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Lucy Gasser

scholar of literary & cultural studies, editor of poco.lit.

A Visit to the Museum of African Art in Belgrade

I could have taken a bus, but I decided to walk. This was a mistake, as my journey on this otherwise beautiful autumn morning in Belgrade took me along a highway full of thunderous traffic, noxious car fumes, and a bewildering labyrinth of pedestrian over- and underpasses. But after getting lost and taking twice as long for the trip as intended, I finally arrived in the leafy suburb of my destination: The Museum of African Art.

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Tara June Winch
The Yield

August Gondiwindi has been washing dishes in miserable grey London for ten years, when the death of her grandfather Albert causes her to journey home to Massacre Plains in Australia. Thus begins the story told by Tara June Winch in The Yield: a book both very beautiful and very sad.

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“African Authors in Markets” – a panel discussion

Many of us who love literature might like to think of it as untethered from the mundane aspects of the real world, but books emerge and circulate in a literary market much like other markets, and literary value – however one might define it – is definitely not the sole determinant of what gets a book published and read.

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Nana Oforiatta Ayim
The God Child

Nana Oforiatta Ayim’s prose in her debut novel The God Child feels like poetry: vivid, associative, beautiful – and sometimes a little confusing. The story navigates between Ghana, Germany and the UK, following its young protagonist Maya from childhood to her early twenties, and is a narrative rich in history, complicity and complicated relationships.

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Toni Morrison
Recitatif

Recitatif is a writerly experiment that sees the acclaimed Toni Morrison toying with her reader as she frames an insightful commentary on racial categorizations. First published in 1983, it is famously the only short story the Nobel-laureate ever wrote.

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Tsitsi Dangarembga
This Mournable Body

This Mournable Body is undoubtedly an important book, but it’s more than a little difficult to read. The deservedly renowned Zimbabwean novelist, filmmaker and playwright Tsitsi Dangarembga presents a devastating portrait of her country after independence has finally been achieved, but has failed to produce the equitable utopia that the struggle seemed to promise would follow liberation from colonial oppression.

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