African LiteratureNgugi wa Thiong'o, Carole Enahoro, and Brian Chikwava

In the fifty years since the publication of Chinua Achebe's seminal Things Fall Apart, many other African writers have won world-wide acclaim - and Luminato is proud to host three of today's most notable examples.

Reading from Dreams in a Time of War, 2009 Booker Prize nominee Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o shares memories of the Kenya of his childhood. Nigerian politics and disaster capitalism are among the targets of Carole Enahoro's satiric debut novel Doing Dangerously Well, while in Harare North, Brian Chikwava, winner of the 2004 Caine Prize, looks at the precarious lives of Zimbabwean refugees in London.

Spend your Saturday exploring this Festival thread! Join us at Global Music: Rock the Casbah & An African Prom at Queen's Park for a day of free music following this literary event.

Authors and moderator

Ngugi wa Thiong'o, currently Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine, was born in Kenya, in 1938 into a large peasant family. He was educated at Kamandura, Manguu and Kinyogori primary schools; Alliance High School, all in Kenya; Makerere University College (then a campus of London University), Kampala, Uganda; and the University of Leeds, Britain. He is Honorary Member of American Academy of Letters. A many-sided intellectual, he is novelist, essayist, playwright, journalist, editor, academic and social activist.  His many books include A Grain of Wheat, Petals of Blood, Wizard and The Crow and his new memoir – Dreams in a Time of War.

Brian Chikwava is among the exciting new generation of writers emerging from the African continent. His short story Seventh Street Alchemy was awarded the 2004 Caine Prize for African Writing. He has been a Charles Pick fellow at the University of East Anglia, and was the recipient of an Arts Council grant in 2005. He lives in London.

Carole Enahoro was born in London of a Nigerian father and an English mother, and grew up in Nigeria, Britain, and Canada. Her family has been involved in Nigerian politics, diplomacy, and journalism since Nigerian independence. After university, she worked as a film/TV producer and an art history lecturer in Britain and Canada. She is currently working on a PhD at University College London (UCL) researching satire and Nigerian urbanism, and shares her time between Canada, Britain and Nigeria. This is her first novel.

Dionne Brand (moderator) is a renowned poet, novelist, and essayist. Her writing is notable for the beauty of its language, and for its intense engagement with issues of social justice. Her work includes nine volumes of poetry, four books of fiction and two non-fiction works. She was educated at the University of Toronto, where she earned a BA in English and Philosophy and an MA in the Philosophy of Education at OISE.

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