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47
eBiz Africa Review Summer 2013 /
Été 2013
DID YOU KNOW? /
LE SAVIEZ-VOUS?
1. Leonor Miano
Miano’s 2005 novel, In the Dark
Heart of the Night tells the story of a
woman who returns from France to
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as a “foreigner” and for failing to
bring presents, she decides to leave,
but on the eve of her departure, a
guerrilla group raids her village and
uses some twisted form of Pan-
Africanism as a way of subjugating
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English translation, as did many of
my French-speaking friends who
had read the original novel, and their
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was curious to know just how bad the
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Night is a bad translation, I would like
to read the good translations of all her
other work because this Cameroon-
born, “Afro-pean” writer, who is now
based in France, is brilliant!
2. Hj Golakai
HJ’s book was nominated for South
Africa’s premier literary prize, The
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doesn’t often make it on this list, but
the beauty of HJ’s writing is that she
achieves the rare feat of keeping a
neat balance between popular and
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book, but if her unpublished prose
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3. Ondjaki
This Angolan writer, who studied
in Lisbon and now lives in Rio de
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Morning, Comrades tells the story
of a young boy growing up in post-
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comes to visit from Portugal, he
learns that there is a world beyond
his home city, one in which people
are unafraid and ration cards don’t
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into a village, visits the church, and
soon impresses everyone with his
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storylines are deceptively simple but
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4. Chika Unigwe
Before Alastair Campbell tweeted
“the best novel so far read this
summer”, I had read Unigwe’s On
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women who have all left Africa for
Europe in pursuit of wealth and
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collide with the nightmare of
Belgium’s red light districts, forcing
them to reimagine their identities by
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5. Thando Mgqolozana
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was published, a South African
traditional leader suggested that
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a good enough reason in itself to
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even better one is that his prose
are as captivating as his plots are
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themes that he explores in his
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Not a Man, and the virgin birth in the
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he never seems to preach, but
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his or hers own truth
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