Safe House: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction (Commonwealth Writers)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.97 (731 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1459735471 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 272 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-05-14 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, OBE, editor, critic, and broadcaster, is former deputy editor of Granta magazine, series editor for the Kwani? Manuscript Prize, and the deputy chair of the Caine Prize for African Writing. She served as a judge on the 2015 Man Booker Prize panel. . She lives in London, England
(Globe and Mail)The stories in this anthology provide a form of connective tissue to contemporary life on the African continent in Cape Town, Nairobi, Dakar, and Kano. Fresh ways of writing African experiences are afoot. (Jonny Steinberg, author of A Man of Good Hope) . Not so much timely as long overdue, this collection of essays and short memoirs directs the focus inward, leaping from blade-sharp observations of contemporary life around the African continent to a striking consideration of the continent’s cultural and political future. (Billy Kahora, Editor of Kwani?)A promising tradition of creative nonfiction is nascent in Africa. This publication signals the gestation of something enormously exciting and genuinely new. Saf
Arja Salafranca said Welcome collection of African creative non-fiction. While essay anthologies and collections from places such as North America and Britain are common and plentiful, and part of the publishing landscape there, essays from Africa are rare indeed. It’s sometimes hard enough, in a calendar year, to find essays published in South Africa, where I live, and rarer still to come across anthologies of the genre. This collection of creative non-fiction is to be welcomed, and let’s hope there are many more to come.The reasons for the paucity of essays might be many, editor Ellah Wakatama Allfrey offers up one such
Illuminating African narratives for readers both inside and outside the continent. A Nigerian immigrant to Senegal explores the increasing influence of China across the region, a Kenyan student activist writes of exile in Kampala, a Liberian scientist shares her diary of the Ebola crisis, a Nigerian journalist travels to the north to meet a community at risk, a Kenyan author travels to Senegal to interview a gay rights activist, and a South African writer recounts a tale of family discord and murder in a remote seaside town. In a collection that ranges from travel writing and memoir to reportage and meditative essays, editor Ellah Wakatama Allfrey has brought together some of the most talented writers of creative nonfiction from across Africa.