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Stanely Mushava Literature Today

Since its inception in 2013, this column has consistently called on Zimbabwe’s cultural ecosphere, mainly publishers, Government, educational institutions and audiences, to take the front seat in promoting and preserving the country’s most important works of art.

This month marks 30 years since the death of Dambudzo Marechera, but what is perhaps more tragic is the dearth of his works on the Zimbabwean market. Despite having six titles to his name, most of this great artiste’s books are nowhere to be found in our bookshops.

With sufficient effort, you will find “Mindblast” and “House of Hunger” from publishers or bookshops and “The Black Insider” from pirates but “Cemetery of Mind”, “Scrapiron Blues” and “Black Sunlight” are harder to find than money in 2017.

As a hopeless media junkie, I have been frustrated many times hopping from shop to shop for Zimbabwean classics, especially books and music, in vain.

No wonder the only idea many Zimbabweans have of Dambudzo Marechera is that fake letter supposedly from him to a white chick called Samantha. No wonder barbershop tales about doctors certifying that Marechera’s mind worked six times faster than an ordinary mortal’s, him reading the dictionary in the dark using, burning elapsed pages for torchlight, writing a novel about a falling leaf are taken as seriously as red-lettered scripture.

It speaks to the grand canonisation of African artistes and thinkers without actually engaging them that Alain Mabanckou flags in his poem “As Long as Trees Take Root in the Earth”: “False prophets summon Diop/who remains to be read/false prophets summon Fanon/ who remains to be read/false prophets summon Césaire/who remains to be read.”

This week, I share a Quartz article in which the 2017 Caine Prize for African Writing winner calls on African countries to be economically involved in their literature. The article, headed, “We need African countries to support our literature, says 2017’s Caine prize winner,” was written by Farid Y. Farid and published in Quartz last month:

When Bushra al-Fadil landed in London to receive the 2017 Caine Prize for African Literature, he spent a day perusing the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies.

He felt a pang of sadness when running his fingers through an early edition of the quintessential African novel “Things Fall Apart” by Nigerian Chinua Achebe.

“I saw original copies of Achebe’s work in Yoruba and English,” he says. “I even saw Nubian languages in all their diversity preserved beautifully and I thought to myself what a shame that these masterpieces could not be in the libraries of our countries. We should have institutes that honour them.”

Al-Fadil (65), a Sudanese novelist who was expelled for his political dissidence from his country and has been living in Saudi Arabia since 1992, won the prestigious prize breaking several records in the process.

Apart from being the oldest winner, he is the first African writer to claim the prize for writing in his Arabic mother tongue and away from his homeland.

“It was a pleasant surprise for me as I did not know that the previous Sudanese winner, Leila Abou Elela, had written her stories in English.”

She was awarded the same prize in 2000. The Caine Prize for African Writing, now in its 18th year, is named after the late Booker Prize chairman Michael Caine, who championed emerging African literature. Some of the previous winners have included Zimbabwe’s star writer No Violet Bulawayo and Sierra Leone’s Olufemi Terry.

“For me to write in Arabic and to win, shows us that translation widens the horizons for authors from Arab and African countries,” he added.

African literature has seen a renaissance in the last decade in part thanks to awards like Caine Prize, Brunel International African Poetry Prize and the Etisalat Prize for Literature. But the interest has also come from an increased curiosity about a rising Africa narrative as well as the, mainly young, African writers keen to tell their own stories in their own voice.

These writers have also found a more willing audience in the Western countries which dominate the publishing world as readers seek out authentic voices. The success and high profile of Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in particular as well as newer voices like Bulawayo, Tope Folarin, E. C. Osundu, Binyavanga Wainaina and Helon Habila has also been encouraging.

Al-Fadil’s story “The Story of the Girl Whose Birds Flew Away” was first published in Arabic in 1979 and was subsequently translated into English by Max Shmookler in 2016 and included in the edited collection “The Book of Khartoum”.

However, he does not delve into national affiliations and prefers to see himself as a writer and translator.

“I am a Sudanese writer who happens to live in Sudan and Saudi Arabia, like Lorca who said I am a writer who lives in Spain. I even honour my Nubian roots, from southern Egypt, in the process of writing. I write in Arabic and my culture is Arab in the main but I am Sudanese and Muslim, which is complicated in itself,” he said.

Originally a poet, he has authored several short story collections, writes regularly on Sudanese and African politics and specialises in Russian literature, which he taught at Khartoum University until he was fired in June 1992 for protesting student exams which were held until martial law.

Al-Fadil maintains that the form of the novel has exploded in its creativity and experimentation on the continent

“It is ironic that there is a genuine hunger for Arab literature in Western countries and beyond, while illiteracy rates among our people are soaring…There should be quality education as a right on the continent as start.”

He points to upcoming generations that should be supported by their countries and sees that the major African economies must make more of an effort to endow the arts.

“Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa could be leading pillars in promoting the cultural industry on the continent because of their geographic breadth and their large populations,” he added.