7/3/2023 0 Comments How to write about africa![]() ![]() “In your alarmed house, you wake in the small hours to find the room unnaturally light. ![]() ![]() “Territory must be secured and defended or it will be lost. Ivan Vladislavic writes of his hometown, Johannesburg, “a frontier city, a place of contested boundaries”. Africa is big: 54 countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book.īinyavanga Wainaina instructs, in his essay for the current issue of Granta, ‘the View from Africa'. Don't get bogged down with precise descriptions. In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breast: use these. Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. Also useful are words such as “Guerillas”, “Timeless”, “Primordial” and “Tribal”. GRANTA SPRING ISSUE 93: The Magazine of New Writing, €15 in bookshopsĪlways use the word “Africa” or “Darkenss” or “Safari” in your title. ![]()
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