MALE AFRICAN WRITERS WHO INSPIRED CHANGE…. (APART FROM CHINUA ACHEBE) Alan Paton (South Africa, 1903 – 1988) South African author and anti-apartheid activist. In 1948, four months after the publication of Cry, The Beloved Country, the separatist National Party came to power in South Africa. In 1953 Paton founded the Liberal Party of South Africa, which fought against the apartheid legislation introduced by the National Party. He remained the president of the SALP until its forced dissolution by the apartheid regime in the late 1960s, officially because its membership comprised both blacks and whites. Ousmane Sembène: (Senegal, 1923). Widely acknowledged as a seminal figure in both African literature and film. Sembène’s work, on both page and screen, is centrally concerned with the cultural practices and political discourses surrounding the female body in Africa 0 Wole Soyinka: (Nigeria, 1934). He won the Nobel prize in literature in 1986 and is often spoken of in the company of Achebe and Ngugi. Like his fellow Nigerian, Soyinka was outspoken on the subject of the Biafran War, calling for a cease-fire in 1967. He was subsequently imprisoned for just under two years, a period he recounts in his memoir, The Man Died: Prison Notes (1972). Ayi Kwei Armah: (Ghana, 1939). His first book, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968), has echoes of the French existential tradition associated with Sartre and Camus. A critique of a system overrun by nepotism and corruption, the novel still packs a punch almost 50 years on. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: (Kenya, 1938). The experience of British colonialism and the Mau Mau struggle for independence, as well as Kenya’s position in the neocolonial era preoccupy much of Ngugi’s thought and writing. (Petals of Blood). Nuruddin Farah: (Somalia, 1945) First novel, From a Crooked Rib (1970), depicted struggles of women in the Horn of Africa. His most recent, Past Imperfect, made up of Links (2004), Knots (2007) and Crossbones (2011), provides a fictional exploration of everything from the botched US-led Operation Restore Hope to contemporary debates about international piracy.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 00:11:05 +0000
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