Abstract
Introduction
Penguin’s new African Writers Series was launched in January 2010, with Chinua Achebe in an advisory role. Although generally welcomed, the series was criticised for not bringing forward new writers. The inaugural Penguin Prizes for African writing were awarded with the non-fiction prize going to Nigerian Pius Adesanmi. Achebe’s canonical standing remains unchallenged. The African Trilogy (Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease and Arrow of God) was published as a handsome, accessible volume with a new introduction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie by Alfred A. Knopf of New York.
With the notable exception of Langaa RPCIG, few West African publishers are marketing fiction and poetry but new voices are emerging in the diaspora. This year sees first novels by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, whose I Do Not Come to You by Chance explores the world of Nigerian ‘419’ scams, and by Chika Unigwe, whose On Black Sisters’ Street is set among trafficked African sex workers in Antwerp. Abuja-based Nwaubani was the Africa regional winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Best First Book Award.
Nigerian poet, Tanure Ojaide has published a new volume: The Beauty I Have Seen: A Trilogy. Ojaide has his own website, www.tanureojaide.com, which includes a blog. Increasingly, students of West African literature should find their way around the blogosphere. Another blog “celebrating the literature renaissance in Anglophone Cameroon” can be found at http://anglocamlit.blogspot.com/.
The Nigerian poet, dramatist and scholar Esiaba Irobi died in 2010, aged forty-nine. He was born in 1960, the year of Nigeria’s independence, and leaves a substantial legacy in the field of theatre and literary criticism.