Happy midweek everyone! Wow. We are already halfway through the week. How time flies. How has the year been going for you so far? I hope that the year has been kind to everyone. If not, I hope you will experience a reversal of fortune in the coming months. More importantly, I hope everyone is happy and healthy, in body, mind, and spirit.

With the midweek comes a fresh WWW Wednesday update, my first this year. WWW Wednesday is a bookish meme hosted originally by SAM@TAKING ON A WORLD OF WORDS. The mechanics for WWW Wednesday are quite simple, you just have to answer three questions:

  1. What are you currently reading?
  2. What have you finished reading?
  3. What will you read next?
www-wednesdays
What are you currently reading?

My foray into African literature continues with Nobel Laureate in Literature Wole Soyinka’s latest book, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth. This is the sixth consecutive novel written by a Nobel Laureate in Literature I read, the fifth this month alone. After his memoir, Aké: The Years of Childhood, this is my second book by the first Black African to be awarded the aforementioned Nobel Prize; it is also my first novel by Soyinka. When I learned about the book’s release back in 2021, I was looking forward to it. I was able to obtain a copy of the book in early 2022 but like most of my books, it was left to gather dust on my bookshelf. To redress this, I added the book to my 2023 Top 23 Reading List. The title is derived from the global index wherein Nigerians are dubbed the happiest people on earth.

The novel takes place in an imaginary version of Nigeria and featured several facets of contemporary Nigerian society. What stands out, for now, are the religious divides – there is a Chrislam – and the proliferation of religious cults. The book is rather interesting although a little verbose. I am just a hundred pages in but I can already feel its weight. I will be featuring more of my impressions of the book in this week’s First Impression Friday.

What have you finished reading?

After a slow start to my African literature month, I have slowly but surely gained momentum. In the past week, I was able to complete three books, the first of which was Naguib Mahfouz’s Sugar Street. I wasn’t originally planning on reading the book but I have long been looking forward to completing Mahfouz’s famed The Cairo Trilogy so I decided to finish the trilogy with Sugar Street. I read the first book back in December and the second book was my opener for my August African Literature Month. I acquired the first two books in the series about five or six years ago but upon learning that they form part of a trilogy, I decided to put on hold my plan to read them until I complete all three books. I was finally able to obtain the final piece late in 2021.

The novel is still set in the Egyptian capital but now the story advanced to 1935. We again meet the family of Ahmad Abd al-Jawad. Kamal, his youngest son is still unmarried. Aisha who lost her husband and two sons was now living in the family home with her daughter. Khadija is also a mother but is still highly opinionated. The eldest child, Yasin, has become the paragon of character development. Among the three books, the third book has perhaps the most pervasive political discourse. Khadija’s two sons represented polar opposites of the political spectrum. Abd al-Muni’m is becoming loyal to fundamental Islamic principles while his brother Ahmad is slowly becoming more involved with Communism. Both were critical discussions in the period the book was set; Egypt was taking on its own identity separate from its previous subjugators. Like the first two books, death and grief are woven into the story. Overall, it was a great book to conclude what has been a very engaging trilogy.

I am pretty sure I wasn’t the only one who got caught in surprise when Abdulrazak Gurnah was announced as the awardee of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature. But as soon as the dust settled, I learned that the Tanzanian-born writer has established quite a reputation for chronicling his birth nation’s – he moved to the United Kingdom when the Zanzibar Revolution broke out – tumultuous colonial history. It was this quality of his storytelling that got him commended by the Swedish Academy. Paradise was one of the novels I acquired first hoping that it will provide me an insight into his body of art; I ended up reading After Lives first in late 2022.

Interestingly, this is the second book by a Nobel Laureate in Literature I read that has the title Paradise; the first one was written by Toni Morrison. Gurnah’s Paradise was his fourth novel and is widely recognized as the one that elevated him to global recognition. The novel chronicled the story of Yusuf, a boy born in the fictional Tanzanian town of Kawa at the turn of the 20th century. His family owed a lot to Aziz,  a rich and powerful Arab merchant. To settle their debt, Yusuf’s father pawned him to Aziz; Yusuf was made to believe that Aziz was a blood-related uncle. Like After Lives, Paradise was eventful as Yusuf, who joined Aziz’s merchant caravan, would encounter several adventures as they travel into the interior to the lands west of Lake Tanganyika. The portrait Gurnah painted of pre-colonial East Africa showed a society that was divided by religion, race, and even gender.

Breaking the streak of male Nobel Laureates in Literature writers is Nadine Gordimer. This only underlines one of the concerns vis-a-vis the prestigious literary award: the glaring gap in terms of male and female awardees. To be fair, the Swedish Academy has been recognizing more women in the past three decades than in the almost nine decades prior. However, there is still a lot that needed to be done but, at least, the Swedish Academy is slowly closing the gap; since 2018, the award alternated between the two genders. Gordimer, however, remains the only female African writer to be awarded the prize.

Anyway, July’s People is my second novel by Gordimer, after Burger’s Daughter. Set during a fictional Civil War wherein black South Africans were able to defy the apartheid, the novel charted the relationship of Smales, a liberal White South African family, and their black servant, July. Because of the war, the couple was forced to retreat from Johannesburg to July’s native village with nothing else but the clothes on their back. They tried to integrate into village life but they were shocked beyond belief by everything they witnessed and experienced. This also meant that the couple have become more reliant on July for their survival. This did not sit well with the couple, as such, causing tensions between them and their servant. Power dynamics, racial hierarchy, and white hypocrisy were among the prevalent themes. The book is less complex than Burger’s Daughter but it is equally engaging.

What will you read next?