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  • Leeds African Studies Bulletin
  • Leeds African Studies Bulletin No. 64 (2001/02)
  • Article

In this Issue

Analysing Africa

  • The Struggle for Land in Africa - Professor Lionel Cliffe

Reading Africa

  • Review of Violence and Memory: One Hundred Years in the 'Dark Forests' of Matabeleland - David Simon
  • Review of No Telephone to Heaven - Martin Banham
  • Review of The Ordeal of the African Writer - Martin Banham
  • Review of State of the Environment in the Zambezi Basin 2000 - William Banham

Remembering Africa

  • Professor Adrian Hastings - Ingrid Lawrie
  • Senate resolution on the retirement of Lionel Cliffe

Leeds African Studies Bulletin No. 64 (2001/02) Tuesday 17 July 2001

Review of The Ordeal of the African Writer

By Martin Banham (University of Leeds)

Abstract

 

  • Article keywords:
  • Amos Tutuola
  • Charles R Larson
  • Ivory Coast
  • Ken Saro-Wiwa
  • Liberia
  • literature
  • Martin Banham
  • Nigeria
  • publishing
  • Zimbabwe

The Ordeal of the African Writer. Charles R Larson. Zed Books, London and New York, 2001. pp168, ISBN 11 85649 931 6 (pb.) £14.95, $19.95.

Like many other expatriates, Larson first encountered African writing when he taught – in his case with the Peace Corps in Nigeria – in Africa. Like many of us he didn’t initially fully understand what he was encountering and made errors of critical judgement – both over and under enthusiasm. But the experience was central to Larson’s life and work that has been dedicated to the teaching and promotion of the extraordinary writers of Africa. This splendid book is both celebratory and cautionary. It chronicles the writing and publishing experience of a range of individual authors commencing with the Nigerian Amos Tutuola, looks at popular publishing ventures such as the Onitsha Market Literature, introduces us to many writers (published and still unpublished) from Liberia, the Ivory Coast and Zimbabwe who deserve to be more widely known, and describes the grim realities of publishing in Africa (plus the occasional successes such as Baobab Books in Harare) and the grimmer realities of the persecution of writers. His penultimate chapter includes ‘Censorship, Imprisonment, Exile [and] The Death of Ken Saro-Wiwa’.

Larson argues for the creation of a non-profit making pan-African publishing house, and it would be good to think that this hugely informative, often angry but always enthusiastic book would assist in the realisation of such a venture.

 

[Published in Leeds African Studies Bulletin 64 (2001), p. 106]

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  • Reading Africa
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