Module 7 THE OTHER AFRICAN

LITERATURE

Objectives:
At the end of the lesson, the students should be able to:
1. Discuss the literature in Senegal, Egypt, Benin, Nigeria, Kenya and
Madagascar.
2. Differentiate literature in Senegal, Egypt, Benin, Nigeria, Kenya and
Madagascar.
3. Identify the writers in Senegal, Egypt, Benin, Nigeria, Kenya and
Madagascar.

Literature of Senegal
The introduction of French into Senegal goes back to the 1800s and the few
books written in French by Senegalese authors in the 19th century signal the modest
beginnings of a written tradition that complemented a flourishing oral tradition. In fact,
Senegalese writing goes back to the 18th century and Phillis Wheatley's poetry
(175384). This young Senegalese woman, snatched from her native land and sold as a
slave in America, is considered to be the first black woman to have published a literary
work (in English).
In 1850 Lépold Panet, from Gorée published his Relation de voyage de
SaintLouis à Souiera [The Chronicle of Saint-Louis' Voyage to Souiera] in the Revue
Coloniale [The Colonial Review]. A few years later, the Abbé Bouillat provided a wealth
of information about his era in Esquisses Sénégalaises [Senegalese Sketches]. In
1920, the school teacher Amadou Mapaté published Les Trois volontés de Malic
[Malic's Three Wishes] for his pupils. In 1925, Bakari Diallo told of his experiences as a
"tirailleur-sénégalais" [Senegalese Infantryman] in Force-Bonté. In the 1930s, both
Senghor's poetry and the Negritude Movement gave Senegalese literature an
international reputation. After the Second World War, novelists such as Ousmane
Soce, Sembene Ousmane (who later also made films), Cheikh Hamidou Kane,
Abdoulay Sadji and others developed further a lively literary tradition and popularised
Senegalese literature, both within and beyond their own country. Other writers include:
Lamine Diakhate, Birago Diop, Cheik Aliou Ndao , Abdoulaye Sadji, Ibrahima Sall and
Boubacar Boris Diop who is possibly the best known Senegalese writer of today.
It was only after Independence that women began to publish literary material. At
first it was only modest booklets such as Annette Mbaye d'Erneville's poetry. But in the
mid 1970s, the autobiography of Nafissatou Diallo, poetry by Kiné Kirama Fall and
novels by Aminata Sow Fall and Mariama Bâ followed. Also worth mentioning, is a
manuscript by Mame Younousse Dieng that was shelved for 20 years by the publisher.
From the beginning of the 1980s, a large number of women have contributed to a
significant expansion of Senegalese literature : Myriam Warner Vieyra, Aminata Maïga
Ka, Tita Mandeleau (who lived for many years in New York), Amina Sow Mbaye, Ken
Bugul (who currently lives in Benin), Ndèye Boury Ndiaye,
Mariama Ndoye (who currently lives in Tunisia), Khadi Fall, Khady Sylla etc..
At the beginning of the new millenium, women authors continue to published strongly
as illustrated by the recent novels of Sokhna Benga, Aïssatou Cissé, Jacqueline
Fatima Bocoum, Nafissatou Dia Diouf, Khady Hane, Fama Diagne Sène, Madjiguène
Niang, Fatou Diome, Aminata Zaaria, Sanou Lô, ... and also Marie NDiaye
(notwithstanding the fact that she was born in France and only retains loose links with
her father's country of origin.)

Senegalese Writers
1. Mariama Ba. One of the pioneers of Senegalese literature. Born in Dakar
in 1929, she lost her mother soon after, and was raised by her maternal
grandmother, who was of Muslim confession and strongly attached to traditional
culture. Through the insistence of her father, an open-minded politician, the
young Mariama attended French school, obtained her school-leaving certificate,
and won admission to the École Normale for girls in Rufisque, from where she
graduated as a schoolteacher in 1947.

2. Ousmane Sembene. The Senegalese writer and filmmaker Ousmane

Sembène (born 1923) is one of Africa's great contemporary novelists and the
father of African cinema. His work is characterized by a concern with ordinary
decent people who are victimized by repressive governments and
bureaucracies. Several of his films have been censored in Senegal because of
their political criticism.
Ousmane Sembène was born on Jan. 8, 1923, at Ziguinchor in the southern
region of Casamance in colonial French West Africa, now Senegal. Among
Francophone African writers, he was unique because of his working-class
background and limited primary school education. Originally a fisherman in
Casamance, he worked in Dakar as a plumber, bricklayer, and mechanic. In
1939 he was drafted into the colonial army and fought with the French in Italy
and Germany and then participated in the liberation of France. He settled in
Marseilles, where he worked on the piers and became the leader of the
longshoremen's union. His first novel, Le Docker noir (1956; translated into
English in 1981 as The Black Docker), is about his experiences during this
period.
Sembène soon turned to writing full-time. He returned to Senegal a few years
before it gained independence in 1960. He became an astute observer of the
political scene and wrote a number of volumes on the developing national
consciousness. In Oh pays, mon beau peuple!, he depicts the plight of a
developing country under colonialism. God's Bits of Wood (1960) recounts the
developing sense of self and group consciousness among railway workers in
French West Africa during a strike. L'Harmattan (1964) focuses upon the
difficulty of creating a popular government and the corruption of unresponsive
politicians who postpone the arrival of independence.

3. Leopold Senghor. Senegalese poet, writer, and statesman Léopold

Sédar Senghor was born near Dakar in the town of Joal to a Fulbe mother and a
Serer trader father. He was educated at the École Nationale de la France
d’Outre-Mer in Paris, where he became friends with Aimé Césaire and future
French president George Pompidou. After earning his French citizenship,
Senghor taught in Tours and Paris. He joined the French army during World War
II and spent 18 months in a German prison camp. After serving successive
terms representing Senegal in the French National Assembly, Senghor returned
to his native land, where he led his nation’s independence movement in 1960.
He eventually became Senegal’s first democratically elected president, a post
which he held for the next 20 years.

Senghor’s political and literary careers were inextricably linked. Residing

parttime in France, he wrote poems of resistance in French which engaged his
Catholic spirituality even as they celebrated his Senegalese heritage. Senghor is
the author of several collections of poetry, including Chants d’ombre (1945),
Nocturnes (1961), and The Collected Poetry (1991, translated by Melvin Dixon).
He also edited an anthology of work by African poets in French colonies,
Anthologie de la Nouvelle Poésie Négre et Malagache (1945, with an
introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre). His nonfiction work includes numerous
volumes on politics, philosophy, sociology, and linguistics.

4. Birago Diop. African Francophone poet and storyteller Birago Diop was
born outside Dakar, Senegal, in 1906. Encouraged by his family from a young
age to pursue his literary and scholarly aspirations, he earned a BA from Lycée
Faidherbe in Saint-Louis, Senegal, before eventually moving to France to pursue
veterinary medicine at the University of Toulouse. In Paris, Diop encountered
many other African, black American, and Caribbean expatriates and fell into the
emerging negritude literary and artistic movement.

In 1933, Diop returned to Senegal, where his career as a veterinarian led him
throughout rural West Africa. On these excursions, he encountered indigenous
Wolof traditions and oral literature, which greatly informed his later work. African
subject matter treated in classically French forms characterizes his unique style.
 A recipient of the Grand Prix Littéraire de l’Afrique-Occidentale Francaise and an
Officier de la Légion d’Honneur, Diop died in Dakar in 1989.

5. Fatuo Diome. She was born on Niodior, an island off the coast of
Senegal in 1968. She grew up with her grandmother and, despite difficult
circumstances, managed to attend school, learning French – the language of her
later works. She left her village at the age of thirteen in order to go to secondary
school in the nearest city. Up until the start of her degree course in Dakar she
lived with three foster families in different cities. In 1990 she met a Frenchman
working in Senegal and married him four years later, going back to France with
him that same year, where she experienced racism even from her own parents
in law. Following her divorce she embarked on a literature degree in Strasbourg,
financed by cleaning jobs.
Self-determination, exile and ostracism are the main themes in Diome’s work.
Following a collection of short stories and a novella, she published her first
novel, »Le Ventre de l’Atlantique« (Eng. »The Belly of the Atlantic«, 2006), in
2003. She achieved international recognition for the work, winning the Prix des
Hémisphères Chantal Lapicque, the LiBeraturpreis and the young readers’ book
prize of the »Jury der jungen Leser«. The largely autobiographical story-line tells
of a young African immigrant in France who bonds with her younger brother, the
latter having remained in Senegal, as they simultaneously watch football on
television. She tries to talk him out of his unrealistic dreams of a career as a
footballer in France. Through vivid language full of humour, irony and filmic
immediacy, her thorough and sophisticated critique makes apparent the causes
and conditions of suppression. »I had had enough of the clichés: immigration is
not only about the exploitation of poor people. It’s also about people who leave
in order to emancipate themselves, who leave in the name of freedom and who
leave for an abundance of other reasons.« In this respect, the critique not only
focuses on Europe, but also on Africa, where the protagonist experiences the
disapproval of the village community because of being illegitimate, as well as the
restrictions of a solidified tradition, as people mistrust their own strength.

Literature of Egypt
Ancient Egyptian literature comprises a wide array of narrative and poetic forms
including inscriptions on tombs, stele, obelisks, and temples; myths, stories, and
legends; religious writings; philosophical works; autobiographies; biographies; histories;
poetry; hymns; personal essays; letters and court records. Although many of these
forms are not usually defined as "literature" they are given that designation in Egyptian
studies because so many of them, especially from the Middle Kingdom (2040-1782
BCE), are of such high literary merit.
The first examples of Egyptian writing come from the Early Dynastic Period (c.
6000- c. 3150 BCE) in the form of Offering Lists and autobiographies; the
autobiography was carved on one's tomb along with the Offering List to let the living
know what gifts, and in what quantity, the deceased was due regularly in visiting the
grave. Since the dead were thought to live on after their bodies had failed, regular
offerings at graves were an important consideration; the dead still had to eat and drink
even if they no longer held a physical form. From the Offering List came the Prayer for
Offerings, a standard literary work which would replace the Offering List, and from the
autobiographies grew the Pyramid Texts which were accounts of a king's reign and his
successful journey to the afterlife; both these developments took place during the
period of the Old Kingdom (c. 2613-c.2181 BCE).
These texts were written in hieroglyphics ("sacred carvings") a writing system
combining phonograms (symbols which represent sound), logograms (symbols
representing words), and ideograms (symbols which represent meaning or sense).
Hieroglyphic writing was extremely labor intensive and so another script grew up
beside it known as hieratic ("sacred writings") which was faster to work with and easier
to use. Hieratic was based on hieroglyphic script and relied on the same principles but
was less formal and precise. Hieroglyphic script was written with particular care for the
aesthetic beauty of the arrangement of the symbols; hieratic script was used to relay
information quickly and easily. In c. 700 BCE hieratic was replaced by demotic script
("popular writing") which continued in use until the rise of Christianity in Egypt and the
adoption of Coptic script c. 4th century CE.
Most of Egyptian literature was written in hieroglyphics or hieratic script;
hieroglyphics were used on monuments such as tombs, obelisks, stele, and temples
while hieratic script was used in writing on papyrus scrolls and ceramic pots. Although
hieratic, and later demotic and Coptic, scripts became the common writing system of
the educated and literate, hieroglyphics remained in use throughout Egypt's history for
monumental structures until it was forgotten during the early Christian period.
Although the definition of "Egyptian Literature" includes many different types of
writing, for the present purposes attention will mostly be paid to standard literary works
such as stories, legends, myths, and personal essays; other kinds or work will be
mentioned when they are particularly significant. Egyptian history, and so literature,
spans centuries and fills volumes of books; a single article cannot hope to treat of the
subject fairly in attempting to cover the wide range of written works of the culture.
Egyptian Writers
1. Naguib Mahfauz. Born in Cairo in 1911, Naguib Mahfouz began writing
when he was seventeen. His first novel was published in 1939 and ten more
were written before the Egyptian Revolution of July 1952, when he stopped
writing for several years. One novel was republished in 1953, however, and the
appearance of the Cairo Triology, Bayn al Qasrayn, Qasr al Shawq, Sukkariya
(Between-thePalaces, Palace of Longing, Sugarhouse) in 1957 made him
famous throughout the Arab world as a depictor of traditional urban life. With
The Children of Gebelawi (1959), he began writing again, in a new vein that
frequently concealed political judgements under allegory and symbolism. Works
of this second period include the novels, The Thief and the Dogs (1961),
Autumn Quail (1962), Small Talk on the Nile (1966), and Miramar (1967), as well
as several collections of short stories.
2. Yusuf Idris. Egyptian playwright and novelist who broke with traditional
Arabic literature by mixing colloquial dialect with conventional classical Arabic
narration in the writing of realistic stories about ordinary villagers.

Idrīs’ first anthology of stories, Arkhas layali (The Cheapest Nights), appeared in
1954 and was quickly followed by several more volumes, including A-laysa
kadhalik (1957; Isn’t That So?). In the 1960s he sought to create a uniquely
Egyptian dramatic form using colloquial language and elements of traditional folk
drama and shadow theatre. He presented this plan in a series of three essays
entitled “Towards a New Arabic Theatre,” and he tried to put it into practice in his
own plays, notably Al-Lahzat al-harija (1958; The Critical Moment), Al-Farafir
(1964; The Farfoors, or The Flipflap), and AlMukhatatin (1969; The Striped
Ones). Idrīs’ other major works included the novels Al-Haram (1959; The
Forbidden) and Al-ʿAyb (1962; The Sin). In the Eye of the Beholder: Tales of
Egyptian Life from the Writings of Yusuf Idris (1978) and Rings of Burnished
Brass (1984) are two collections of his works published in translation.

3. Taha Hussein. One of the most influential 20th century Egyptian writers
and intellectuals, and a figurehead for the Arab Renaissance and the modernist
movement in the Arab World. His sobriquet was "The Dean of Arabic Literature".

4. Tawfiq al-Hakim. A well-known Egyptian writer, Tawfiq al-Hakim is

renowned as the father of modern Arab drama. He began writing under a
pseudonym Husayn Tawfiq, to avoid the wrath of his family who, similar to many
others at the time, did not think much of writers, considering it a frivolous
endeavor unworthy of middle-class society. Most of the plays were written for
the popular theater of the Ukasha brothers (Zaki, Abd al-Hamid, and Abdullah).
 These early plays touched on political and social themes couched in melodrama
and comedy, favorite forms with enthusiastic audiences of the early twentieth
century. 'Al-Dayf al-Thaqil (The Unwelcome Visitor) touched on the rising
nationalist themes prevalent around the 1919 revolution that took Egypt by
storm.

5. Gamal al-Ghitani. Egyptian novelist and editor was a major figure in the
avantgarde Egyptian literary movement called Gallery 68. Ghitani was best
known for his debut novel, Al-Zaynī Barakāt, a historical parable set in early
16thcentury Mamluk Cairo, in which the central character, Zayni Barakat, is a
respected government official who eventually joins forces with the head of the
secret police to stay in power. The novel was perceived as a thinly disguised
critique of Nasser, whose administration had arrested Ghitani, a fierce defender
of freedom of speech, for public dissent and had jailed him in 1966–67 for six
months. Ghitani graduated (1962) in Oriental carpet design from the College of
Arts and Crafts, Cairo, and apprenticed as a carpet maker (1962–66) before
turning to a career in journalism, including a stint as a newspaper correspondent
covering the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

Literature of Benin
Benin, like much of Africa, has a long history of storytelling. And like much of
Africa, this was an oral tradition, that is, passing the stories verbally from one
generation to another.
The arrival of the French changed things drastically. First of all, there was the
obvious influence from the addition of the French language. The first novel written from
a Beninese author, called L'Esclave, was written in 1929 by Felix Couchoro. Since then
many authors have carved their niche in Beninese literature.
Most writers are employed in either the education field, in some aspect of
government, or in journalism. One name that came up is feminist poet Colette Sénami
Agossou Houeto. Not only has she been an educator, but she has written scores of
poems. Another female writer is Adelaide Fassinou. She is Benin's Secretary General
for UNESCO, yet has still managed to churn out four French-language novels. Paulin
Joachim is a journalist and editor who have also published two sets of poetry. He was
also the recipient of the W.E.B. Du Bois medal in 2006.
Beninese Writers
1. Richard Dogbeh born Gbèmagon Richard Dogbeh in what is now Benin,
was a novelist and educator. He served as Benin's Directeur de Cabinet of the
National Ministry of Education from 1963 to 1966. He was also active in the
Comité Consultatif International de Documentation des Bibliothèques et des
Archives and then from 1968 to 1979 served as a UNESCO expert on
educational systems for much of West Africa. After that he spent his life in
Benin. As an author Dogbeh started early and at 16 won the nation's "Institut
Français d'Afrique Noire" prize for a novel. He also published essays, poems,
and stories. He died in Cotonou.
2. Paul Hazoume. Although a staunch supporter of French colonialism,
Paul Hazoume's narrative captures the customs and traditions of Dahomey. This
novel, set in the first half of the 19th century, depicts a pattern of war, slave
trade and human sacrifice - practices that earned Dahomey a reputation for
brutality.

3. Jean Pliya. Playwright from Dahomey (Benin). The first agrégé in

geography of the present Benin Republic, Pliya has held a number of important
government offices including that of vice‐chancellor of the Université du Bénin.
4. Olympe Bhêly-Quénum. His major works included the novels Un Piège
sans fin (1960; Snares Without End), in which a man’s life is ruined when he is
unjustly accused of adultery; Le Chant du lac (1965; “The Song of the Lake”),
which illustrated the modern conflict between educated Africans and their
superstitious countrymen; and L’Initié (1979; “The Initiate”), the protagonist of
which is a French-trained doctor who is also an initiate of a faith-healing cult. A
collection of short stories (Liaison d’une été [1968; “Summer Affair”]), many of
which were written before the novels, introduced his major theme of the
supernatural. BhêlyQuénum was praised in France for his elegant, poetic use of
the French language. His novels and stories are for the most part violent
episodes tied together by powerful narrative flow.

5. Adelaide Fassinou was born on the 15th of September 1955 in Porto-

Novo, Benin. In 1986 she graduated in contemporary literature and became a
French teacher. In subsequent years, she taught in various secondary schools
and colleges. After further studies and research at the National University of
Benin, Adelaide was granted a DEA in Stylistics. In 1999, she became the officer
in charge of evaluations at the National Institute for Training and Research in
Education and in 2005, was working as Benin General Secretary for UNESCO.
Literature of Nigeria
In the beginning was oral literature, the root of African literature. Nigerian
literature, in particular, began with the oral tradition, pioneered by the unsung heroes of
her literary past, like royal bards, warriors, story tellers, priests and many others.
Literary elements like folklore and proverbs were originated by these unknown literary
soldiers.
According to Bade Ajuwon in his article, ‘Oral and Written Literature in Nigeria’,
in Nigerian History and Culture, pre-literate Nigeria once enjoyed a verbal art
civilization which, at its high point, was warmly patronised by traditional rulers and the
general public. “At a period when writing was unknown, the oral medium served the
people as a bank for the preservation of their ancient experiences and beliefs. Much of
the evidence that related to the past of Nigeria, therefore, could be found in oral
traditions.”
He cited the instance of Yoruba community where “as a means of relaxation,
farmers gather their children and sit under the moon for tale-telling... that instruct the
young and teach them to respect the dictates of their custom”. This was the practice
across the cultural groupings that form Nigeria today. A literary work must, therefore,
derive from these basic traditional elements to be adjudged as African literature.
Nigeria, therefore, owes her present giant strides in the international literary scene to
her rich oral tradition.
The written tradition was introduced to Northern Nigeria in the 15th century by
Arab scholars and traders. The intellectual and religious interaction between them and
the indigenous community led to the adaptation of Hausa into Arabic script; a genre
known as Ajami. The subsequent arrival of missionaries in the 1930s with the Roman
script further enhanced the written tradition and gave rise to the emergence of many
indigenous poets and prose writers. The novels in particular were based on folktales
featuring fantastic characters of humans, animals and fairies. According to available
records, the earliest literature in Hausa written in Arabic and Ajami, were by Islamic
scholars such as Abdullahi Suka who wrote Riwayar Annabi Musa in Ajami, and Wali
Danmasani Abdulajalil who wrote the Hausa poem Wakir Yakin Badar also in Ajami.
The works of these pioneers marked a literary landmark, which came to its height in the
nineteenth century when the Islamic Jihadist, Shehu Usman Dan Fodio, wrote
hundreds of poems in Arabic, Fulfulde and Hausa.
The Hausa novel genres in Roman script were published from the winning
entries of a writing competition in the 1930s. The works, which have become classics,
include Shehu Umar by Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Ruwan Bagaja by Abubakar Imam,
Gandoki by Bello Kagara, Idon Matambayi by Mohammadu Gwarzo and Jiki Magayi by
M. Tafida and Dr. East. In terms of plays, the Six Hausa Plays edited by Dr. R. M. East
and published in 1930 were the first plays in Hausa. It consists of three plays; Kidan
Ruwa, Yawon Magi and Kalankuwa.
Southern Nigeria owes its literary legacy to missionary activities in the area
around 1840s which went hand in hand with inculcation of literacy. The need to
translate the bible for the new converts necessitated a number of publications by the
missionaries. Prominent among such publications were, A Grammar of the Ibo
Language (1840) by the pioneer missionary, Rev. J.F. Schon and A Vocabulary of the
Yoruba Language (1843) by Samuel Ajayi Crowther, an ex-slave and the first African
Bishop of the Niger Diocese of the Church Missionary Society. Such publications
eventually served not only the primary religious purpose but also as a sound
foundation for the written indigenous literature, in which folklores and other genres of
oral tradition were recorded and woven into poetry, short stories and novels, especially
in the Igbo and Yoruba languages.

Nigerian Writers
1. Wole Soyinka is best known as a playwright. Alongside his literary
career, he has also worked as an actor and in theaters in Nigeria and Great
Britain. His works also include poetry, novels, and essays. Wole Soyinka writes
in English, but his works are rooted in his native Nigeria and the Yoruba culture,
with its legends, tales, and traditions. His writing also includes influences from
Western traditions - from classical tragedies to modernist drama.

2. Femi Osofisan is an internationally lauded playwright, scholar, poet,

novelist, actor, director, songwriter, and activist. Based in Ibadan, Nigeria, he
has enjoyed a long career of writing, directing, and teaching in his home country
and abroad, including the Guthrie Theatre (1997). His work has been described
as “cries for personal freedom and political action.” A member of the Advisory
Board of the International Research Centre at Freire Universitat in Berlin,
Osofisan was awarded the prestigious Thalia Prize in 2016, the first African to
be so honored by the International Association of Theatre Critics. Under his
given name and his pseudonym, Okinba Launko, he has published five novellas,
six volumes of poetry, and more than 50 plays, including Once Upon Four
Robbers and A Nightingale for Dr. Dubois. Professor Emeritus of Theatre Arts at
the University of Ibadan, Osofisan spent his time at Camargo working on The
Africa-Diaspora Triad: Three Plays on African Americans and the Beginnings of
African Independence (2): Maya Angelou.

3. Ben Okri. Nigerian novelist, short-story writer, and poet who used magic
realism to convey the social and political chaos in the country of his birth. His
 first novels, Flowers and Shadows (1980) and The Landscapes Within (1981),
employ surrealistic images to depict the corruption and lunacy of a politically
scarred country. Two volumes of short stories, Incidents at the Shrine (1986)
and Stars of the New Curfew (1988), portray the essential link in
Nigerian culture between the physical world and the world of the spirits.

4. Buchi Emecheta. Much of her fiction has focused on sexual politics and
racial prejudice, and is based on her own experiences as both a single parent
and a black woman living in Britain. Her first novel, the semi-autobiographical In
the Ditch, was published in 1972. It first appeared in a series of articles
published in the New Statesman magazine, and, together with its sequel,
Second Class Citizen (1974), provides a fictionalised portrait of a poor young
Nigerian woman struggling to bring up her children in London. She began to
write about the role of women in Nigerian society in The Bride Price (1976); The
Slave Girl (1977), winner of the New Statesman Jock Campbell Award; and The
Joys of Motherhood (1979), an account of women's experiences bringing up
children in the face of changing values in traditional Ibo society.

5. Sefi Atta. A former chartered accountant and CPA, she is a graduate of

the creative writing program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. Her short stories
have appeared in journals like Los Angeles Review and Mississipi Review and
have won prizes from Zoetrope and Red Hen Press. Her radio plays have been
broadcast by the BBC. She is the winner of PEN International's 2004/2005 David
TK Wong Prize and in 2006, her debut novel Everything Good Will Come was
awarded the inaugural Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. Her short
story collection, Lawless, received the 2009 Noma Award For Publishing in
Africa. Lawless is published in the US and UK as News From Home.

Literature of Kenya
Kenya has a strong tradition of oral literature, which continues today in several
languages. As a result of Kenya's position as a former colony of England, the national
literature concurrently belongs to several bodies of writing, including that of the
Commonwealth of Nations and of Africa as a whole. Most written literature is in
English; some scholars consider Swahili to be marginalized as a language, despite
Kenya's independence from Britain.
Kenyan literature includes a large body of oral and written folklore, much of the
latter collected by British anthropologists. During the colonial era, writers of European
origin residing in Kenya, such as Elspeth Huxley (The Flame Trees of Thika, 1959) and
Isak Dinesen (Out of Africa, 1937), introduced indigenous themes and settings to broad
audiences. The Swahili literary tradition (see also Swahili literature), both oral and
written, dates to the 18th century and is represented by authors such as Muyaka bin
Haji al-Ghassaniy and Kupona Mwana. Contemporary novelists, including Ngugi wa
Thiong’o, Grace Ogot, Meja Mwangi, Hilary Ngweno, Margaret Ogola, and R. Mugo
Gatheru, address problems in colonial and postcolonial society. Many of these writers
publish in English, although Thiong’o has insisted on publishing first in his native
Kikuyu, saying:
Only by a return to the roots of our being in the languages and cultures and
heroic histories of the Kenyan people can we rise up to the challenge of helping in the
creation of a Kenyan patriotic national literature and culture that will be the envy of
many foreigners and the pride of Kenyans.

Kenyan Writers
1. Grace Ogot. A Kenyan author of widely anthologized short stories and
novels who also held a ministerial position in Kenya’s government. One of the
few wellknown woman writers in Kenya, Ogot was the first woman to have fiction
published by the East African Publishing House. Her stories—which appeared in
European and African journals such as Black Orpheus and Transition and in
collections such as Land Without Thunder (1968), The Other Woman (1976),
and The Island of Tears (1980)—give an inside view of traditional Luo life and
society and the conflict of traditional with colonial and modern cultures. Her
novel The Promised Land (1966) tells of Luo pioneers in Tanzania and western
Kenya.

2. Francis D. Imbuga. A Kenyan playwright and literature scholar whose

works, including Aminata and Betrayal in the City, have become staples in the
study of literature schools in Kenya. His works have consistently dealt with
issues such as the clashes of modernity and tradition in the social organisation
of African communities. His play Betrayal in the City was Kenya's entry to
FESTAC.

3. Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye was an English/Kenyan novelist, essayist and

poet. Born Marjorie King in 1928 in Southampton, England, and died on 1st
December 2015 in Kenya. Marjorie travelled to Kenya to work as a missionary in
1954. She worked at the S.J. Moore Bookshop on Government Road, now Moi
Avenue in Nairobi, for some years. There she organised readings which were
attended by, among others, Okot P'Bitek, the author of Song of Lawino, and
Jonathan Kariara, a Kenyan poet. She met Macgoye, a medical doctor, and the
two were married in 1960. In 1971, an anthology entitled Poems from East
 Africa included the acclaimed poem "A Freedom Song". Her 1986 novel Coming
to Birth won the Sinclair Prize and has been used as a set book in Kenyan high
schools. She has been called the "mother of Kenyan literature". Marjorie Oludhe
Macgoye died on December 1, 2015, at her home in Nairobi.

4. Margaret Atieno Ogola was not a full-time writer, but a pediatrician, the
medical doctor of Cottolengo Hospice for HIV/AIDS orphans. But she became a
household name for The River and the Source, KCSE set book for many years
and which has been translated into Italian, Lithuanian and Spanish.

5. Elspeth Huxley, who died in 1997, is chiefly remembered for her lyrical
and evocative memoir The Flame Trees of Thika (1959). Yet this was only one
of the thirty books she wrote, and it took just a few months of her remarkably
active life to compose.

Literature of Madagascar
One of the island's foremost artistic traditions is its oratory, as expressed in the
forms of hainteny (poetry), kabary (public discourse) and ohabolana (proverbs). An
epic poem exemplifying these traditions, the Ibonia, has been handed down over the
centuries in several different forms across the island, and offers insight into the diverse
mythologies and beliefs of traditional Malagasy communities. In addition to these
artistic traditions, oral histories were passed down across generations. Many stories,
poems and histories were retold in musical form; the concept of poetry in traditional
Malagasy oral literary traditions is inseparable from song, as demonstrated by the
Malagasy words for "poem" - tononkira and tononkalo - which are formed by combining
tonony (words) with hira/kalo (song).
Arcane knowledge of various kinds, relating to religious rites, herbal medicine
and other privileged knowledge, were traditionally recorded by ombiasy (wise men)
using the sorabe, an Arabic script adapted to transcribe the Malagasy language, it was
introduced by Arab sailors between the 7th and 10th centuries. These earliest written
works were only made to be seen by the ombiasy and were not disseminated.
Malagasy sovereigns customarily kept ombiasy advisers and were occasionally
instructed to read and write in the sorabe script, and may have used it for a wider range
of purposes, although few sorabe documents survive to the present.
Elements of oral history and traditional oratory were documented by British and
French visitors to the island; the first Malagasy historian was Raombana (1809–1855),
one of the first pupils of the London Missionary Society school at the Rova of
Antananarivo,who documented early 19th century history in English and Malagasy. The
Tantara ny Andriana eto Madagasikara, a compilation of the oral history of the Merina
sovereigns, forms another major source of knowledge about traditional highland society
and was collected and published in the late 19th century by a Catholic priest residing in
the highlands.

Malagasy Writers
1. Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo. A Malagasy writer, one of the most important
of African poets writing in French, considered to be the father of modern
literature in his native land. Rabéarivelo, a largely self-educated man who
earned his living as a proofreader for the Imerina Printing Press, wrote seven
volumes of poetry before his tragic death. Presque-Songes (1934; “Nearly
Dreams”) and Traduit de la nuit (1935; “Translation of the Night”) are considered
to be the most important. His early work is closely imitative of late 19th-century
French poetry, especially that of Charles Baudelaire and of a literary group
known as the Fantaisites, who wrote melancholy verse expressing a sense of
futility. His later work is more remote and impersonal, retaining a Baudelairean
sense of form but exhibiting a more mature, individual style. A final collection of
poems, Vieilles Chansons du pays Imérina (“Old Songs of the Imerina Country”),
published two years after his death, is based on poetic love dialogues (hain-
teny) adapted from Malagasy vernacular tradition.
2. Esther Nirina. She was born in 1932 on the central highlands of
Madagascar. She worked as a librarian at Orleans from 1953 to 1983. She
returned to Madagascar in 1990 and became an important figure in the
Malagasy literary scene. A member of the Malagasy Academy, she served as a
president of the Society of Writers of the Indian Ocean (SEROI). Her books
include Silencieuse respiration (1975), Simple voyelle (1980), Lente spirale
(1990), Multiple solitude (1997), Rien que tune: ceuvres poetiques (1998) and
Mivolana an-tsoratra. She died in 2004.

3. David Jaomanoro (1953–2014) was a master poet, playwright, and fiction writer.
Following studies in France, he taught literature at the University of Antsiranana
before moving to Mayotte, where he held many artistic positions, including
president of a dance theater company and director of the national youth literature
center. His work has been widely published in France and awarded several
prizes, including the Grand Prize of the RFI-ACCT in 1993. Two of his short
stories and several of his poems were translated into English for the
anthology Voices from Madagascar.

4. Jacques Rabemananjara, a Malagasy politician, playwright, and poet.

Rabemananjara began writing in the early 1940s and published his first volume
of verse, Sur les marches du soir (“On the Edges of Evening”), in 1942. A death
sentence imposed on him for his alleged participation in the 1947 revolt in
Madagascar embittered him, despite a later reprieve, and the poems of Antidote,
written while he was imprisoned in 1947–50 and published in 1961, reflect his
anger at the injustice imposed on him and his political hopes for the future.

5. Elie Rajaonarison founded “Sandratra,” an association of young

Malagasy poets, and joined with others to found the Malagasy National
Committee of ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites). In
addition to his work as a poet—Mr. Rajaonarison has authored many poetry
collections, including Voyage Sur Les Hautes Terres (Trip to the Highlands,
2002)—he makes translations, contributes to local newspapers, and often
appears on radio and television programs. He is participating courtesy of the
U.S. Department of State.