Just in case you've run out of ideas for books to read, here comes the mother of all prize lists, the 2007 Impac/Dublin Literary Award longlist (incidentally, also a tidy sum if won, at 100 000 euros). The Africans on it are:
Leila Aboulela MINARET (Sudan)
Andre Brink PRAYING MANTIS (South Africa)
J.M. Coetzee SLOW MAN (South Africa)
Diana Evans 26A (UK/Nigeria)
Nadine Gordimer GET A LIFE (South Africa)
Abdulrazak Gurnah DESERTION (Zanzibar)
Uzodinma Iweala BEASTS OF NO NATION (USA/Nigeria)
Dan Jacobson ALL FOR LOVE (South Africa)
Zakes Mda THE WHALECALLER (South Africa)
Jude Njoku THE QUICK SANDS (Nigeria)
Helen Oyeyemi THE ICARUS GIRL (UK/Nigeria)
Johan Steyn FATHER MICHAEL'S LOTTERY (South Africa)
Ndikaru wa Teresia CRY OF THE OPPRESSED (Kenya)
Rachel Zadok GEM SQUASH TOKOLOSHE (South Africa).

I am embarrassed to say that I have never heard of Njoku, Steyn or Wa Teresia so will have to track these down immediately - the three of them also happen to be writers not yet published in the west, so there's a definite correlation there. An additional complication is that Wa Teresia appears to be self-published in Kenya, so this one may be a challenge to track down! Interestingly, only 5 of the 14 currently live on the continent, and I suppose there's always the question of whether writers like Evans, Iweala and Oyeyemi would actually even call themselves African given that they have been raised outside the continent.

There is a review of the latest book, MY MOTHER'S LOVERS, by South African Christopher Hope, one of the Impac/Dublin judges in 1996.

Nadine Gordimer was recently robbed and threatened in her home in South Africa. Her response to the attack was very different to Andre Brink's charge in the press which I wrote about last month, but no less valid. Read further about what she had to say here.

Shawn Slovo (sister to the author Gillian Slovo) has written the screenplay to a movie causing stirs in the film industry, CATCH A FIRE, shown recently at the London Film Festival. This article gives some of the background to Patrick Chamusso on whom the movie is based, including some of the very interesting story of the Slovo family. If this movie is anything like Shawn Slovo's 1988 film A WORLD APART then we are in for a real treat. If you have not yet seen A WORLD APART, then I highly recommend it to you. It is a truly representative film about South African white activist experience (CRY FREEDOM is nowhere near as good - too much Hollywood treatment). Although their names are changed (to Roth) in the film, it is about the Slovo family, whose story is deeply entwined with the history of the country. A WORLD APART was banned in South Africa when it came out and we would meet hush-hush to watch copies which themselves had been copied so many times that the quality of the film was distorted with stripy lines and fuzzy snow, smuggled from house to house. I can't recommend it highly enough. An exceptional film and an outstanding cast which deservedly won just about every award thrown at it at the time. A fitting tribute to the extraordinary humanity of Joe Slovo and Ruth First.

Going back to the Impac/Dublin longlist - I think I will give the African titles a whirl from February once the From The Stacks reading challenge is over! It helps that I've already read some of these, but I certainly haven't posted on any (except - in passing - Oyeyemi). Perhaps some of you will join me in the new year with a little selection from the longlist to your own criteria (all138 titles might be pushing it a bit!) as the shortlist will be announced March/April 2007.

Sadly, Miriam Makeba has died. I will always remember her for her role in the fantastic musical KING KONG (very difficult to get hold of these days). Watch her perform the extraordinary When I've Passed On here and the more well-known Pata Pata here. What a voice!

An online reading and discussion of Doris Lessing's THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK starts next week. Nigerian British writer Helen Oyeyemi is one of the official readers (Thanks to Danielle and Kimbofo for drawing my attention to this).

The London African Film Festival starts in a couple of weeks; I am so jealous of those of you who live in the capital!

This year's longlist for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction has been announced. Unfortunately, their website hasn't been updated with this information yet, but the full list is available on The Book Depository website. It is wonderful to see a serious prize like this develop (this is only in its second year) precisely because it raises the profile of arabic writers in the English speaking world. Unfortunately, much of the work is not available in English yet, and I'm ashamed to say that the only writer's name I recognize is Ibrahim Al-Koni. The Libyan author has produced an astonishing number of titles, yet very few are available in translation, which seems unfortunate. The American University in Cairo Press translates quite a few Arabic language titles each year, if you are interested.

"...Congo's crisis is not unprecedented, nor is it unrivalled. To people who know the continent, there's something of an arbitrary quality as to how one crisis seizes the public imagination and others go ignored." The excellent journalist and writer Michela Wrong pens a short piece for The Guardian/Observer (thanks to The Scarlett Lion for the link). Personally, I would have preferred a much longer piece - Wrong is a thoughtful and thought provoking writer with great integrity. She has a new book out next year on Kenya, which I look forward to immensely. It is currently listed on Amazon as It's Our Turn to Eat: How One Man Broke Tribal Ranks to Fight Government Greed in Kenya although whether this will be the final title, who knows.

"Bile did not grow up dreaming of being a pirate. He comes from a family of fishermen whose livelihood was destroyed, he says, by the arrival of industrial trawlers from Europe." An alternative view of piracy in the Gulf of Aden by Daniel Howden in The Independent on Friday.

The announcement of the Costa (formerly Whitbread) Book Award winners today, reminds me of my previous musings over the International IMPAC/Dublin Literary Award finalists. The longlist is vast and wide ranging: something for everyone (almost too huge, in fact). My focus, naturally is to explore the titles by African writers:

Leila Aboulela MINARET (Sudan)
Andre Brink PRAYING MANTIS (South Africa)
J.M. Coetzee SLOW MAN (South Africa)
Diana Evans 26A (UK/Nigeria)
Nadine Gordimer GET A LIFE (South Africa)
Abdulrazak Gurnah DESERTION (Zanzibar)
Uzodinma Iweala BEASTS OF NO NATION (USA/Nigeria)
Dan Jacobson ALL FOR LOVE (South Africa)
Zakes Mda THE WHALECALLER (South Africa)
Jude Njoku THE QUICK SANDS (Nigeria)
Helen Oyeyemi THE ICARUS GIRL (UK/Nigeria)
Johan Steyn FATHER MICHAEL'S LOTTERY (South Africa)
Ndikaru wa Teresia CRY OF THE OPPRESSED (Kenya)
Rachel Zadok GEM SQUASH TOKOLOSHE (South Africa)

Who would you choose to take a closer look at? Paul Auster? Neil Gaiman? Kate Grenville? Arnaldur Indridason? Elizabeth Kostova? Haruki Murakami?

The shortlist ("up to a maximum of ten titles") will be announced in March/April, so that gives three months to read at least some of the titles. Anyone like to join me? Let's call it the IMPAC/Dublin challenge - select your own "up to a maximum of ten titles" and get cracking!

Up to London again on Monday night (I feel somewhat yo-yo like!), this time for our fiction reading group. We discussed The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi which, I have to say, really had something going for it. It is not the sort of book I would normally choose to read, full of ghosts (maybe) and Yoruba mythology, but I have to admit it kept me gasping through to the end and was a truly scary story. If I didn't have ten other books to read and write about for my own book by next Wednesday's meeting with Francofinn, I would read it again straight away. Can't wait for her next two books which allegedly Bloomsbury has already signed the wonder child up for (she was 18 and writing her A levels whilst writing The Icarus Girl, and is now at Cambridge).

CEK's family have a very clever Christmas tradition: from October, you can't buy yourself anything, but you can add it to a Christmas list. From the list - which all friends and family have access to - you may (or may not) receive some gifts. I think it is such an excellent idea, as you do actually get things you want, yet it is still a surprise as you don't know which of the things on the list will appear. Recently I became the lucky beneficiary of just such a list. Asked what I might like as a farewell gift from the Africa Book Centre, I humbly submitted my list of droolsome faves - and got all of them! Woohoo!

On occasion, feeling completely exhausted and having put my back/neck/hip/knee (take your pick!) out, I would hobble around the corner from work to the Walk-in Backrub Centre in Neal's Yard, Covent Garden. Shiatsu massage - you float on air as you leave. So that was one of my presents, which I will make full use of one of these days when I visit London as a tourist rather than for work or study.

In my pursuit of a writing career, I really enjoy the quarterly Mslexia magazine, and their diaries are the best. I've had one of their diaries for two years now, and they just push all the right buttons. Anyway, present part two was a subscription to Mslexia - fantastic! One of those magazine subscriptions you always toy with getting, but can't quite make up your mind...

Present part three is gift vouchers for any three Persephone books (I am SO excited, but how to choose...). Everyone always assumes that booksellers don't want books or book tokens as gifts. WRONG! Why did we become booksellers in the first place, I ask you?! Yes, yes, a love of books of course, but also: discounts! So now that I am no longer a bookseller, this is an extremely precious gift, and I am savouring the Persephone catalogue which dropped through my post slot last week. For those of you who don't know Persephone, I cannot recommend them highly enough. Each book is exquisite to behold, beautifully made with understated grey covers and inside a riot of colour as the endpapers are reproduced fabrics from the period in which the book was written. You even get a matching bookmark! I have read several already, and loved all. I have a small idea percolating quietly on the backburner of starting my own publishing company for African books (maybe a decade hence?) and if I do, I would wish for books like Persephone's. Perfectly produced, top-notch writing.