African literary writing changes hands

Today’s top African writers are children of the wider world. The global literary market belongs to them, and it is little wonder that many of them have rapidly attained celebrity status.

True, older African writers have become serious contenders for the Nobel literature prize – and actually bagged it once in a while. But here, we are talking about the incredibly rapid success of fresh writers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Pettina Gappah and a few others who have appeared on the scene and taken over.

That the rise of the new writers has been truly meteoric is attested to by the fact that their seminal works are quickly translated into major world languages and sell widely.

The writers have benefited from new markets for African writing that have rapidly opened up in recent years, firmly placing African writing within the global literary radar. They have also benefited substantially from the new and cocksure book marketing machines deployed by savvy multinational publishers.

Acutely aware of the potential returns from top African titles, the publishers have generously commissioned the most promising writers, and their agents doggedly hanker after the hottest ones. Their works are then taken over by marketing behemoths – mostly internet-assisted – that rapidly propel the writers into the international limelight.

The publicity the new writers enjoy is a far cry from the obscurity many early African writers had to contend with, published as they were by local houses with limited resources. In the African Writers Series (AWS) era, there was little publicity when it happened. But it was the voice of African writing then.

African Writers Series

Arguably, without the famous AWS we might never have heard of the likes of Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Ayi Kwei Armah. Nor would we have heard of such great names from southern Africa as two Nobel laureates Nadine Gordimer and Doris Lessing or their literary colleagues Alex La Guma and Bessie Head.

As for French-speaking African writers such as Sembène Ousmane, Ferdinand Oyono and Alexandre Biyidi, the man who wrote under the pen names Ezo Boto and Mongo Beti, would have remained behind the restrictions of the great colonial language divide. The same would have been the fate of great Arabic writers like Driss Chraibi, Tayeb Salih and the other African literature Nobel laureate, Naguib Mahfouz.

But the fact that the famous series played a major role in marketing African writers from different backgrounds does not mean that it was the one that originally published the men and women today honoured with the ‘great’ tag. On the contrary, the real pioneers of African writing were people like the South Africans Peter Abrahams and Ezekiel (later Es’kia) Mphahlele who published their first works elsewhere when the likes of Achebe and Ngugi were still in school.

As for the Francophone writers like the Cameroonians Ferdinand Oyono and Mongo Beti, their works that eventually appeared in the series had been published in their original French years earlier. In fact they were the real forerunners of the first wave of African writers, and the same applies to the works of the famous Senegalese poets Léopold Sédar Senghor and the two Diops - David and Birago - and Congo’s Tchicaya U’Tamsi.

These great poets had made names in the French-speaking world years - and even decades - before they appeared in anthologies in English translation, thanks to the great exposure they enjoyed due to the proliferation of major literary journals based in France. These were a godsend for aspiring writers, and were run by luminaries such as Senghor himself, the Caribbeans Aimé Césaire and Alexandre Dumas and the legendary Alioune Diop, the colossal African literary and cultural pioneer who was the founder of the famous journal, Présence Africaine.

A young Gambian writer Dayo Forster. Photo | FILE | AFRICA REVIEW

Lesser journals like Okyeame and Black Orpheus, published in French as Orphée Noire, were to play a major role in showcasing nascent African writers, particularly in West Africa. As for East Africa, the leading journals of the time were East Africa Journal, Zuka and Rajat Neogy’s vastly successful Transition, which from its founding in 1960 rapidly attained international status.

As for today’s neophyte African writers, the world is practically their oyster. Enjoying the services of professional and extremely savvy literary agents of international repute, they are routinely published in top internationally renowned literary journals. In fact it is through these journals, including Agni, the St. Petersburg Review, Granta,The Paris Review, Wasafiri and others, that they first make their names.

Some of them also benefit tremendously from sustained exposure though virtual studios like Francis Ford Coppola’s famous Zoetrope. Apart from the advantage of being published in leading online literary journals, their works benefit immensely from translations into major world languages, opening up vast world markets for their works.
The accruing lucre contrasts sharply with the lot of the perennially cash-strapped literary figures of yesteryear. As narrated in the recent memoirs by Heinemann’s long-serving editor James Currey, many earlier African writers were the bane of long-suffering publishers, who had to contend with perennial nagging and demands for advance royalties.

Literary prizes

The earlier writers sadly also had to contend with rare and laughable literary prizes, coupled with ridiculously tiny print runs, in their respective countries. Paradoxically, today’s literary glitterati are a pampered lot, generously rewarded through such prestigious literary prizes as the Caine, Orange, Booker, Commonwealth and Penguin ones.

At the same time, well-capitalised international publishing houses sustain and even spoil the younger writers with all-expenses-paid book promotion tours. Further, they are likely to benefit, early in their writing careers, from generous and lucrative lecture circuits.

All that aside, the cream of new African writers – many of them foreign-based - have access to scholarships that facilitate education at leading academic institutions around the globe, including the Ivy League ones. Consequently, many of them have the benefit of obtaining Master of Fine Arts and other degrees that arm them with the crucial tools of their trade.

Once initially published, they often obtain generous grants that in some cases enable them to write full-time, unlike their predecessors, many of who had to dabble in other occupations, including academia for the best-educated ones, who up to this day lecture in foreign institutions, constituting a major brain drain.

ciugumwagiru@yahoo.co.uk