The Book Stokvel

Thank you to every member of our community who continue to believe in what this community stands for 🫶🏽 #TheBookStokvel #AfricaWritesWeRead #AfricanLiterature #africanstoriesbyafricans #ReadingCommunity

He's undergone three separate exiles across three decades - Algeria (1964–69), then Cameroon (1974–84), and then Togo (1984–94). He only returned to Côte d'Ivoire permanently in the 1990s. He died in Lyon, France, in 2003, with his final novel unfinished. #AhmadouKourouma

Kourouma is sometimes referred to as the "African Voltaire." Expelled from secondary school for participating in student protests, he was drafted into the French army and deployed to Indochina - punished for refusing orders to suppress African independence activities.

This week's Did You Know Installation is on Ahmadou Kourouma - Ivorian novelist, and one of the most celebrated Francophone African writers of the 20th century. #AhmadouKourouma #TheBookStokvel #IvorianLiterature #FrancophoneAfrica

Farah also is a perennial Nobel Prize nominee. #NuruddinFarah #TheBookStokvel #SomaliLiterature #AfricanWriters #AfricanHistory #PostcolonialLiterature

He described his novels as being “about states of exile; about women shivering in the cruel cold in a world ruled by men; about the commoner denied justice; about a torturer tortured by guilt, his own conscience; about a traitor betrayed.”

This week's Did You Know Installation is on Nuruddin Farah, Nuuradiin Faarax in Somali. #NuruddinFarah #TheBookStokvel #SomaliLiterature #AfricanWriters #AfricanHistory #PostcolonialLiterature

Naledi, the protagonist, is growing up- navigating family, campus life, love, and the long road to self-acceptance. And through it all, her hair tells its own story. Honest, warm, and deeply South African. This one will find you wherever you are in your own journey ♥️

This week’s Bookmarker is Bantu Knots by Lebo Mazibuko A coming of age story set in the heart of Soweto. #TheBookStokvel #LeboMazibuko #SouthAfricanLiterature #AfricanFiction #AfricaWritesWeRead

We love your work 🥰🥰🥰

@KamoIsADuiker Thank you for sharing :)

@TheBookStokvel Yes totally, we have also started a K.Sello Duiker Literary Foundation. And all information on it can be found his dedicated Instagram page. kselloduiker and also his website kselloduiker.com

This is very pleasing to learn 😊

She went on to publish over 20 books. In 1983 she was named one of the Best Young British Novelists by Granta- alongside Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan. She was the only Black African woman on the list. #BuchiEmecheta #NigerianLiterature #WomenWhoWrite

Buchi described her work as “stories of the world, where women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical.” #BuchiEmecheta #TheBookStokvel

This week's Did You Know is focused on Buchi Emecheta- Nigerian novelist, librarian and one of the most important African women writers of the 20th century. #BuchiEmecheta #TheBookStokvel #AfricanLiterature #NigerianLiterature #WomenWhoWrite #AfricanWriters #WomenInLiterature

This made him the first and only African writer to receive the award in its 33-year history. He described his own writing as “literary shock treatment.” Dambudzo passed away in Harare in 1987, aged 35. #DambudzoMarechera #TheBookStokvel #ZimbabweanWriters #HouseOfHunger

Expelled from Oxford with nowhere to go, he hitchhiked to London and wrote The House of Hunger- widely believed to have been written in a riverside tent, sleeping rough and largely destitute. Published in 1978, it won the Guardian Fiction Prize the following year.

This week's Did You Know installation is on Dambudzo Marechera- Zimbabwean novelist, poet, playwright, and one of the most defiant voices African literature has ever produced. #DambudzoMarechera #TheBookStokvel #AfricanLiterature #ZimbabweanWriters #HouseOfHunger