We wrap up book news for our readers in our regular Book Digest segment with books from Vamba Sherif, Jessemusse Cacinda, Zukiswa Wanner, and Serubiri Moses.
Kwashala Blues by Jessemusse Cacinda
Publisher: Ethale Books
Date: September 5, 2023
Genre: Fiction, novella
Language: Portuguese
Where to find it: Click here.
Jessemusse Cacinda
Jessemusse Cacinda is a philosopher, journalist, project manager, and cultural activist. He published essays, articles, chronicles, and short stories in literary and philosophical anthologies, newspapers, press, and magazines and coordinated two literary anthologies bringing together contemporary Mozambican writers. In 2016 he founded, with Alex Macbeth, Ethale Publishing, a publishing house focused on promoting African narratives and their diasporas. He is the author of the book Pensar Africa (Ethale Publishing, 2020), Published O Hambúrguer que Matou Jorge — Antologia de Contos Criminais Moçambicanos (Ethale Publishing, 2017).
Kwashala Blues
Kwashala Blues opens up to the reader, with a portrait of a Maputo marked by sensations and memories. Returning to Nampula for the first time, on the occasion of his father’s death and five years after leaving the city, a young man employed in a law firm in the capital begins a journey to the North of the country, starting, at the same time, a journey in his past and history of Mozambique. If the Mozambican capital ends up being a vibrant counterpoint to Nampula, this city takes on more defined contours as we travel through the lives of its inhabitants, between Muahivire and Namicopo.
The Emperors Son by Vamba Sherif
Publisher: Iskanchi
Date: October 24, 2023
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Iskanchi, Amazon.
Vamba Sherif
Vamba Sherif is a novelist, essayist, speaker, book and film critic. He’s a lecturer in African Literature at Leiden University. His work has appeared in many languages, including Dutch, English, French, German, Spanish, Polish, and the Indian Malayalam. He has also published essays, stories, film reviews, columns and opinion pieces in The New York Times, the German Kulturaustausch, African Writing, Trouw, Volkskrant, NRC and ZAM-Magazine, among many others. With Ebissé Rouw, he compiled Black: Afro-European literature in the Netherlands and Belgium, a unique anthology of Afro-European experience in the Low Countries.
The Emperors Son
Vamba Sherif’s The Emperor’s Son tells the story of Zaiwulo, a young boy sent off to the ancient city of Musadu to study under Talata, a great scholar and head of the legendary Haidarah family. The boy soon notices that there is more to the story of his presence among the Haidarahs, and as he grows older and becomes a soldier fighting alongside Emperor Samori whom the French nicknamed “the Black Napoleon”, his resolve to unravel the mysteries of his childhood propels him into an adventure that leads him back home in the forests where there awaits a revelation with far-reaching consequences.
Vignettes of People in an Apartheid State by Zukiswa Wanner
Publisher: Paivapo Publishers
Date: October 13, 2023.
Genre: Nonfiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Cheche Books Nairobi.
Zukiswa Wanner
Zukiswa Wanner is a writer, editor, and publisher born in Zambia to a Zimbabwean mother and a South African father, raised in Zimbabwe and currently based in Kenya but who considers the whole African continent her home. She has written the novels The Madams (2006), Behind Every Successful Man (2008), Men of the South (2010), and London Cape Town Joburg (2014). She has also written the nonfiction offerings 8115: A Prisoner’s Home with Alf Kumalo (2010), Maid in SA: 30 Ways to Leave Your Madam (2013), Hardly Working: A Travel Memoir of Sorts (2018), and The Black Pimpernel: Nelson Mandela on the Run (True Adventures) (2022).
Vignettes of People in an Apartheid State
In May 2023, South African author Zukiswa Wanner was a guest of the Palestine Festival of Literature. Coming from a country with a history of apartheid, she should have had an inkling of what to expect but her experiences were more than she bargained for. As Palestinians are not permitted to travel across checkpoints, the Palestine Festival of Literature brought her among other festival participants to different parts of the Palestinian territories (glorified bantustans) for literary engagement with audiences. Vignettes is her witness account of contemporary settler colonialism, genocide, and a world that’s damned by its refusal to hear the pleas for a truly free Palestine.
The Moon Is Reading Us A Book by Serubiri Moses
Publisher: Pântano Books
Date: July 23, 2023
Genre: Poetry
Language: English
Where to find it: Click here.
Serubiri Moses
Serubiri Moses is a Ugandan curator and author based in New York City. He currently serves as faculty in Art History at Hunter College and visiting faculty at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. He previously held positions at New York University and the New Centre for Research and Practice, and delivered lectures at Williams College, Yale University, University of Pittsburgh, The New School, basis voor aktuelle kunst, and University of the Arts Helsinki. As a curator, he has organized exhibitions at museums including MoMA PS1, New York; Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; and the Hessel Museum, Bard College, NY. He previously held a research fellowship at the University of Bayreuth; received his MA in Curatorial Studies at Bard College; and is an alumni of the Àsìkò International Art Programme. He serves on the editorial team of e-flux journal. He has published poetry in the online journals Jalada and Badilisha Poetry Exchange, as well as in print in journals Kwani? 7, Kwani? 8, and READ: A Journal of Inter-Translation (2022). His poetry has been reviewed online in The New Inquiry. THE MOON IS READING US A BOOK is his first book of poetry.
The Moon Is Reading Us A Book
The Moon Is Reading Us A Book is the debut collection of poetry from a writer who displays a wide-ranging palette for storytelling and folklore in a suite of narrative poems. The collection is built around an ensemble of characters that range from known to unknown, through which Serubiri crafts visually-inspired poems that combine the photographic, the intensely personal, and the scholarly. In his book, he manages to domesticate larger-than-life figures, including Zanzibari-born singer-songwriter Freddie Mercury and Nigerian-born photographer Rotimi Fani Kayode. Simultaneously pondered and elastic, Serubiri’s poetry lures these figures – and the reader – into an atmosphere that is only as expansive as the interior landscapes he delineates with each succeeding poem. With this he expresses his own doubts and path, from memories of his native Uganda to New York City, through a psychology of decisions and life choices.
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