Subscribe to Read | $0.00
Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Quick and Easy Sign Up!
It takes less then 1 minute to sign up, then you can enjoy Unlimited eBooks.
Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Quick and Easy Sign Up!
It takes less then 1 minute to sign up, then you can enjoy Unlimited eBooks.
Read Anywhere and on Any Device!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
Helon Habila has done a damn fine job of selecting a diverse and striking stories for this in my opinion, but he has made one editorial decision that didn't suit me: putting the pieces in reverse chronological order. Cool idea, but... I didn't want to go along with it - what can I say? I'm an unruly kid. So I read the last story first and carried on that way - sorry Helon! Here are a few of my highlights.Alex La Guma - Slipper Satin I love this little snapshot of social tensions, patriarchy and
The content of Africa has inspired so many epic novels and travel books that the short story genre has often been overlooked.Granta have decided that this omission needs to be addressed, and have released this collection of short stories written by African authors. They are set primarily in Africa, but there are other stories set in different parts of the globe.As with any collection there are the good, the bad and the indifferent. Some are really well written, others less so, but they all deal
I loved every story, which is very rare for me in an anthology. Outstanding book. If I were still teaching I'd definitely use it.
The best stories came off very simply. The rest very forgettable
This books contains a very diverse collection of African short stories from all over the continent and from different time periods. Some are truly wonderful, others are more like stilllifes and dis not impress me at all. Some are difficult understand and require a lot of research for a writer unfamiliar with anlocal slang or historical context, which is tiresome bit also a great opportunity for learning more about the continent's history and culture.
The story of Africa, from independence to the present, is best told not in its history books and other officially constructed documents, but in its novels, short stories, poems and other artifacts. I first read Uwem Akpan's AN EX-MAS FEAST years ago, from his collection, Say You're One of Them; still, I was brokenhearted the second time around as I read about the anguish and helplessness a young boy living in Kenya feels as he observes his underage sister sell her body to provide for the fami
"But I grope after language to describe the feeling I experience on my evening walks, the light in the air and on the sea. This pleases me: that some things remain beyond my grasp..." thus muses the jogger in Henrietta Rose-Innes' "Promenade" about a significant encounter between him, a middle-aged unassuming copy writer, and a young ambitious boxer. The sense of enjoying "things remaining beyond (our) grasp" could be a leitmotiv for many of the stories in the "GRANTA Book of the African Short
I love the book! I love it so much I want everybody to read it. I love how the book somehow resembles a time capsule. We could see how the themes evolves as time changes. Since the stories are arranged from present to the past, we could see how some values change with time and some aren't. The themes in some of the stories are heavy with patrioticism and nationalism especially those during the revolutions era while the newer stories mostly revolve about family and moral values.This book has made...
I'm really hesitant on whether to give this anthology 3 or 4 stars. It's always hard when there are so many authors in one book - I like some of them more than others, and I can't figure out a fair average.The book introduces over 20 modern African writers. The editor calls them the 'post-nationalist' generation, with respect and warmth. The introduction is a good place to start this book, it gives you a lot of good background information on how and why the writers and stories were selected and
The stories I read were good. I love short stories it just transports you shortly into someone's life. It's life observing people from a bench. You only get a slice of their lives and your imagination can draw images of what could have happened before or what will be next. I find it also really good to break my biases. Because my brain automatically makes associations and then as I get to know the characters, the shortcuts gets shredded one by one. Quiet fascinating to witness this happening in
With 29 stories from all over Africa, written in what editor Habila calls the continent's "post-nationalist" period, a collection this big, and this diverse is bound to vary greatly in quality. Some of them are excellent. For me, the three standouts were 'the Arrangers of Marriage', 'Promenade' and 'the Last Bordello'. There's a lot of other strong stories in here too ('Stickfighting Days' and 'Propaganda By Monuments' were memorable, too) but a lot of others I'd forgotten almost as soon as I'd
