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A review by alicetragedy
Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara by Ellah Wakatama Allfrey
3.0
(Actual rating: 3.5 stars)
This collection of short stories and excerpts from novels (or works in progress) is puzzling. I quite enjoyed the first half of the collection, but I struggled through most of the second half. Some of the short stories were really, really great (notably Adichie's “The Shivering”, Edwige Renee Dro’s “The Professor”, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s “Echoes of Mirth”, as well as the excerpts of “Harlot”, “Why radio DJs are Superstars in Lagos”, “The tiger of the Mangroves”, “New mom”, “Our time of sorrow”, “Soham’s mulatto”), but some of the other stories were confusing or downright terrible (I even skipped a few!). I found it difficult to constantly need to adapt to a new pace or writing style, and some of the excerpts were hard to understand, having no additional context.
That's probably to be expected when putting together the works of 39 authors, with no real thread connecting their work other than a continent; with each new story and writer comes a context and style switch, so it's not surprising I didn't love this collection. In some cases, it was clear that some of the texts were complete works in progress, that probably needed polishing or altering and perhaps having them in a collection of short stories didn't do them justice.
I would, however, still recommend it to people who are interested in discovering new voices from different countries in Africa.
From this list, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was the only writer I knew, and I’ve definitely discovered some gems I'm looking forward to reading more of in the future.
This collection of short stories and excerpts from novels (or works in progress) is puzzling. I quite enjoyed the first half of the collection, but I struggled through most of the second half. Some of the short stories were really, really great (notably Adichie's “The Shivering”, Edwige Renee Dro’s “The Professor”, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s “Echoes of Mirth”, as well as the excerpts of “Harlot”, “Why radio DJs are Superstars in Lagos”, “The tiger of the Mangroves”, “New mom”, “Our time of sorrow”, “Soham’s mulatto”), but some of the other stories were confusing or downright terrible (I even skipped a few!). I found it difficult to constantly need to adapt to a new pace or writing style, and some of the excerpts were hard to understand, having no additional context.
That's probably to be expected when putting together the works of 39 authors, with no real thread connecting their work other than a continent; with each new story and writer comes a context and style switch, so it's not surprising I didn't love this collection. In some cases, it was clear that some of the texts were complete works in progress, that probably needed polishing or altering and perhaps having them in a collection of short stories didn't do them justice.
I would, however, still recommend it to people who are interested in discovering new voices from different countries in Africa.
From this list, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was the only writer I knew, and I’ve definitely discovered some gems I'm looking forward to reading more of in the future.