Africa 39 New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara
Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara is a landmark literary anthology published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Curated under the auspices of the Hay Festival and in celebration of Port Harcourt’s selection as the UNESCO World Book Capital 2014, the collection brings together thirty-nine of the most promising and distinctive writers under the age of forty from sixteen countries south of the Sahara. Part I: Prefaces and Editorial Frameworks Wole Soyinka’s Introduction: “The Word Shall Fly Free!” In his introduction, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka frames the collection around the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. He reflects on how the historical “wind of change” that blew across post-colonial Africa in the mid-20th century changed character, carrying the debris of external ideological warfare. Soyinka distinguishes between a handful of genuine leaders who possessed conviction in social doctrines and a cynical majority who used radical ideologies as weapons to silence dissidence and demand conformity. In the Soviet Union and its captive bloc, creative choices were placed under a “testamentary microscope,” turning literature into a mechanism of party ideology. This ideological policing soon spread to African academic institutions, resulting in bitter, paralyzing debates. For Soyinka, the …