{"id":9661,"date":"2021-11-26T15:41:25","date_gmt":"2021-11-26T15:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/?p=9661"},"modified":"2021-11-26T14:37:34","modified_gmt":"2021-11-26T14:37:34","slug":"why-africa-is-dominating-literary-prizes-in-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/why-africa-is-dominating-literary-prizes-in-2021","title":{"rendered":"Why Africa is dominating literary prizes in 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Mozambique. <\/strong><\/span>Some of the world\u2019s biggest literary awards, including the Nobel, Booker and Goncourt, have gone to Africans this year in a sign of the continent\u2019s emergence as a major force in publishing and a region with a direct line to the pressing questions of our time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are witnessing a reawakening of interest in Africa among the European literary world,\u201d said Xavier Garnier, who teaches African literature at the Sorbonne in Paris.<\/p>\n

He described the string of awards for Africans as \u201cstriking\u201d.<\/p>\n

They include Tanzania\u2019s Abdulrazak Gurnah becoming a Nobel laureate, South Africa\u2019s Damon Galgut winning Britain\u2019s Booker Prize and 31-year-old Senegalese Mohamed Mbougar Sarr becoming the first writer from sub-Saharan Africa to win France\u2019s top literary award, the Prix Goncourt.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not all: Senegalese writers won this year\u2019s International Booker (David Diop) and Prix Neustadt (Boubacar Boris Diop) while Portugal\u2019s Prix Camoes went to Paulina Chiziane of Mozambique.<\/p>\n

These are not token gestures by prize committees trying to look relevant, experts say.<\/p>\n

Rather, as Garnier put it, they reflect the Western industry finally recognising a booming literary scene that \u201cno longer really needs recognition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Publishing houses have sprouted across Africa in recent years, along with literary reviews, festivals and regional prizes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a huge reading public for African writers, and that\u2019s been underlined during the pandemic when we\u2019ve seen the scale of the community as it shifted online,\u201d said Madhu Krishnan, who teaches African literature at Britain\u2019s Bristol University.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople don\u2019t come out of nowhere. We just don\u2019t always see these smaller worlds from Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018A lot more variety\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n

African literature had a previous heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, though it was tied up with politics and decolonisation, embodied by figures like Senegal\u2019s poet\/president Leopold Sedar Senghor.<\/p>\n

Today, the themes are much broader and writers less concerned with how they are viewed by outsiders.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing more experimentation, ecologically engaged texts, African futurism,\u201d said Krishnan. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot more variety \u2014 a lot more that isn\u2019t concerned with explaining itself to a Western audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diop\u2019s Booker-winning \u201cAt Night All Blood Is Black\u201d tracks a soldier\u2019s fall into madness on the frontlines of World War I.<\/p>\n

And Sarr\u2019s Goncourt winner, \u201cLa plus secrete memoire des hommes\u201d (\u201cThe Most Secret Memory of Men\u201d), focuses on literature itself.<\/p>\n

Sarr was praised by Congolese writer-critic Boniface Mongo-Mboussa for \u201cstepping away from the usual African subjects \u2014 violence, war, child soldiers\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mongo-Mboussa said he hoped the wins would open the way for greater integration of African writers in the notoriously closed French literary scene.<\/p>\n

\u2018Tensions and anxieties\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n

What might explain the burst of European interest is that Africa looks increasingly like a testing ground for problems that may soon affect us all.<\/p>\n

\u201cEcological crisis, social crisis\u2026 it\u2019s the African continent that is showing us the major threats that we all face,\u201d said Garnier.<\/p>\n

Not that the victories have been entirely free of controversy.<\/p>\n

There were grumblings online about the Nobel going to someone who emigrated to Britain in the 1960s, and that Gurnah\u2019s birthplace of Zanzibar is not \u201creal Africa\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are beefs in African literature, especially between the diaspora and the continent,\u201d said Krishnan.<\/p>\n

She said Gurnah\u2019s extensive work in nurturing African talent made it hard to agree with the criticisms.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut this speaks to the tensions and anxieties about what we mean when we talk about African literature. Who\u2019s African? What\u2019s African?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a tendency to reduce it to race or geography, but Africa is huge, there are at least 55 countries, it\u2019s multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and that\u2019s often erased in the discourse.\u201d<\/p>\n

For More News And Analysis About Mozambique<\/a> Follow Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Mozambique. Some of the world\u2019s biggest literary awards, including the Nobel, Booker and Goncourt, have gone to Africans this year in a sign of the continent\u2019s emergence as a major force in publishing and a region with a direct line to the pressing questions of our time. \u201cWe are witnessing a reawakening of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":9660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,8,16],"tags":[233,281,283],"class_list":["post-9661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-files","category-homepage-english","category-twitter","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-mozambique","tag-mozambique"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Africa is dominating literary prizes in 2021 - Mozambique<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Some of the world\u2019s biggest literary awards, including the Nobel, Booker and Goncourt, have gone to Africans this year i ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/why-africa-is-dominating-literary-prizes-in-2021\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Africa is dominating literary prizes in 2021\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Some of the world\u2019s biggest literary awards, including the Nobel, Booker and Goncourt, have gone to Africans this year i ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/why-africa-is-dominating-literary-prizes-in-2021\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Mozambique\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-11-26T15:41:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/sites\/64\/2021\/11\/img-61a0f11792805.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1057\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"651\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/why-africa-is-dominating-literary-prizes-in-2021#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/why-africa-is-dominating-literary-prizes-in-2021\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Why Africa is dominating literary prizes in 2021\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-11-26T15:41:25+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/why-africa-is-dominating-literary-prizes-in-2021\"},\"wordCount\":640,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/why-africa-is-dominating-literary-prizes-in-2021#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/sites\/64\/2021\/11\/img-61a0f11792805.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Mozambique\",\"Mozambique\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"files\",\"homepage-english\",\"twitter\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/why-africa-is-dominating-literary-prizes-in-2021#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/why-africa-is-dominating-literary-prizes-in-2021\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/why-africa-is-dominating-literary-prizes-in-2021\",\"name\":\"Why Africa is dominating literary prizes in 2021 - 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