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lawrenceschimel.bsky.social
My translation, published in a trilingual edition by @flippedeye.bsky.social (and winner of a PEN Translates award from @englishpen.bsky.social ).

#womenintranslation #xl8 #poetry #poetryintranslation #africawrites #booksky #blackbooksky
becomingbeninese.bsky.social Becoming Beninese @becomingbeninese.bsky.social · Jan 30
From #BookAfricana:
"Originally written in Gun, a language of Benin... her verses bridge continents and cultures, expressing both deep love for her Beninese homeland and the complexities of exile, while meditating on tradition, memory, and displacement." 🇧🇯📖

#BlackBookSky #BookSky
A large stylized red letter 'V' on a teal background above the author name Agnes Agboton and the title 'Voice of the Two Shores: Translated by Lawrence Schimel'
January 31, 2026 at 4:44 PM
xanwriter.bsky.social
For anyone interested in hearing more about @sauutiverse.bsky.social you'll have another opportunity this weekend when several members of the Sauuti collective host a panel as part of the Africa Writes convention:

africawrites.org/africa-write...

#africanfuturism #afrofuturism #africawrites
September 27, 2023 at 7:11 PM
hollandhousebooks.bsky.social
The Island Prize Family Tree keeps growing ...🎉📚🌍🌊🎉

#writing #africanauthors #africanwriting #africanliterature #buylocal #theislandprize #karenjennings #africawrites
April 26, 2025 at 9:38 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
Three copies of Mozambican writer Mia Couto's "A confissão ds leoa" / "Confessions of the Lionness", from left to right, in original Portuguese Ndjira paperback, and Harvill & Secker and Farrar Strauss Giroux hardback English translations by David Brookshaw.
October 11, 2024 at 6:34 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
Cover of Cheikh Anta Diop's "Precolonial Black Africa", showing a monochromatic photograph of a bust in unknown material, the top of the head missing; this image is framed by two bands in different shades of red; the book title and author name appear in the inner, lighter red frame above and below the image respectively.
October 1, 2024 at 4:15 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
Cover of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's "Decolonising the mind: the politics of language in African literature" (1986) in the James Currey / Heinemann paperback edition; cover image shows the upper half the face of the author; author name appears in black capitals at the top of the frame, book title in brown standard orthography below that, and the subtitle across two lines in all capitals but smaller font size below the title in the same colour.
October 12, 2024 at 4:14 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
Two editions of Ugandan historian Mahmood Mamdani's "Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism"; on the left of the frame the James Currey, London / Fountain, Kampala / David Philip, Cape Town edition from 1996 featuring an uncredited ceramic artwork of musicians; on the right the Wits University Press, Johannesburg & Makerere Institute of Social Research, Kampala edition from 2017 featuring Nadir Tharani's 'The Magician Making Light' (2014) on the cover.
October 7, 2024 at 12:35 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
José Eduardo Agualusa's "A General Theory of Oblivion" (2015), Daniel Hahn's English translation of the original Portuguese "Teoria Geral do Esquecimento" (2012). Cover is a montage of pink and red and green, with details from photographs of a dark green doorway, a damaged concrete building, and what appears to be electrical or barbed wiring against a green wall.
October 2, 2024 at 7:23 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
Ahmadou Kourouma's "Waiting for the wid beasts to vote" (originally published as "En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages"; translated by Frank Wynne); cover shows "Mali Malinke Hunters" credited to Charles Lenars, which is a photograph of a mam wearing cloth wrapped around his head and down around his chin with the ends hanging down to his shoulders on either side of his face, the long barrel of a rifle visible behind his head.
September 27, 2024 at 5:55 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
The Zed Press paperback edition of Eduardo Mondlane's "The Struggle for Mozambique" (1983 [1969]), featuring a red cover with a photograph of Mondlane (on the right) and Samora Machel (on the left) sitting down, seemingly in conversation during the anticolonial liberation struggle against Portuguese settler occupation. The book title and author name appear above the photograph in white and silver capitals respectively, and below the photograph there are notifications for John Saul's introduction and Herb Shore's biographical sketch in standard orthography above the Zed Press logo in silver at the bottom of the frame.
October 10, 2024 at 9:33 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
Hardback first editions of Noni Jabavu's "Drawn in Colour: African Contrasts" and "The Ochre People: Scenes from a South African Life" (published by John Murray in 1960 and 1963 respectively); "Drawn in Colour" is an orange cover with a drawing of an aloe in bloom backed by a white circle representing the sun and a white line across the lower quarter of the frame representing the horizon, while the book yitle appears in large black capitals at the top of the frame, the subtitle in green below it, and next to the figure of the sun the author's name in white letters; "Ochre People" cover is dull yellow verging on khaki, figuring three orange and white aloes in descending size from left to right to create perspective, a big orange circle in the top right hand of the frame as the sun, book title im all white capitals, subtitle capitalised smaller font, and authoe name in green on the right halfway down the frame.
September 28, 2024 at 6:02 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
Cover of the English translation of Nawal El Saadawi's "God Dies by the Nile"; cover illustration by Phyllis Mahon is of a woman whose face appears in profile looking to her right (the left of the frame), her arm raised above her head so that he dark right armpit is visible to the viewer, her eyes are shit, and her lank blacl hair falls onto her left shoulder in the right of the frame; the image is surrounded by a white covrr on which the name of the author appears at the top of the frame above the name of the book, with text identifying Saadawi as the author of "Woman at Point Zero" in-between.
September 28, 2024 at 10:20 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
Cover of Helon Habila's "Travellers" in the Hamish & Hamilton hardback edition, featuring a monochromatic photograph of a man and a woman. He is on the left of the frame wearing a chequered flat cap and grey jumper over a collared white shirt; he is smiling broadly and his left arm (a watch at the wrist) is bent at the elbow as his hand cups the chin of the woman on the right of the frame; she is laughing, her eyes shut, and can be seen wearing a beret, a large earring in her left ear blurred mid-swing, and a black top over which can be seen a large pendant on a long chain. The image is credited to Magnum Photos; the cover design by gray318 renders the book title in black print on a green band above the photograph, and the author's name in black print on a yellow band below the image.
October 17, 2024 at 4:29 AM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
Zimbabwe Publishing House edition of Tsitsi Dangarembga's "Nervous Conditions" (1988); cover art by Claudette Johnson is a drawing of Black woman wearing a beige clothing item wrapped in voluminous folds obscuring the shape of her body; she looks directly at the viewer, and an earring dangles from her left lobe; author name and book title appear in bold black capitals over the image in the lower half of the frame; the publishing house logo, a styliaed icon of the Zimbabwe Bird atop the letters Z, P, and H, appears in the lower right hand corner of the cover.
September 28, 2024 at 6:35 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
Cover of "Engendering African Social Sciences", edited by Ayesha Imam, Amina Mama, & Fatou Sow for CODESRIA (Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa) Dakar, Senegal; published in 1997, the white book cover design by Simon Acquah features an abstract artwork in blue ink and an off-kilter yellow square in the bottom half of the frame while the book title appears in large blue capitals in thebupper half of the frame, and the names of the editors in smalls standard orthography below that.
October 8, 2024 at 2:32 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
Cover of Pepetela's "A Gloriosa Família: O Tempo dos Flamengos" (1997), the cover featuring two illustrations separated by the name of the author in black capitals and the title of the novel in red ones; the top image is a black and white drawing of some thatched buildings on a coastline backed by palm trees, and the bottom image is a brown and white sketch of enslaved Black men on a ship's deck being manhandled by white sailors, the scene supervised by the captain, his arms folded.
October 18, 2024 at 5:19 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
Naguib Mahfouz's "The Cairo Trilogy" in the Everyman's Library hardback edition; cover is a photograph of Mahfouz on a Cairy street clutching a newspaper to his side.
October 1, 2024 at 4:28 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
Bessie Head's "A Bewitched Crossroad" showinga photograph of four men on horseback leading cattle on a dusty road with the sun behind them visible throughbthe branches of a thorn tree on the left of the frame. The men's faces are obscured because they are backlit by the sun. The image is credited to Peter Johnson (1984). Author name and novel title appear at the top of the frame in all capitals and standard orthography respectively.
October 1, 2024 at 2:01 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
Saul Dubow's "Illicit Union: scientific racism in modern South Africa" (Witwatersrand University Press; 1995), a volume in the Cambridge WUP African Studies Series. The cover is a deep red background with an illustration of four men's heads drawn facing the viewer and in profile, reminscent of nineteenth century colonial and early twentieth century imperial notions of racial difference (sic). The book title and subtitle appear above this image in white capitals and standard orthography respectively, and the author's name appears in capitals below the image. A diagonal strap in the lower right corner indicates "For sale in South Africa only. Not for export'.
October 19, 2024 at 12:20 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
Cover of Ayi Kwei Armah's "The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born" (1968), the Heinemann African Writers Series edition, cover design by Keith Pointing using an illustration by Christopher Brown in the style of West African market art, of two human figures in worshipful postures before a radio on top of a television on top of a pink car with bottles of alcohol on bonnet and trunk (and an LP record on each bottle mouth), the wheels of the csr resting on a washing machine on the left and a refrigerator on the right, and a giant soda bottle in the style of old Coke ones between the appliances; next to each of the appliances is another human figure, both clad in red. All figures wear what appears to be West African garb and headdresses.
September 30, 2024 at 7:07 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
Cover of the English translation of Anouar Benmalek's "The Child of an Ancient People" in the Harvill Press paperback edition featuring a photograph by Penny Tweedie/Corbis of a pair of hands holding dark brown snail shells at the bottom of the frame. The author's name appears in grey-green at the top of the frame, above the book title in white letters; the Harvill leopard emblem appears in the top left hand corner of the frame.
October 15, 2024 at 7:15 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
Two editions of Tayeb Salih's "Season of Migration to the North" (1969 [1966]; translated from Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies). On the left the Heinemann edition with a black cover designed by Bill Hayes featuring a sculpture of a woman's head and upper torso, and on the chest of this figure there is a painting of a human figure in Arab dress standing in a landscape of palm trees over which a bright sun shines; the title of the book appears in all capitals above at the top of the frame, and below it in standard orthography the name of the book. On the right is the Penguin paperback edition featuring a cover photograph by Jeff Cottenden of blue potsherds and a delicately fringed cotton cloth with flowers and a butterfly embroidered onto it on a wooden surface; at the bottom of the frame, below this image, on a grey background, there is the name of the author in white print, and the name of the book in black print, both in standard orthography, with the Penguin publisher's logo (a black and white penguin inside an orange oval) on the left.
October 28, 2024 at 7:45 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
Cover of Nuruddin Farah's "Sardines" (1981) featuring a charcoal figure of a veiled head by Don Kilpatrick III, a photograph by Michael S. Lewis of a right hand holding a yellow cloth against a blue-grey backdrop which covers much of the lower 40% of the frame, the whole designed by Scott Sorenson. Author name and book title appear in all capitals in bronze and indigo respectively against the white 60% portion of the cover.
October 3, 2024 at 6:00 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
Ama Ata Aidoo's "Our Sister Killjoy: or Reflections from a Black-eyed Squint" (1977) in the Longman African Writers edition, featuring an illustration by Gerry Baptist of two trees on two panels, on the left a tree with drooping branches in a field of grass and flowers, red leaves hanging from its branches and brown leaves on the grass; on the right a palm tree beneath a red sun on yellow sand and rocks.
October 2, 2024 at 2:46 PM
acfick72.bsky.social
Books that have stayed with you or influenced you, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

#BookSky 💙📚 #Books

#BooksAfrica #AfricaWrites
Cover of Buchi Emecheta's "The Joys of Motherhood" (1979), the Geprge Braziller paperback edition; the cover design bt Catherine Stock features an illustration of a woman holding a child on her chest; the human figures arr rendered in black with white lines to differentiate faces and limbs; the woman is figures in a dress and headwrap of the same light and dark brown pattern; the author's name is rendered in black capitals in the upper right corner of the frame; the novel title appears in larger font black letters below that in standard orthography.
October 14, 2024 at 11:56 AM