The party has a purpose—Carey Baraka considers the influence of literary get-togethers on Kenya’s writing scene
Sleeping Poet: That Party at Frank’s At 7.30 or 8 or 8.30 p.m., somewhere along in there, on 30 June…
Tag: Granta
‘What happens when you have a crime committed against a person that never ever comes to an end?’—Margie Orford talks to Jennifer Malec about her new novel The Eye of the Beholder
The JRB Editor Jennifer Malec sat down with Margie Orford to talk about the challenges of writing about sexual violence, the politics…
Wole Soyinka vs Caroline Davis—The CIA Controversy by Adekeye Adebajo
In 2020, Caroline Davis, a British scholar, now based at England’s University College London, published the book African Literature and…
The Granta emails, or How to Write About Africa revisited—notes on catalysing a moment of literary reparations, by Nkiacha Atemnkeng
I cannot count the number of times I’ve read the late Binyavanga Wainaina’s viral Granta essay, ‘How to write about…
‘To photograph Switzerland is to rephotograph it’—Sindi-Leigh McBride reviews Fernweh, Teju Cole’s latest photobook
Fernweh, Teju Cole’s latest photobook, feels like a palliative moment amid the uncertainty, loss and raw grief of the pandemic,…
[The JRB Daily] 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize regional winners announced—including Rwandan-born Namibian author Rémy Ngamije
Header image: Rémy Ngamije (Namibia), Roland Watson-Grant (Jamaica), Kanya D’Almeida (Sri Lanka), Carol Farrelly (UK), Katerina Gibson (Australia) The regional…
Fragments, explorations and variations—Jennifer Malec reviews Zadie Smith’s debut collection of short stories, Grand Union, her most American book to date
Zadie Smith, the accomplished, experimental New Yorker—The JRB Editor Jennifer Malec reviews Grand Union. Grand UnionZadie SmithHamish Hamilton, 2019 Read an…
‘The fallible memory is surely at the heart of writing fiction’—Jennifer Malec interviews Ivan Vladislavić about his latest novel, The Distance
The JRB Patron Ivan Vladislavić chats to Editor Jennifer Malec about memory, nostalgia and his latest novel, The Distance. Ivan…
‘I like writing male characters—I don’t have to get them home safely at the end of the chapter’—An interview with Aminatta Forna
Aminatta Forna sat down with The JRB Editor Jennifer Malec at the Open Book Festival in Cape Town to talk about her new novel,…
‘Utterly mysterious, and utterly worthy of our attention’—Wamuwi Mbao reviews Asymmetry, the debut novel by Lisa Halliday
Lisa Halliday’s debut Asymmetry is a genuinely surprising novel, which invites us to question how men and women are rendered in…
[The JRB Daily] Pwaangulongii Dauod wins 2018 Gerald Kraak Award for his essay ‘Africa’s future has no space for stupid black men’
Pwaangulongii Dauod has won the R25 000 Gerald Kraak Award, which honours African writing and photography that ‘provokes thought on the…