Posts from Olongo Africa

By now, you must have heard about the shortlist of the Ako Caine Prize stories for 2021. It includes stellar offerings from Doreen Baingana, Rémy Ngamije, Meron Hadero, Troy Onyango, and Iryn Tushabe. We at Olongo wish them hearty congratulations! Caine Prizewinners and shortlistees have always gone on to become proud names in African literature, from Binyavanga Wainaina to Chimamanda Adichie to Tọ́pẹ́ Fọlárìn, to name a few.

“Lucky,” by Doreen Baingana, is a historical-memoir short story that addresses the subject of war and its devastating effects on human society. The immediate allusion to “Gulu District, West Nile” paints in the reader’s mind the impression of the 1980 insurgency⎯which occurred after Idi Amin was toppled a year earlier⎯and places the story perfectly to the period during the Uganda Bush War, which lasted for nine years from 1980.

Adunni Oluwole’s prediction that the elite were going to replace the colonial system in Nigeria with a worse system was proven true by the events that succeeded independence. In spite of her support for the continuation of the colonial system, she was not a supporter of oppression.

Troy Onyango’s "This Little Light of Mine" is one of the shortlisted stories for the 2021 Caine Prize. It continues that tradition established in Onyango’s earlier works – writing explorations of contemporary rejection, isolation and conflict.

From changing her name, revitalizing the Igbo culture to making global impact, Chimamanda has always looked out to fix things, to reset the old and suboptimal, like a Grandma reaching out to adjust an ever wonky radio. If it could be better and if there is the possibility that it be adjusted, then why not?

Cheluchi Onyemelukwe’s debut novel, The Son of the House, won the award for Best Fiction Writer at the 2019 Sharjah International Book Fair.

How often we find rest in the place for longing, fame in the space of hiding, the truth in the face of the neonates.

sometimes I wish my uncle would've been the fourth Hebrew brother to come out of fire alive.

Used to be a time when there were worries that African films could hardly compete with their global counterparts. But as the Sundance entries prove, those days may be long gone. The critics have been near universal in their praise and so have the festival juries and industry awarding bodies.

yes to the light / turning, delicate summer— / language of wonder, / bone of miracle

Kolawole Samuel Adebayo is a Nigerian poet with works published in Button Poetry, Glass Poetry, and elsewhere.

The clocks in my house no longer tell the time of day, at least not as they should.

'Shooting is normal. Just tell the kids to duck for cover if you hear bombs.'