Introduction
Compiling the 2019 list and introduction amid a global pandemic has been disconcerting. As it has been repeatedly remarked across social media platforms, it is troubling to try to continue with non-essential work as usual, when all around us, people are sick and dying. But it is also the case that many people across the world turned to literature during this pandemic, for a grip on reality, for insights into how to affirm life in precarious times, for community through online literary festivals and book launches, and above all, for a little beauty. In East Africa, two writers – Kenyan James Murua and South African Zukiswa Wanner – curated an eight-day online literary festival, Afrofolit Sans Frontieres, in March 2020. The festival featured 16 writers from ten African countries, sharing their work in English, French, Lingala and Portuguese, with virtual audiences across the world. This is the spirit with which the current list and introduction were finalised: it is offered as yet another pocket of reassurance and beauty from the world of literature and the artistic imagination.
Historical fiction re-imagining of significant moments, figures and encounters in the region’s history remains a consistent thread in this year’s list. Among these is Melvin Page’s fictional autobiography of a Malawian King’s African Riffles soldier in Distinguished Conduct: An African Life in Colonial Malawi [see Fiction: Malawi]. Through the fictional figure of Juma Chimwere, Page’s novel revisits British military misadventures in central Africa, exploring the complexities of African involvement in these regiments and the tensions between imperial logic and indigenous perspectives. Similarly, Peter Hunt’s Sunset on the Pearl of Africa [see Fiction: Uganda] is inspired by a British civil servant’s experiences of Uganda under British administration. Elsewhere, David Hallock Sanders’ Busara Road: A Novel [see Fiction: Kenya] is set in the context of Quaker missionary history in Western Kenya at the height of British colonial rule while MGN Kahende’s David Livingstone: The Wayward Vagabond [see Kenya: Fiction] is a satirical fictionalised reconstruction of the historic David Livingstone’s adventures in the region. While decidedly fictional, these titles would be of interest to historians and literary scholars alike as a rich resource on the shifting memorialisation of these historical moments and the ways in which subsequent developments in world history may have tinted the forms of nostalgia for empire that found their way into historical fiction.
Still on historical questions, the Idi Amin regime as well as his expulsion of Asians continues to preoccupy novelists in Uganda, Kenya, Canada and Britain. Among these titles are James Anyuru and Rachel Willson-Broyles’ A Storm Blew in from Paradise, Ali Anar’s Night of Power and Reginald Hill’s Night of Darkness [see Fiction: Uganda]. A Storm Blew in from Paradise is a semi-biographical novel, by Ugandan-Swedish James Anyuru, based on his father’s life story. The 1971 Idi Amin coup finds Anyuru’s father in Greece training to be a pilot who soon finds his life derailed by the poisonous political atmosphere back in Uganda and the broader Cold War tensions sweeping across East and central Africa when he attempts to return home. After various sojourns in Zambia, Kenya and Tanzania as a refugee and exile, he meets and marries his Swedish partner in Kenya and eventually settles down with his family in Sweden. Grace Ogot’s posthumously published book A Call at Midnight [see Fiction: Kenya] is another historical novel that drills down to the everyday lives and families torn apart by the upheaval unleashed by the Idi Amin regime in Uganda. Here, Ogot examines the trajectories of Ugandan exiles in Kenya in the 1970s and what this period meant, at a personal level, for families exiled to neighbouring Kenya. For scholars of intra-African diasporic itineraries, Ogot and Anyuru’s novels are valuable additions to the library of literature on intra-African mobilities and diasporas, especially at a time when the emphasis tends to be on African diasporic movements to the global north. For its part, Reginald Hill’s Dream of Darkness is a spy thriller centred around a fictional former British security service agent’s memory of his time in the intelligence service and Britain’s secret connections to Idi Amin. As it is a fictional narrative speculating on the intricacies of the secret service landscape, readers who enjoyed John le Carre’s The Constant Gardener’s meditation on similar questions would find it an interesting fictional return to the terrain of strategic international interests and the British intelligence service in Eastern Africa.
One historical dimension of the region that has been receiving growing attention in recent years is the question of German-Jewish exiles in Kenya between the 1930s-1950s. For scholars of British imperial and Jewish histories alike, the biographical texts on these experiences offer a glimpse into an under-explored set of experiences with regard to British colonial immigration policies as well as the life stories of Jewish exiles in colonial Kenya at a particularly fraught moment in world history. On this year’s list, Natalie Eeppelsheimer’s Road Less Travelled: German-Jewish Exile Experiences in Kenya, 1933-1947 and Cilli Kasper-Holtkotte and Alexandra Berlina’s “They Called us Bloody Foreigners”: Jewish Refugees in Kenya, 1933 until the 1950s [see Auto/biography: Kenya] use the frame of life narratives to examine this historical moment.
Regarding life writing, one emerging trend that appears to resonate with contemporary emphases on self-help and wellness is the memoir that zooms in on forms of self-realization in sports and adventurous feats. Two titles this year relate the authors’ journeys of conquest and self-realisation achieved through scaling Mt Kilimanjaro. These include Monde A Mondi’s My Kilimanjaro, My Perseverance: Who Said Life Will Be Easy and Letshego Zulu’s I Choose to Live: The Gugu Zulu Story [see Auto/Biography: Tanzania]. The latter title comes on the back of the tragic death of South African racing champion, Gugu Zulu, while climbing Mt Kilimanjaro with his partner, Letshego Zulu, and a team of volunteers as part of a fundraising initiative in 2016. His partner returned to the mountain the following year and the book chronicles her story of her partner’s passing and her journey towards healing after the loss and grief. Rhoda Wanja Thairu’s The Snow Girls: Two Pioneering Young Women Who Climbed Mount Kenya in 1964 [see Auto/Biography: Kenya] similarly details two friends’ successful attempt to summit Mt Kenya, as part of a group of young people drawn from top high schools in Kenya – African Girls’ (now Alliance Girls’) Alliance, Jamuhuri and Thika High schools. The author and her schoolmate, Hannah Njoki Kahiga were the only girls to join the largely male group of climbers.
With regards to fiction, 2019 was a productive year, with highlights including new titles from some of the region’s best known names: Uganda’s Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, author of the award-winning historical novel, Kintu, brought out two short story collections: Let’s Tell This Story Properly and Manchester Happened [see Anthologies: Uganda]. Across in Kenya, Yvonne Owuor, widely celebrated for her historical novel, Dust, published her second novel, The Dragonfly Sea [see Fiction: Kenya] while compatriot Stanley Gazemba, author of The Stonehills of Maragoli published Dogmeat Samosa [see Fiction: Kenya]. Meantime, the prolific M.G. Vassanji added A Delhi Obsession to his oeuvre [see Fiction: Kenya] and Ken Walibora, widely recognised for his many Kiswahili language novels, brought out an English translation of his best known novel, Siku Njema as A Good Day [see Fiction: Kenya]. Tragically, Walibora passed on earlier this year (2020), just months after the publication of a special issue of the journal Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies which he guest-edited with journal editor Godwin Siundu. The special issue on trends in East African Swahili literatures is an exciting first in the region, as it was published in English and Kiswahili, formally recognizing the potential for generative scholarly engagements between scholarship on Anglophone and Afrophone literatures across linguistic borders.
Still on familiar names, film fans will recall Robert Katende’s name, following the Hollywood film Queen of Katwe, a biopic of the 13-year old girl mentored by Katende to Uganda’s national chess championship. This year’s list includes Katende’s memoir, A Knight without a Castle: A Story of Resilience and Hope [see Auto/Biography: Uganda]. Labors of Love: The Official Biography of Gideon B. Byamugisha [see Auto/Biography: Uganda] is another important Ugandan entry in this year’s life writing list. Reverend Gideon Byamugisha of the Anglican Church is the first African religious leader to publicly declare his HIV positive status in the 1990s. This biography examines the Reverend’s life and his tireless efforts to confront the HIV/AIDS crisis in Uganda, the cultures of stigma in the church and beyond and the interventions in care work for children orphaned by the pandemic. Elsewhere, scholars of Kenyan literature familiar with Rebekka Njau’s classic, The Sacred Seed, will welcome the publication of her memoir, Mirror of My Life: A Memoir [see Auto/Biography: Kenya].
Regarding scholarship, two titles on the list turn their attention to queer studies in East Africa, with keen focus on the work of Kenyan-Ugandan writer Binyavanga Wainaina in Adriaan van Klinken’s Kenyan, Christian, Queer: Religion, LGBT Activism and Arts of Resistance in Africa and Jomo Kenyatta’s writing in Keguro Macharia’s Frottage: Frictions of Intimacy across the Black Diaspora [see General Studies: Kenya]. In a field that has been largely overdetermined by a mix of scholarly perspectives distilled from Northern contexts and well-meaning, but often short-sighted rhetoric on homophobia in Africa, these two titles invite readers to linger on the specificities of African contexts, thoughts and everyday life when making sense of questions of queer desire, whether these insights are drawn from the life stories of writer-activists like Wainaina or ethnographic meditations on the interface between sexuality and ethnicity in Kenyatta’s thoughts on Gikuyu society. Elsewhere, Grace A. Musila and Tina Steiner edited a special issue of English in Africa, themed around cartographies of war and peace in East Africa [see Journals: Special Issues]. The theme of the special issue and a good number of the papers are drawn from the third edition of the biennial Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies conference held at the University of Dar es Salaam in 2017.
Overall, 2019 was a year of abundance both in literary and scholarly production on East and Central Africa.
