#africanperspective?

[discoverafricanmedia]

New African literature is disrupting what Western presses prize

There is a thriving counter-current of transnational African literary life that confounds rather than caters to an international taste for "digestible" fiction.

Responding to critics who claim that African bestselling authors cater their work to appeal to top Western publishers or literary “gatekeepers”, Jackson argues that this over simplification fails to acknowledge the various small independent US and UK publishers that are working together with adventurous African writers to offer a new and evolving genre of African literature. 

[discoverafricanmedia]

How not to talk about African fiction

To start our partnership with Brittle Paper, Ainehi Edoro explores the inherent bias of readers, reviewers and publishers when it comes to African novels – by comparing Amazon blurbs for David Mitchell and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Ainehi Edoro describes the common marketing practice of African bestselling fiction, to center African stories around social and political issues such as corruption, colonialism or poverty, in an attempt to appeal to readers. Edoro describes that “African fiction is packaged and circulated, bought and sold not on the basis of its aesthetic value but of its thematic preoccupation.”