A Day of Book Readings in Ibadan

I was privileged at the weekend to attend a reading in Ibadan organised along with a book tour by Auggust Media featuring nine new Nigerian writers and spanning four cities. It was one of the best gatherings I have attended in a while. Ibadan was the second city where the reading train has stopped on its way into the heart of the Niger Delta. There's more information about the programme tagged 9 Writers, 4 Cities HERE, HERE and HERE.

Now I have got a stack of the following new books to read:

I am Memory, a collection of poetry by Jumoke Verissimo
Night of a Creaking Bed, a collection of short stories by Toni Kan
From the Caves of Rotten Teeth, short stories by Igoni Barrett
To Saint Patrick, a novel by Eghosa Imasuen
Under the Brown Rusted Roofs, a novel by Bimbola Adelakun, and
The Poet Lied, collection of poems by Odia Ofiemun.

Just before Saturday, I had completed Tolu Ogunlesi's book for young adults titled Conquest and Conviviality.

The informal after-event get-together at the University Staff Club was an icing on the already pleasant day. It is not everyday that one gets to dialogue with authors, critics and editors over drinks and good music. Present were Sola Olorunyomi, author of Afrobeat: Fela and the Imagined Continent, Remi Raji, poet and author of Lovesongs for my Wasteland, Amatoritsero Ede, poet and editor of Maple Tree Literary Supplement, and moderator of Krazitivity, Toni Kan, telecoms exec, columnist and author of Night of a Creaking Bed and Songs of Absence and Despair, Eghosa Imasuen, author of To Saint Patrick among others.

Those interested in the itinerary of the 9 Writers, 4 Cities Book Tour should look up http://blog.farafinamagazine.com.

The inserted photo has Jumoke Verrisimo autographing her book for the blogger. "From one writer to another", she writes.

A Nobel Week

Many interesting things happened in the gone week. One was most remarkable.

The Nobel Prize for literature was given to a Frenchman whose works interestingly have not been accessible to the many people of Africa, and even of Europe where he resides. Jean-Marie Gustav le Clezio was given the prize for being the "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization"

His book Onitsha (after the Eastern Nigerian city) details his experience of living in colonial Nigeria - one of such accounts by a foreigner would make a good read, if only for its unique perspective. There is of course a mild irony that Chinua Acbebe an annual member of the speculative shortlist of the prize is from that same region of Nigeria, though born a decade before this year's prize winner.

The New York Times writes in this recent article that "Mr. Le Clézio is not well known in the United States, where few of his books are available in translation, but he is considered a major figure in European literature and has long been mentioned as a possible laureate. "

His not being known here, and in the United States might be due to a lack of adequate translations of his work. But you have to know a writer's/story's prospects before venturing into translating them. What have the French-English literary translators been doing all these while? No doubt the writer has now become a hot cake and will now be made more accessible now that his name has joined the greats. This year's award thus throws a light on a branch of literature often neglected at great risk to the sustenance of literary culture: translation. Not many people in Africa and America will know what Le Clezio has written in his native French language until and unless his works are translated. And we can't force him to write in English!

This week also tasked my opinion and knowledge on the language questions in (African) literature. It is a wide debate: which language should the African write in? These recent events have only vindicated the opinions of great voices like Chinua Achebe who insists on writing in whatever language, as long as he passes his message across. That language of course happened to be English, although the question remains whether he would have been so globally recognised if he had written Things Fall Apart totally in his Igbo language. Ngugi wa Thiong'o now writes in his native Gikuyu language, and later translates them himself into English. In all, literature exists in different cultures and only translation can make them more accessible either from a dominant language into teh minority ones, or vice versa.

Needless to say, that book, Onitsha has now joined my reading wishlist. Sadly, one may have to wait until Nigerian publishers secure publishing/translation rights for those works of the writer before we get them to buy here in Nigeria. Any other suggestions?

Here is a phone interview with Le Clezio. And an old interview. Finally, here is a link to a short story by the writer, translated.