In her latest book, Manifesto: On Never Giving Up, Bernardine Evaristo reflects on her career. And what can I say? She knows her craft, and she knows how to present herself and her work in an extremely likeable way.
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Since Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021, the Zanzibar-born author who lives in the UK has suddenly become known to mainstream audiences. Gurnah’s 2001 novel By the sea is about a dispute between two families that takes place against a backdrop of political change.
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Fatma Aydemir’s second novel is a moving family story and an absolute page turner.
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Representations of dis/ability run through the literature of every era. It seems to be a particularly useful narrative device for writers who address colonial contexts and their consequences. At the same time, depicting dis/abled characters allows these authors to question the social and potentially colonial construction of dis/ability.
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Although “Welcome to Lagos” partly tells of tragic circumstances and corruption, the first adjective that comes to my mind to describe it is: funny.
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Are you by any chance planning a trip to Morocco? Then Mona Ameziane’s autobiographical travel book is certainly good preparation.
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Since poco.lit. is an English and German language platform, we rarely review books from other language zones. As such, it’s something of an exception that Peruvian winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa, should appear here. His latest novel Harsh Times sheds light on colonial power relations that are not based on the official colonial structures.
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May Ayim. Radical Poet, Gentle Rebel (not yet translated into English) was released on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of May Ayim’s death in August 2021. The book is edited by her three friends and companions Ika Hügel-Marshall, Nivedita Prasad and Dagmar Schultz.
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Regardless of whether you’ve ever been mushroom picking or not, if you read Long Litt Woon’s The way through the woods: Overcoming grief through nature, you are sure to develop a fascination for it.
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