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Review of Various titles from Bayreuth African Studies

Issue
Date

By Martin Banham

From Bayreuth African Studies:

No.72. ‘They Keep The Home Fires Burning”: Conversations on food, manners and hospitality in Africa. Ed. Georgina Beier. 2005, pp. 181, ISBN 3 927510 87 4, €14.95.

No.75. Religion in the Context of African Migration. Eds. Afe Adogame and Cordula Weisskoppel. 2005, pp. 366, ISBN 3 927510 89 0, €27.95.

No.77. Africa, Europe and (Post)Colonialism: Racism, Migration and Diaspora. Eds. Susan Arndt and Marek Spitczok von Brisinski. 2006, pp. 346, ISBN 3 927510 93 9, €34.95.

No. 79. Die Macht des Wortes: Das journalistische Interview als Rezeptionsform afrikanischer Literaturen. Manfred Loimeier. 2006, pp. 511, ISBN 3 927510 94 7, €49.95.

No. 81. Subject, Context and the Contours of Nigerian Fiction
. Ezenwa-Ohaeto (ed. Eckhard Breitinger). 2007, pp.181, ISBN 978 3 939661 00 9, €9.95.

No. 82. Theatre, Performance and New Media in Africa. Eds. Susan Arndt, Eckhard Breitinger and Marek Spitczok von Brisinski.. 2007, pp.222, ISBN 978 3 939661 01 6, €19.95.

No. 83. Change Aesthetics in Anglophone Cameroon Drama and Theatre. Hilarious N.Ambe. 2007, pp.220, ISBN 978 3 939661 02 3, €24.95.

The extraordinary Africana publishing enterprise that is Bayreuth African Studies, created by Eckhard Breitinger who is now joined as co-publisher by Pia Thielmann, continues to produce a range of important studies, some of the more recent of which are listed above. We hope to carry more detailed reviews of individual volumes in future issues of the LUCAS Bulletin, and on our web site. Meanwhile, some brief comments on four volumes amongst those listed above. It is sad to report the death, in a road accident, of Hilarious N Ambe, but he has left us an authoritative and important study of contemporary Cameroonian Anglophone theatre (in which, inter alia, he chastises the present reviewer for being ignorant of important anglophone theatre in material published in the 1970s and ‘90s). The posthumously published study of Nigerian fiction by the Nigerian poet and critic Ezenwa-Ohaeto (who died at the age of 47) is complemented by an edition of Matatu, (No. 33) Of Minstrelsy and Masks: The Legacy of Ezenwa-Ohaeto in Nigerian Writing, eds. Christine Matzke, Aderemi Raji-Oyelade and Geoffrey V Davis, Rodopi, Amsterdam & NY, 2006. The writers under discussion in Die Macht des Wortes are Wole Soyinka and Ousmane Sembène. Finally, a special word of delight and appreciation for Georgina Beier’s gathering of fourteen conversations about food, culture and memory from a range of friends and colleagues in Africa. It’s a mixture of cookbook and cultural treasure chest!

[Published in Leeds African Studies Bulletin 69 (2007), pp. 95-96]

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