employed translators are their own bosses. They can work from anywhere in the world and exercise their language skills every day.

Clients from across the globe with all different kinds of materials—technical manuals, travel brochures, articles, and works of literature — need translators. The demand for translators and interpreters worldwide is going up each coming day.

Use your skills to earn the cash that you need.

Do you have a document that needs to be translated into another language? Kindly contact us and your document will be translated in no time at all.

[jomwila]

Zambian Translators International

Zambian Translators International (ZTI) is a Specialized Translation Company which deals in the following languages: English to Bemba, Nyanja, Kaonde, Lozi, Tonga, Luvale and Lunda as well as from these languages to English. Are you a Translator looking for a place to use your skills to make some cash, then you are in the right direction. Self-employed translators are their own bosses. They can work from anywhere in the world and exercise their language skills every day.

Clients from across the globe with all different kinds of materials—technical manuals, travel brochures, articles, and works of literature — need translators. The demand for translators and interpreters worldwide is going up each coming day.

Use your skills to earn the cash that you need.

Do you have a document that needs to be translated into another language? Kindly contact us and your document will be translated in no time at all.