Under African Skies: Modern African Stories

by Charles Larson (Editor)

Overview

Spanning a wide geographical range, this collection features many of the now prominent first generation of African writers and draws attention to a new generation of writers. Powerful, intriguing and essentially non-Western, these stories will be welcome by an audience truly ready for multicultural voices.

With contributions from:
Amos Tutuola (Nigeria)
Camara Laye (Guinea)
Birago Diop (Senegal)
Sembene Ousmane (Senegal)
Luís Bernardo Honwana (Mozambique)
Ngugi wa Thiong'o (Kenya)
Tayeb Salih (Sudan)
Es'kia Mphahlele (South Africa)
Grace Ogot (Kenya)
Ama Ata Aidoo (Ghana)
Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)
Bessie Head (South Africa/Botswana)
Similih M. Cordor (Liberia)
René Philombe (Cameroon)
Tijan M. Sallah (Gambia)
Ken Saro-Wiwa (Nigeria)
Don Mattera (South Africa)
Yvonne Vera (Zimbabwe)
Véronique Tadjo (Ivory Coast)
Ben Okri (Nigeria)
Alexander Kanengoni (Zimbabwe)
Mzamane Nhlapo (Lesotho)
Steve Chimombo (Malawi)
Sindiwe Magona (South Africa)
Nuruddin Farah (Somalia)
Mandla Langa (South Africa)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374525507
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	08/05/1998
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Charles R. Larson pioneered courses in African, African-American, and Third World literature. The author of numerous critical volumes, including The Emergence of African Fiction, he teaches at American University in Washington D.C.

Read an Excerpt

Under African Skies

Amos Tutuola

(BORN 1920) NIGERIA

Amos Tutuola's writing career began in 1948, when he mailed The Wild Hunter in the Bush of Ghosts to the Focal Press in London. In an earlier letter, Tutuola had described the ghost narrative, claiming that the text would be accompanied by photographs of Nigerian spirits. According to Bernth Lindfors, when the Focal Press received the work, "the 77-page handwritten manuscript had been wrapped in brown paper, rolled up like a magazine, bound with twine, and sent via surface mail. When the sixteen negatives accompanying it were developed, all but one turned out to be snapshots of hand-drawn sketches of spirits and other phenomena featured in the story. Tutuola had hired a schoolboy to draw these illustrations and had photographed them. He had also included a photograph of a human being sitting by the lagoon in Lagos because he felt that she adequately represented 'the old woman who sat near the river' in the story."

In Tutuola's enchanting narrative, there are illegitimate and cannibalistic ghosts, a sixteen-headed ghost, and a Salvation Army ghost, plus an educated ghost who teaches the narrator to read and write. More disturbing, the Yoruba afterworld (the domain of the spirits described in the story) has become fully bureaucratic, so complicated in its red tape that it's surprising that anyone ever passes on.

The Focal Press—publishers of photography books—quickly lost interest in Tutuola's novel, which languished until Lindfors edited the work for publication in 1982. Well before that time, Tutuola had become a worldfamouswriter, primarily because of the publication of The Palm-Wine Drinkard , in 1952. Reviewing the book, the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas noted: "This is the brief, thronged, grisly and bewitching story, written in young English by a West African, about a journey of an expert and devoted palm-wine drinkard through a nightmare of indescribable adventures, all simply and carefully described, in the spirit-bristling bush." The term "young English" confused the literary world, which quickly assumed that all subsequent Anglophone African writers would write in a similar style.

Clearly, Amos Tutuola's creative world is bewitching, extraordinarily vivid, and unforgettable. The Yoruba cosmology, which is central in each of the author's seven published books, often springs spontaneously alive when a character opens a door (perhaps in a tree) and enters into an entirely new world. As I wrote years ago, Tutuola's eschatology provides "a bridge between the internal and the external world (the ontological gap), between the real and the surreal, between the realistic and the supernatural."

Amos Tutuola was born in Abeokuta, Western Nigeria, in 1920. He completed six years of primary-school education, followed by training as a blacksmith, while serving in the R.A.F. in Lagos throughout World War II. The Palm-Wine Drinkard was written while Tutuola was working as a messenger for the Department of Labor. "The Complete Gentleman" has been excerpted from The Palm-Wine Drinkard as an example of oral storytelling incorporated into a written narrative. Other versions of this story exist in many West African languages. (See, for example, "The Chosen Suitor," from Dahomean Narrative, edited by Melville and Frances Herskovits, 1958.)

Introduction copyright © 1997 by Charles R. Larson

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION
Amos Tutuola - (Nigeria) THE COMPLETE GENTLEMAN
Camara Laye - (Guinea) THE EYES OF THE STATUE
Birago Diop - (Senegal) SARZAN
Sembene Ousmane - (Senegal) BLACK GIRL
Luís Bernardo Honwana - (Mozambique) PAPA, SNAKE &, I
Ngugi wa Thiong'o - (Kenya) A MEETING IN THE DARK
Tayeb Salih - (Sudan) A HANDFUL OF DATES
Es'kia Mphahlele - (South Africa) MRS. PLUM
Grace Ogot - (Kenya) TEKAYO
Ama Ata Aidoo - (Ghana) TWO SISTERS
Chinua Achebe - (Nigeria) GIRLS AT WAR
Bessie Head - (South Africa/Botswana) THE PRISONER WHO WORE GLASSES
Similih M. Cordor - (Liberia) IN THE HOSPITAL
René Philombe - (Cameroon) THE TRUE MARTYR IS ME
Tijan M. Sallah - (Gambia) INNOCENT TERROR
Ken Saro-Wiwa - (Nigeria) AFRICA KILLS HER SUN
Don Mattera - (South Africa) AFRIKA ROAD
Yvonne Vera - (Zimbabwe) WHY DON'T YOU CARVE OTHER ANIMALS
Véronique Tadjo - (Ivory Coast) THE MAGICIAN AND THE GIRL
Ben Okri - (Nigeria) A PRAYER FROM THE LIVING
Alexander Kanengoni - (Zimbabwe) EFFORTLESS TEARS
Mzamane Nhlapo - (Lesotho) GIVE ME A CHANCE
Steve Chimombo - (Malawi) TAKEN
Sindiwe Magona - (South Africa) I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THAT, NOW
Nuruddin Farah - (Somalia) MY FATHER, THE ENGLISHMAN, AND I
Mandla Langa - (South Africa) A GATHERING OF BALD MEN

Editorial Reviews

An overview of contemporary writing from Africa, drawing together 27 stories produced over the past three decades. Editor Larson offers a judicious mix of familiar figures (Amos Tutuola, Sembene Ousmane, Chinua Achebe, and Ben Okri) and less well known writers, among them Luís Bernardo Honwana ("Papa, Snake & I") from Mozambique, Vèronique Tadjo ("The Magician and the Girl") from the Ivory Coast, Tijan Sallah ("Innocent Terror") from Nigeria, and Mandla Langa ("A Gathering of Bald Men") from South Africa. A deeply moving (and prophetic) short story by activist Ken Saro-Wiwa ("Africa Kills Her Sun"), who was executed in 1995 by the Nigerian government, reminds us how deadly dangerous the pursuit of literature can be. Clear themes emerge here: the terrible struggle to preserve tradition, the conflicting pull of Western and African beliefs, the awful disruptions still visited on Africa by the West. These are expressed in a variety of forms, with stories ranging from straightforward realism to soaring blends of traditional storytelling and magic realism. Larson's biographical notes on the writers are terse and useful. A necessary volume for anyone seeking an introduction to modern African literature.

Kirkus Reviews

These tales reflect some of Africa's best characteristics - compassion and humour and an immense determination to survive against terrible odds.

Irish Independent

Every item in Charles Larson's beautifully produced anthology brims with political resonances.

Scotsman

powerful and intriguing . . . offering an excellent introduction to black African literature

Goegraphical Magazine

powerful, intriguing and masterfully written

Pride