All posts by Tope Salaudeen-Adegoke
- 18 Aug, 20
- by Tope Salaudeen-Adegoke
- in Poetry
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- Title: Questions for the Sea
- Author: Stephen Symons
- Publisher: uHlanga Press
- Number of pages: 81
- Year of publication: 2016
- Category: Poetry
‘The waves bring back even things we haven’t lost’, a line from Yehuda Amichai’s poem ‘The Seashore’, is the epigraph that opens Questions for the Sea by Stephen Symons. This line is to be taken both as act and setting for Symons’ debut collection of poems. The sea is the motif in Questions for the Sea, the poet’s metaphor for self and country, South Africa. The reader is invited, as a surfer or beachgoer, to share in the memories brought back by waves. In this volume, Symons is a performer – because remembering itself is a conscious act – awash with both cherished personal moments and social, dark history. More…
- 06 Sep, 19
- by Tope Salaudeen-Adegoke
- in Drama
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- Title: Mama Mudu’s Children: A South African Post-Freedom Tragi-Comedy
- Author: Masitha Hoeane
- Publisher: African Perspectives Publishing
- Number of pages: 88
- Year of publication: 2017
- Category: Drama
The title of this review borrows from the cardinal message in the refrain of ‘The Path’, a song by the Nigerian folklorist, Beautiful Nubia. It is also the exigent message of the play Mama Mudu’s Children: A South African Post-Freedom Tragi-Comedy by Masitha Hoeane, which is a problem play set against the backdrop of xenophobia and the disintegration of those communal values that make up Ubuntu. On the book’s front cover, there is a sprawling shanty township and what seems to be a mob, or demonstrators, under two different banners: ‘Edladleni Hill’ and ‘Xenophobia’, with a faint spiral of smoke in the background, everything depicted in sharp monochrome. This is both an ironic take on the notion of the rainbow nation and an example of a random township in South Africa. More…
- 31 Aug, 18
- by Tope Salaudeen-Adegoke
- in Fiction
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- Title: The Final Bet
- Author: Abdelilah Hamdouchi
- Translator: Jonathan Smolin
- Publisher: Hoopoe
- Number of pages: 138
- Year of publication: 2016
- Category: Fiction
‘The true test of democracy is in the police stations and not in the dome of parliaments’. – Abdelilah Hamdouchi
When only the circumstantial facts and evidence of a case point to a person as guilty in a repressive police state, where the police are reckless, hostile, shoddy and can coerce a false confession out of anyone, then one has already lost the trial before it begins, that is if there will be any trial at all. One will easily be convicted for a murder especially when there is an ostensible motive. More…
- 09 Jan, 18
- by Tope Salaudeen-Adegoke
- in Children, Fiction, Young Adult
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- Title: Who Told the Most Incredible Story?
- Author: Naana J E S Opoku-Agyemang
- Publisher: Afram Publishers (Ghana) Limited
- Number of pages: 619 (5 Vols: Vol 1, 113pp; Vol 2, 121pp; Vol 3, 128pp; Vol 4, 122pp; Vol 5, 135pp)
- Year of publication: 2015
- Category: Children
‘“Fantasy” is the natural bedrock of all African folktales. In other words, there is no African oral narrative, including folktales, both “fictional” and “non-fictional”, that is not couched in varying degrees of fantasy’, writes Ademola Dasylva in his monograph, Classificatory Paradigms in African Oral Narrative (p 14). It is often said that childlike truths are best expressed in a childlike manner, and fantasy is a sure means of perpetuating childlike truths. Fantasy allows free range for the imagination of oral artists and their listeners. More…
- 29 Aug, 17
- by Tope Salaudeen-Adegoke
- in Fiction
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- Title: And after Many Days
- Author: Jowhor Ile
- Publisher: Kachifo Limited
- Number of pages: 287
- Year of publication: 2016
- Category: Fiction
Family is beautiful, an institution of love that binds more than mere friendship when genuine love is present. Family is not just a group of individuals who live together – the fraternal love and amity between siblings is wonderful when it is present. And, to be fortunate enough to have people who can be regarded as relatives is to be blessed immensely. More…
- 18 Nov, 16
- by Tope Salaudeen-Adegoke
- in Fiction
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- Title: Whitefly
- Author: Abdelilah Hamdouchi
- Translator: Jonathan Smolin
- Publisher: Hoopoe
- Number of pages: 136
- Year of publication: 2016
- Category: Fiction
Whitefly is crime fiction set in Morocco. This book by Abdelilah Hamdouchi, first published as al-Dhubaba al-bayda and translated from the Arabic to English as Whitefly by Jonathan Smolin, is a work of significance being that a writer from the Arab world, from the Maghreb precisely, is writing in the crime fiction genre. The book also defies the saying in the Arab book industry that ‘Cairo writes, Beirut publishes and Baghdad reads’ by showing that many writers from other parts of the Arab world are making significant breakthroughs. More…
- 23 Aug, 16
- by Tope Salaudeen-Adegoke
- in Fiction
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- Title: My Father’s Song
- Author: Efo Kodjo Mawugbe
- Publisher: Afram Publications (Ghana) Limited
- Number of pages: 232
- Year of publication: 2015
- Category: Fiction
Whether African oral art should be written down is a question that has been considered by many scholars. In fact, it has been argued that the genre should be regarded as ‘art’ and not ‘literature’. One of the perspectives on the genre, raised by a notable scholar, Ruth Finnegan, is that ‘literature’ denotes text and written material while ‘art’ works perfectly well for describing the genre because it was essentially oral and unwritten. More…
- 26 Apr, 16
- by Tope Salaudeen-Adegoke
- in Fiction
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- Title: A Slim, Green Silence
- Author: Beverly Rycroft
- Publisher: Umuzi
- Number of pages: 239
- Year of publication: 2015
- Category: Fiction
‘God is a comedian to an audience too afraid to laugh’. – H L Mencken, A Book of Burlesques, quoted in the novel.
A ghost stalks her house and flows above her town, Scheepersdorp, where she has lived all her life. She does not understand why Dr Mkhaliphi, a mysterious boatman, rows her back to the town in the early morning. She cannot remember for how long she has been dead. But she must solve a puzzle from her past as the boatman says, and she has until half past six in the evening to solve the puzzle by observing the everyday lives of the loved ones she left behind. More…
- 19 Feb, 16
- by Tope Salaudeen-Adegoke
- in Young Adult
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- Title: Masai Mara Adventures with Olê Ntutu
- Author: Gerald Kithinji
- Publisher: Morven Kester East Africa Limited
- Number of pages: 202
- Year of publication: 2015
- Category: Young Adult
There is an exigent situation that threatens the existence of animals. Rhinoceroses, elephants, lions have been under attack and their numbers are now drastically reduced. Recently, the saga of Cecil the lion, in Zimbabwe, hunted down and beheaded by an American tourist, roused fury and controversy internationally. And, that is just one case that got media attention – illegal hunting still goes on unreported. Already, the northern white rhinoceros is on the verge of extinction with only five left on the planet. More…
- 08 Dec, 15
- by Tope Salaudeen-Adegoke
- in Young Adult
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- Title: Deviant Boy
- Author: Samuel Nii Ashie Nikoi
- Publisher: Digibooks Ghana Limited
- Number of pages: 162
- Year of publication: 2015
- Category: Young Adult
Deviant Boy is the kind of story some of us probably have told ourselves or imagined several times when we were young, especially when we were animated by daydreams of coming into fabulous riches. This is the kind of story told by Samuel Nii Ashie Nikoi. Deviant Boy is best categorised under young adult literature. The story is most suitable for young adults because of the tone and the language of the narration. More…