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Books
for Africa
Mail & Guardian
(SA)
July 18, 2002
A ‘hit parade’ of Africa’s best
books has been selected. Shaun de Waal reports.
It began two years ago: a project
to pay tribute to the "jewels" of African literature. In February
in Accra, Ghana, the list of "Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th
Century" was announced, and this month the project reaches its culmination
with ceremonies, conferences and exhibitions in Cape Town and Harare,
the latter as part of the annual Zimbabwe International Book Fair (ZIBF).
The focus of these conferences, using the "100 Best Books" theme,
will be The Impact of African Writing on World Literature. It will be
interesting to see what emerges.
The concept of a hit parade, as
it were, of Africa’s 100 top books was kicked off by Dr Ali Mazrui, one
of Africa’s leading academics. He is the director of the Institute of
Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University in New York, as well
as holding professorships at two other American universities and Jos University
in Nigeria. The occasion was a celebration of the 70th birthday of Chinua
Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart (1958), at Bard College in New York.
At the ZIBF later the same year, Mazrui expanded on his idea.
"In 1998," he said, "the
Modern Library Board ... in the USA chose the 100 great books in English
of the 20th century and ranked them. Ulysses by James Joyce was ranked
first and foremost. And The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
was number 100. The majority of the books were from the Commonwealth and
almost all the rest from the United States. "No African novel in
the English language made the first 100 — not even Chinua Achebe’s work
or the works of Nobel laureates Wole Soyinka and Nadine Gordimer.
Was this linguistic apartheid combined
with racial apartheid?"
Not quite, said Mazrui, noting that
the African diaspora was accounted for by African-American novelists Ralph
Ellison (Invisible Man, number 19), Richard Wright (Native Son, 20) and
James Baldwin (Go Tell It on the Mountain, 39). But Mazrui continued:
"Should we be alarmed that none of the great African writers have
made the list of the top 100? It would have been nice if Chinua Achebe’s
novel Things Fall Apart was included in the list of the 100 top novels
of the 20th century. It certainly deserved to be. Other Achebe enthusiasts
might vote for Arrow of God (1964) as Achebe’s most profound novel. But
none of his works made the list. Was linguistic apartheid verging on the
racial?"
Mazrui noted that "the only
authors who made the list ... whose mother tongue was not English were
Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov and Salman Rushdie". "This means
one of two things: either writing in English when English is not one’s
native language is a far bigger handicap than we had all assumed or that
the judges of the top 100 novels of the 20th century were simply too Anglo-Saxon
themselves. On balance I prefer the latter explanation. The judges were
probably too Anglo-Saxon in their prejudices, even if some judges were
from the wider Commonwealth."
He exhorted Africans to seek out
the "jewels" of their literature, and the project was officially
launched at that edition of the ZIBF, in collaboration with the African
Publishers’ Network, the Pan-African Booksellers’ Association and the
Pan-African Writers’ Association. Now, two years later, the project has
come to fruition. The list has been announced, though the books on it
have not been ranked.
On the list are 19 South African
titles — a healthy 20% of the list. Among them are A Dry White Season
by André Brink, Country of My Skull by Antjie Krog, Life and Times
of Michael K by JM Coetzee, Burger’s Daughter by Nadine Gordimer, Die
Swerfjare van Poppie Nongena by Elsa Joubert, Ingqumbo Yeminyanya by AC
Jordan, Living, Loving and Lying Awake at Night by Sindiwe Magona, The
Soul of the White Ant by Eugene Marais, Down Second Avenue by Ezekiel
Mphahlele, Inkinnsela yaseMgungundlovu by Sibusiso Nyembezi, Long Walk
to Freedom by Nelson Mandela, Native Life in South Africa by Sol Plaatje
and Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton, Third World Express by Mongane
Serote, and The Seed Is Mine by Charles van Onselen.
As for the rest of the list, there
are many acknowledged classics of African literature on it, as well as
some titles that have not reached much of a general public beyond the
bounds of academia.
Nominations were invited in 2000,
in the categories of literature for children, creative writing (including
novels, stories, plays and poetry) and scholarship/non-fiction. An African
book was considered to be a work on an African subject by someone either
born in Africa or who acquired citizenship of an African country.
A total of 1 521 nominations were
received, with some books (such as Things Fall Apart) receiving multiple
nominations. This list was reduced to 500 titles, from which the jury
selected the final 100.
The 16-person jury was chaired by
Njabulo Ndebele, vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town, and included
African academics working around the world and the Egyptian minister of
culture.
Looking at the full list, one notes
that relatively few of the 100 books were initially published in Africa,
though South Africa’s record in this regard is exemplary. Several of these
books are also now out of print. Can the hit parade of Africa’s 100 best
books help to change a situation in which literature, like so many other
commodities of the colonial and post-colonial era, has become something
Africa exports in a raw form, to be manufactured, as it were, in the colonial
metropole, and then re-exported to Africa?
Spike Guara of the ZIBF replied
to this question: "the project is meant to boost African publishing
and the publication of books by Africans. ZIBF can only do so much as
a marketing organisation. However, it is hoped that publishers will rise
to the occasion and take up the challenge by reprinting those books out
of print and by so doing give them a new lifeline. ZIBF hopes, in the
long run, to brand all books on the list for marketing purposes."
Yes, Africa has produced some great
books, but the drive for total literacy and a sustainable publishing industry
within the continent still has some way to go. Let us hope that the grand
gestures of the "African renaissance", of the New Partnership
for Africa’s Development and the African Union help push this process
along, and that when it comes to publishing African work Africans will
one day wholly own the means of production as well.
As Mazrui poetically put it, speaking
of African literature’s roots in a rich oral culture, "Africa, the
Garden of Eden which gave birth to the first human lullaby, may yet be
destined to protect the legacy of the lullaby for all eternity."
The details: In
Cape Town, the exhibition will be held from July 26 to 28. The Indaba
will be held on July 26 and 27 and its theme is The Impact of African
Writing on World Literature. Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century
Awards presentation gala will be held on July 27.
Registration for the Indaba costs
R600, which includes lunches and teas on both days. The theme of the Zimbabwe
International Book Fair 2002, to be held in Harare, is A Celebration of
Africa’s Best and the Indaba will be held on July 29 and 30. The Indaba’s
theme is The Impact of African Writing on World Literature and it will
focus on the 100 Best Books. The writers’ workshop will be held from July
31 to August 1 and the book fair will be held from July 30 to August 3
Top 100 African books
Download the list of top 100 African books:
- PDF
format
- Word
RTF format
This article is available online
at http://www.chico.mweb.co.za/art/2002/2002jul/020726-top100.html
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