Africa (Traveler's Literary Companions)

By Oona Strathem and Oona Strathern

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0844289671
• ISBN13: 9780844289670
• Release Date: February 1995
• Publisher: Passport Books
• Length: 524 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.0" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating, though the Excerpts Were Too Short

This book was published in 1995 and covered 230 works by 218 writers. About two-thirds of the works came from African authors, the rest mainly from Europeans and Americans. Most of the nations in Africa were covered, with each country given one chapter containing literary selections, background including basic facts, literary landmarks, a list of books and capsule biographies of authors. The selections themselves comprised about 40% of the book. Covered most extensively were South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria and Kenya, with 12-15 selections each. Others with a fair number of works included Congo, Ethiopia, Malawi, Morocco, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Uganda. Most other nations averaged 5-6 items. For some other countries, little or nothing by native-born writers was available (Burkina Faso, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, Comorros, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Libya, Mauritania, Niger, the Seychelles). The collection's attractions were the range and background on most nations, including info on the major languages in each place, the major writers -- including those not translated into English -- brief biographies, and even the names/locations of bookstores in major cities. The drawback for this reader was that so much background was included that space for the many excerpts was extremely limited -- each item was rarely allotted more than three-quarters of a page. Except for a handful of poems, nothing was given complete. Imagine reading, for example, just 20-30 lines from a short story or novel. On the other hand, the selection was vast. There were 10 poems, 43 excerpted poems, 79 excerpted novels, 51 excerpted autobiographies, 19 excerpted short stories, and a smaller number of extracts from letters, journals, tales, plays, biographies, nonfiction novels, a song, an interview, a history, an essay and the Bible. It appeared that nothing was translated specifically for this anthology, but the editor drew on a number of earlier collections of prose and poetry and an extraordinarily wide range of reading in other sources. From the works by Africans, the greatest number were written originally in English (nearly half) or translated from French (about a quarter), Portuguese or Arabic. Other works -- about a fifth -- were provided in translation from indigenous languages: Aandonga (Angola), Acholi (Uganda), Amharic (Ethiopia), Baka and Fang (Gabon), Bakongo (Zaire and Congo), Fulani (Mali), Gikuyu (Kenya), Malagasy (Madagascar), Somali (Somalia), Sotho (Lesotho), Swahili (Kenya and Tanzania), Tswana (Botswana) and Zulu (South Africa). Many of these were anonymous poems and tales; the editor referred to fables, proverbs, myths, legends, folktales, praise songs and poetry passed down orally by bards and others from living traditions. Other writing from indigenous languages was by authors like Lesotho's Thomas Mofolo, Mali's Amadou Bâ, South Africa's Mazisi Kunene, Ethiopia's Fikré Tolossa, Tanzania's Shabaan Roberts a