Five facts: John Boyne

John Boyne is one of the main stars in this year’s program, he has appeared in no less than seven festival sessions. He is the author of seven novels including the international bestseller The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas which has sold more than five million copies worldwide. His latest novel is The Terrible Thing That Happened To Barnaby Brocket.

Five facts:

My favourite writers’ festival experience was taking part in an event with the great Morris Gleitzman at the Melbourne Writers Festival in 2009. We had both written books on a similar theme and having known his work for some years it was an honour to share a stage with him.

I’m currently reading The Forrests by Emily Perkins. I’ll be visiting New Zealand in September and am interested in reading some contemporary NZ fiction.

When I was a child I wanted to be a writer or a pop star. Sadly the latter never came true but the fomer worked out ok.

When I’m stuck, or need to take a break from writing, I take my dog for a run in the mountains, let the fresh air clear my head.

The first thing I ever wrote was a new adventure for the Secret Seven.

 

Mini-reviews: Nine Days by Toni Jordan; Gold by Chris Cleave

Over the past month or two I’ve been reading many of the books by authors featured in my Morning Read sessions, and today I thought I’d share with you mini-reviews of a couple of the books you’ll be hearing about/from in MWF’s second big weekend:

Nine Days
Toni Jordan, Text Publishing, 9781921922831

Toni Jordan’s novels Addition and Fall Girl are what you’d call ‘damn good reads’ and her new novel Nine Days, doesn’t disappoint. Nine Days is structurally different from Jordan’s other novels, told from the point of view of several characters. It’s also partly set in the past: WWII-era Richmond, with its cramped spaces, factories, horses, trams, ‘funeral cakes’ and snobby neighbours. The Westaway family takes centre stage, beginning with the hardworking, misunderstood rascal Kip. In the next chapter, Kip’s daughter Stanzi underestimates the value of her father’s lucky shilling. Through each chapter—mother, lover, brother, grandson and more—the heart of the story is slowly, cleverly revealed. In the meantime the reader builds a picture of the family, being privy to traits and foibles the characters have inherited. Nine Days a heart-warming and witty tale of family, loss, obligation, remembrance, love, and finding out what really matters.

Gold
Chris Cleave, Sceptre, 9780340963449

Zoe, Kate and Jack are Olympic-level cyclists, lovers and rivals. Zoe and Kate are best friends who share a trainer (Tom) but whose lives have gone in very different directions. While Zoe pushes herself to extremes in the velodrome and in life, Kate is balancing the sport with caring for her sick child, Sophie. She has missed out on two Olympic games because of the child, but is still partly the envy of Zoe because she has people who care deeply for her. Zoe is scarred by events in her past and this is partly what has cemented her attitude, but also the drive that enables her to win. The tension between the characters and what might happen in the lead-up to the London Olympics provides plenty of drama. My favourite character was Sophie, the Star Wars­-obsessed superkid who would do anything to avoid worrying her parents. The chapters told from her POV are compelling, sweet and fun, and mean that we really feel for her when she takes a turn for the worse. Cleave obviously has had experience and has done much research into cycling, as the tense moments in the velodrome (and on the road) make you aware of your muscles, your breathing. The characters have enough dimension that your loyalty to Zoe, or to Kate, may shift and shift back again throughout the course of the novel. You really don’t know what they might do next. Gold is a page-turner, is psychologically interesting and makes you think about choice, commitment and sacrifice, not to mention the completely admirable physical hard-yards that athletes at the top of their game put in.

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Catch Toni Jordan at The Stella Prize Trivia Night on Friday 31 August at 7:30pm, the Morning Read on Saturday 1 September at 10am, and on the Father’s Day panel with Tony Birch, Deborah Robertson, and Patrick Gale on Sunday 2 September at 1pm.

Chris Cleave will be on that same Morning Read session on Saturday 1 September, he’ll be in conversation with Blanche Clark that afternoon at 2:30pm, he’ll be on a panel called Still Great Britain? on Sunday 2 September at 10am with John Lanchester, Susan Johnson and Jenny Niven. And with Susan Johnson he’ll be conducting a seminar called The Art of the Novel on Sunday 2 September at 2pm.

A brief intro to a vast subject: The Other Africa

It was impossible for the four writers on The Other Africa panel today to give us anything more than a glimpse of such a complex and diverse continent. And that was partly what Kwame Antony Appiah, Majok Tulba, Uzodinma Iweala and Sefi Atta talked about, in their conversation with Arnold Zable. I’ve been reading Iweala’s wonderful book Our Kind of People about people and communities in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The book takes an intimate view through Iweala’s conversations with HIV-positive individuals, community leaders, and government representatives; and through personal questions and reflections. As Iweala said on the panel, he was trying to find a ‘different way to talk about HIV/AIDS in Africa, which doesn’t descend into hyperbole’. He wants to get away from the idea of Africa as a monolith, and the way to do that is through individual stories, individual voices. Iweala spend four or five years on the book, letting himself be guided by the stories people told him.

Esteemed philosopher Kwame Antony Appiah spoke about the fact that, yes, Africa is an enormously diverse and complicated continent (and not just countries but the diverse cultures, languages and religions within them) but when travelling about the world he said that someone from Nigeria, South Sudan, Ghana (to name a few) is often simply perceived is as ‘African’. He said while that is never going to be enough (would ‘Australian’ be enough to describe you?) that perception still informs a part of one’s identity. It is not so much that people intentionally stereotype, though certainly reading nuanced stories about people from cultures other than our own goes some way to helping us break down stereotypes.

Fiction, of course, takes us into the world and experiences of another person, a character, and can be incredibly effective at building empathy and complexifying one’s relationship to other people and places. Nigerian-born Sefi Atta began writing when she was 30, living in the US. She realised she’d never read a novel about a Nigerian woman like herself. She builds up her stories with detail from the characters’ lives so as not to fall on/enforce any particular ideology, though she says ‘there’s something about integrity which matters’ to her as a theme in her writing. She says this is possibly a response to misconceptions about Africa. Her latest novel, being launched at the festival, is A Bit of Difference.

Majok Tulba’s debut novel Beneath the Darkening Sky I have written about in detail previously on the blog. It was a pleasure to hear him talk about his work. Tulba said that writing the book wasn’t easy, because of the topic. As a child he thought that starvation and war were ‘all the world was supposed to be’. In Australia he saw a different world. He returned to his village (which he talks about so movingly) in 2007 and was heartbroken to see the aftermath of war. He remembered some of his friends he used to play with, eat with. He believes in the power of writing, as a way to make people realise the horror of what some children go through (and he did choose not to specify the country in the novel, because he said it could have been a few countries besides South Sudan) but also to show them the beauty of the Africa ‘where we can tell the time by a rooster crowing’. ‘This is the Africa I love’, he said. He wrote the book also to ask the question: ‘why is this happening?’ And he hopes the reader will ask this too.

Appiah spoke about how problematic it can be when there is a perception that an ‘African writer’ is approached only to write about ‘African topics’. His latest book, The Honour Code, is about the role of honour in shaping some specific moral movements. He says that, of course, we also cannot deny the influence of our backgrounds, our cultures, and he recounted a story of his father lying in bed smoking and reading the Ghanaian newspapers, before (I believe) Appiah went off to England, and he said: ‘don’t forget you’re taking the family name with you’. Despite the fact Ghana, and Africa, are not present in the book, the idea of exploring honour may have come from his own personal (and cultural) background.

I don’t want to make this too long. As I said, the session barely scratched the surface (and my notes probably don’t even do it justice) so I would encourage you to check out the work of these writers, the fiction and the nonfiction, and try to catch them at their other sessions during the festival. Click their names in the first paragraph for more info on those.

I hope to see you at the first Morning Read session at 10am tomorrow (featuring Majok Tulba) or at the one on Sunday (featuring Sefi Atta and Uzodinma Iweala).

The Age Book of the Year Awards

The Age Book of the Year awards were announced last night at the Melbourne Writers Festival 2012 opening event, prior to Simon Callow’s enthusiastic, informative Keynote speech on Charles Dickens.

The awards, now in their 38^th year and highly regarded, were presented by Age literary editor Jason Steger. They went to…

Fiction

Foal’s Bread by Gillian Mears (Allen & Unwin)

Poetry

The Brokenness Sonnets I-III and Other Poems by Mal McKimmie (Five Islands Press)

Nonfiction

1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia by James Boyce (Black Inc.)

Overall winner / Age Book of the Year

1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia by James Boyce (Black Inc.)

Boyce was very humble about his win, he commended the Age for continuing to support literature and authors, and he very gratefully acknowledged author and historian Inga Clendinnen, who has been a supporter of his work.

This afternoon the winning authors will be reading from their work in The Age Book of the Year Reading. It’s a free event at 2:30pm at BMW Edge. Do come along.

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Just in case I/we don’t get a chance to write about Simon Callow’s Keynote, his Lateline interview with Tony Jones is online, and of course, you can check out his writing. I can personally recommend (though not on the subject of Dickens) his essay in the latest Sight and Sound (UK) magazine on Orson Welles (another figure he’s passionate about, he’s currently working on the third volume of his biography). See also my Q&A with Callow on writing and playing Dickens.

Freak out in a moonage daydream: Sean M Whelan on Liner Notes

The Liner Notes spoken word event (run by Babble) is always a festival highlight for me, and this year a bunch of writers, poets et al are set to rock our worlds with an interpretation of David Bowie’s album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. *Excitement!* Previous Liner Notes have included Michael Jackson’s Thriller, INXS’ Kick and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. Liner Notes has actually been running a lot longer than it has been part of MWF, and I got in touch with Babble/Liner Notes founder and regular performer Sean M Whelan to ask him some questions about the event:

Sean, can you tell us how Babble and Liner Notes came to be? What was the first album that was ‘interpreted’?

Liner Notes literally came to me in a dream. I was half asleep one night and the concept of it all just kind of materialised in my head. I remember shooting up in bed and searching for a pen and paper to write it down because I’ve had those experiences before where I’ve had a great idea in the middle of the night then gone back to sleep and in the morning I’ve remembered I HAD a good idea but can’t for the life of me remember what it actually was! This time I secured it safely in writing before going back to sleep. I’ve always been a big fan of music and poetry so this seemed the perfect way to combine those two great loves. I loved the idea of it being vaguely built around the model of a tribute night, but unlike other tribute shows all this original material comes out of it.

The first album we interpreted was actually David Bowie’s Hunky Dory! With coming to Bowie again after ten years it feels like we’ve come full circle. Also Liner Notes has developed a lot since our first show at Bar Open in Fitzroy. We were still figuring things out back then. For example, we didn’t have a full band for the first show, Michael Nolan performed with just a solo guitarist. Since then we have had a full band play at every Liner Notes event and for the last three years we’ve performed sold out shows in conjunction with the Melbourne Writers Festival. This year we’re also very proud to be taking the show interstate for the first time. We’ll be appearing at the Brisbane Writers Festival at the Powerhouse on Sept 8. I’ve always thought the show was perfect for touring as it’s very easy to source the performers at whichever location you take it to. Taking it internationally is just a matter of time, we already have two copycat events in North America, we might as well take it over and show them the real thing!

Why Ziggy Stardust? (So many of his albums are classics, after all.)

Well, you’re right, there are SO many great David Bowie albums to choose from. Which is one reason why we wanted to revisit Bowie. There is also the fact that this year marks the 40th anniversary of Ziggy Stardust, so that seemed like a good enough reason to choose Ziggy above the rest. There’s so much glamour and showmanship around that album too, which is naturally appealing to the tiny little rock stars living in all our hearts.

Michael Nolan has been doing an excellent job as MC for Liner Notes over the years, researching the band, the album and each track before the night (not to mention being able to sing). Can you ever imagine doing it without him?

Michael Nolan pretty much IS Liner Notes. I came up with the original concept for the show but right from the start it’s been a joint effort between myself and co-producers Emilie Zoey Baker and Michael Nolan. But Nolan is such a crucial part of the show, from liaising with the Melbourne Writers Festival to source the performers, to the amazing amount of research he does on every album, to singing with the band on the night; he really is indispensable. Now that the model has been built I can easily imagine Liner Notes going on without me but it would be a very different show and much poorer for it without the mighty Michael Nolan at the helm.

The performers at Liner Notes are usually a mix of poets, authors, comedians and musical types—faces both familiar and new. How do you go about selecting the artists for the show?

When Liner Notes first started it was strictly poets who made up the performers for the night, as one of the reasons it was started was as a way to bring wider audiences to poetry events. Ten years later we have expanded it to nearly anybody that we think will have something interesting to offer. For example this year we have Tim Flannery, environmentalist and First Dog on the Moon, cartoonist, both who don’t fit into any of the categories above.

The only brief for our guests is that we hope they will bring something engaging to the stage. Some people think they need to be a fan of whatever album is being highlighted to contribute but that’s not the case at all. The songs, that each guest are asked to provide a response to, are only meant to act as kicking off points for inspiration. Right from the start we have never intended Liner Notes to be a serious literary dissection of popular music, which some fans might expect. Some of our guests are hearing the albums we present to them for the first time. Irreverence is really the name of the game, but so is to expect the unexpected. Part of the thrill of Liner Notes as producers is that we don’t vet any of the work beforehand, so, along with the audience, we see everything for the first time on the night.

Can you tell us what track you’re interpreting from Ziggy, and maybe even give us a small preview?

My challenge this year is to provide a response to Track 3. Side A. Moonage Daydream. Definitely one of my favourite tracks from the album. I wish I could give you a small preview but I seem to be on track for doing what I do every year, and that is to leave it to the last minute and have a total panic attack about it in the few days remaining before the show. The only preview I could possibly provide at this stage is that in the spirit of the song I will most likely ‘Freak out in a moonage daydream oh yeah!’

Liner Notes: Ziggy Stardust is on Saturday 25 August at 8pm. View the full list of performers and ticket details here.

Five (or more) facts: Toni Jordan

Toni Jordan is the author of the popular, award-winning and internationally published books Addition and Fall Girl. Her latest witty, sweet novel, Nine Days, is the story of the most important day in the lives of four generations of one family. Jordan teaches creative writing at RMIT University in Melbourne and has lectured and presented workshops on writing around Australia. Her short stories and articles have been published widely.

Five (or more) facts:

When I finished my most recent book I went straight from the publisher’s office to the airport, where I flew to Beijing to start my AsiaLink residency. Never a dull moment.

My favourite cocktail is anything with gin in it, and I like it sour and lemony.

I’m currently reading Gerald Murnane’s The Plains. I loved the first half; it’s brilliant writing and very clever. The second half is also brilliant, but it’s clearly meant for people cleverer than me.

When I was a child I wanted to be Wonder Woman. The whole bit. Belt, boots, strapless top, magic lasso—she was kick-arse magnificent.

Last night I dreamt I had a bandaid stuck on my eyeball, and when I pulled it off, half my eyeball came off. I was left with this jagged hole like a broken boiled egg instead of an eye. I don’t know what it means but it can’t be good.

When I’m stuck, or need to take a break from writing, I take Myron the WonderWhippet for a walk. He’s vital to my process and should be tax-deductible.

—

Catch Toni Jordan at The Stella Prize Trivia Night on Friday 31 August at 7:30pm alongside Cate Kennedy, Paddy O’Reilly, Emily Maguire, Susan Johnson, Jacinta Halloran and Ruby J Murray. She’ll be reading from her work at The Morning Read session on Saturday 1 September at 10am, and she’ll be discussing dads on Father’s Day, Sunday 2 September, with Tony Birch, Patrick Gale and Deborah Robertson.

Football & figuring out: Paul D Carter on Eleven Seasons

Paul D Carter’s debut novel Eleven Seasons was the Australian/Vogel Literary Award winner for 2012. It’s a coming-of-age story set in the ’80s/’90s about Jason Dalton—Hawks supporter and burgeoning player—struggling to find room to breathe and grow and be himself. I asked Carter some questions about the novel:

Jason Dalton is a great character. His searching, his anger, his passion—all very believable. How did the character form in relation to the novel’s focus on both AFL and personal history/identity?

Jason appeared in earlier drafts of the book, at which stage the narrative focused on his entire family unit, including his mother and father (he was also following Footscray, and the novel began in 1980, not 1985). After writing some 40,000 words of this draft, I felt that the characters were being welded to the themes I wanted to explore, as opposed to the narrative emerging organically from the fears and desires of the characters themselves.

In my second draft, I focused on Jason, and moved the narrative forward so that it encompassed the era dominated by the Hawthorn Football Club. I wrote the opening chapter in a week, and felt I was onto something much better—I cared more for Jason, and I could see more clearly the correlation between his football ‘dreaming’ and his life outside the game as a socially invisible boy.

I like how the novel interrogates different cultures around the game—good and bad—through Jason’s encounters. Was it important to you to shine a light on both the positive and negative aspects?

My greatest aim with this novel was to write a book that dealt with football but which non-followers of the game could appreciate. I wanted to get the reader to think of football as a sphere in his life that was interdependent with the other spheres in his life: his relationship with his mother, his relationships with his friends, his relationships with girls. Football is something he uses for a sense of selfhood and direction, in the same way that other people might embrace music or dance to provide themselves with these things.

This said, I felt it was important to look at the way the way football culture might inhibit him as much as it provides him with solace. I think it can be easy to escape the hard work of growing up and figuring yourself out if you are part of a club or institution that does this figuring out for you. I think this issue extends to cultural pursuits outside of football as well, but in football it is quite explicit.

You were writing a PhD at the same time as writing the novel, well done! Did any of your research feed into the novel, or was it unrelated?

Much of my PhD research informed the novel as I ended up writing a review of creative writing about football and the ways this writing has reflected Australia’s recent social history. This said, I wrote the novel mostly from the gut.

The best things about completing the novel as a PhD were that it created a window of time in my life that I could devote exclusively to writing, and it also gave me a timeline. Without this structure, I’m not sure I would have found the self-discipline to see the project through.

Eleven Seasons won the Vogel this year, and was subsequently published by Allen & Unwin. What was that road to publication like? Has your writing life changed much since then?

I had a very intense summer of 2011-12 rewriting the novel in line with the suggestions of the editors. They read the novel very closely, and very critically. I’m still unsure that I was able to deliver a revised manuscript that answered all of their criticisms. This said, the pressure to push myself above and beyond what I’d already done proved a terrific learning experience. It seems to me that one of the best ways to learn is to have someone believe in you and take you to task at the same time. As an English teacher, it’s a lesson I’m trying to take on board when working with my students.

On the subject of teaching—I’m in my second year as an English teacher, and most of my mental space is still occupied by it. It’s one of the most complex and taxing jobs there is, and my writing has taken a back seat for the time being. But I’m taking notes on a book that will deal with teaching and teenagers. This time around, I’d like to write more about women. I feel like I’m done writing about guys for now.

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Carter will discuss what it’s like to be a first-time novelist with Chris Flynn, Eowyn Ivey, and Ruby J Murray on Saturday 1 September at 1pm, and he’ll be reading from his work at The Morning Read session on Sunday 2 September at 10am. Both sessions are free.

Five facts: Uzodinma Iweala

Uzodinma Iweala is the author of the novel Beasts of No Nation, which won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. His latest book is Our Kind of People, a nonfiction account of the AIDS crisis in Africa. Iweala is an American-born Nigerian.

Five facts:

My favourite writers’ festival experience was the FLIP Festival in Paraty, Brazil because a.) it’s Brazil b.) my little brother came with me and ended up getting profiled as the author’s ‘tall, dark, and handsome’ brother who ‘walks down the street followed by ladies’ in a national newspaper and c.) it’s Brazil.

The best thing about being a writer is not working in a hospital/ listening to all my friends talk about how horrible their real jobs are and realising that I would do what I do for free (don’t get any ideas now…)

When I’m stuck, or need to take a break from writing, I go for a walk, run or bike ride. I often find that vigorous physical activity can help eliminate some of the anxiety that blocks those creative inclinations.

My parents had a great influence on me, because they have been very encouraging of my work but also extremely honest with me about how difficult this world can be. It has really helped form a sense of commitment to my work and a strategic way of thinking about how best to create the right environments to do good work.

My greatest ambition is to sleep, oh please sweet sleep!

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Uzodinma Iweala will be appearing on the panel The Other Africa on Friday 24 August at 2:30pm, with Kwame Anthony Appiah, Sefi Atta, Majok Tulba and Arnold Zable. He’ll be interviewed by Peter Mares on Saturday 25 August at 11:30am in a session called Humanising the Virus. And he’ll be reading from his work in The Morning Read session (free) on Sunday 26 August at 10am.

(More than) five facts: Majok Tulba

Majok Tulba was born in Sudan and lives in Western Sydney with his wife and children. His debut novel is Beneath the Darkening Sky (read my review). Tulba is CEO of the charity SudanCare, made a film that was a finalist at Tropfest, and has been a recipient of the NSW Premier’s CAL Literary Centre Fellowship.

Facts: 

My favourite place in the world is my village, because of the memories and the beauty of the sky and the smell of the fresh air.

I’m currently reading Six Months in Sudan by Dr James Maskalyk.

The best thing about being a writer is sharing my ideas and stories with others.

When I was a child I wanted to be a storyteller, but no one makes any money by telling stories in the village. So I wanted to be a cattle keeper.

My favourite cocktail is American champagne—Coca cola.

My favourite artwork is a photograph by Kevin Carter showing a vulture and a child in Sudan. Because it captures the enormous tragedy of so much loss of life there. It’s haunting.

When I’m stuck, or need to take a break from writing, I take a walk to a park or grab my saucepan and make myself a BBQ.

The first thing I ever wrote was a recount about a lion attack in Sudan when I was sixteen. It had a great influence on me, because I realised I could tell a story and entertain people.

I hope that in/by reading my work, people will learn the power of courage and human spirit.

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Majok Tulba will be discussing The Other Africa with Kwame Anthony Appiah, Uzodinma Iweala, Sefi Atta, and Arnold Zable on Friday 24 August at 2:30 pm, and will be reading from his work in The Morning Read session on Saturday 25 August at 10:00 am.

Book review: Beneath the Darkening Sky by Majok Tulba

Hamish Hamilton (Penguin)
9781926428420
July 2012

It’s taken me a little while to get over Majok Tulba’s unflinching novel about a young boy kidnapped by rebels and forced to become a soldier. On the cusp of adolescence Obinna is forced to witness unimaginable horrors, from murder to rape, starvation, and children being blown up by landmines.

Obinna, whose (first) nickname is Baboon, dares to continue dreaming, remembering, and questioning. But the rebels continue to break him, to beat him down. My heart ached. Sometimes I had to put the book down, to walk away.

But Majok Tulba manages to extract some beauty from this horror. How does he do it? Maybe it’s because the love of his own South Sudanese village is so strong. Tulba imagines, in this novel, what would have happened had he been tall enough to have been recruited. Tulba came to Australia when he was 16, and it’ll be amazing to hear him speak about Beneath the Darkening Sky at the festival, about the choices he made in the novel: what to show, who to focus on.

The dream sequences often centre around Obinna’s lost village and the people in it (many also gone). For the reader, the dreams are welcome relief from the horror, but they are not entirely full of hope—they are sweet but often twisted. In an early dream sequence, the villagers, including Obinna’s mother and father, sing and clap around the bonfire. No one dances except his friend Pina:

Pina jumps and spins, turning her body sideways as she flies. Her dance is frantic. Pina moves faster than I thought anyone could.

Even though everyone is smiling, a bad feeling cramps up my stomach. Like I’m watching a car engine rattling, until it explodes. My village, singing for Pina’s crazy dance, looks like it’s shaking, about to erupt. Everything is about to fall apart.

Tulba’s prose is striking. Obinna’s voice is strong—he deals with much of the horror, at least for a time, through the heartbreakingly innocent eyes of a child. When he first sees a woman beaten, for example, he thinks: ‘Maybe she’s sleeping.’ The first time he witnesses a boy being killed by a landmine, which happens almost in slow motion for the reader, he notes: ‘Landmines don’t kill you, they eat you.’ There are some incredibly memorable lines.

Looking at my notes now I realise, in my memory, I have transposed the dream before the ending for the actual ending. There’s just so much you don’t want to happen, but it does. It must, for this story to be so powerful. While reading the book, I thought it would give me nightmares, but instead I dreamt of children dancing. Like Obinna, I dreamt of something that was a life buoy, keeping hope afloat.

This book is devastating, but it isn’t relentless. And it is important. One reason it is important (among many) is that it reminds you that the person sitting next to you on the tram, standing by you on the street, sitting at the bar—whether a refugee or not—could have endured horrors you couldn’t even fathom. It’s a reminder of the importance of kindness, of generosity, of listening, in a world that can be both spectacularly beautiful and overwhelmingly cruel.

—

Majok Tulba will be discussing The Other Africa with Kwame Anthony Appiah, Uzodinma Iweala, Sefi Atta, and Arnold Zable on Friday 24 August at 2:30 pm, and will be reading from his work in The Morning Read session on Saturday 25 August at 10:00 am.