Given the length of time it took me to complete the Booker Prize project, my first Classics Club list and the World of Literature project, you’d have thought I would have had enough of multi-year reading projects. Apparently not because all it took was a Top Ten Tuesday list from hopewellslibraryoflife about novels set in African nations to set me off again.
My itch to travel the world through books and experience cultures, traditions, issues that are unfamiliar to me, hasn’t gone away since finishing the World of Literature project a year ago. I read authors from 14 different African nations as part of that project but that still leaves 39 countries unvisited.
And so I’m about to embark on a challenge to read books by authors from each of the 53 African nation states. There will be some re-tracing of steps of course but I enjoyed several books from Nigeria and South Africa so it’s no hardship to pay a return visit to those countries.
Any Rules??
Ideally Adventures in African Literature should include books by authors from each of the 53 nation states — rather than just novels set in the country. That might prove impossible since there is little printed literature from some countries or if it does exist, it hasn’t been translated into English. I might have to resort to short stories or poetry in those cases.
The other challenge will be to navigate the tricky question of the author’s origin.
Do I count an author who was born in Nigeria for example but has lived most of their life in USA or UK? What about an author who is second generation Nigerian but has never lived in the country? I’m thinking no in both cases— I want an authentic representation of a country rather than based on knowledge gleaned at a distance.
But I know from past experience that a degree of flexibility is essential if I want to make any progress.
How Long Will the Project Last?
Adventures in African Literature will not have a deadline. The project will last as long as it takes me to read all 53 countries. I also reserve the right to stop at any time if my level of enthusiasm dwindles.
Finding the Authors
I currently have authors from six African nations on my TBR shelves: Egypt, Nigeria, Somali, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. For the remaining countries I’ll draw on The Armchair Explorer, edited by The Lonely Planet Team. This provides a list of five books and films for each country along with a soundtrack of ten tunes. The books recommended are a mix of titles written by authors from the selected country and those where the author strongly evokes the culture/landscape of the country. I’ve dipped into it already and can see it has its limitations because some of the smaller nations don’t get a look in.
Of more use will be Reading the World: Confessions of a Literary Explorer by Ann Morgan who undertook a project in 2012 to read a book from all 96 countries in the world. The book documents some of the issues she encountered such as access to books, translation etc. The actual list of books she read is available on her blog site. Helpfully she provides not just the title of the book she read but also alternatives she considered.
There are plenty of other resources available on line. These are just a few samples:
Five Books: Best African Books
Publishers’ Weekly: 10 Essential African novels
Brittle Paper: online magazine about African literature
Invisible Cities: a project via Discord to read literature from around the world. Now defunct but the list of books is still available
Last — but definitely not least — are book bloggers from around the world. I’m relying on you all to come up with suggestions and recommendations. Don’t you dare let me down!!!
So that’s the plan. If anyone else would like to join me on my adventures I’d love to have you as a travelling companion.