This collection ranges far and wide, as befits the personality and accomplishments of the dedicatee, Geoffrey V. Davis, German studies and exile literature scholar, postcolonialist (if there are ‘specialties’, then Australia, Canada, India, South Africa, Black Britain), journal and book series editor.... Themes covered include publishing in Africa, charisma in African drama, the rediscovery of apartheid-era South African literature, Truth and Reconciliation commissions, South African cinema, children’s theatre in England and Eritrea, and the Third Chimurenga in literary anthologies. Surveyed are texts from Botswana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. Writers discussed (or interviewed: Angela Makholwa) include Ayi Kwei Armah, Seydou Badian, J.M. Coetzee, Chielo Zona Eze, Ruth First, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Bessie Head, Ian Holding, Kavevangua Kahengua, Njabulo Ndebele, Lara Foot Newton, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o/Micere Githae Mugo, Sol Plaatje, Ken Saro–Wiwa, Mongane Wally Serote, Wole Soyinka, and Ed¬gar Wallace, together with essays on the artist Sokari Douglas Camp and the filmmaker Rayda Jacobs. Because Geoff’s commitment to literature has always been ‘hands-on’, the book closes with a selection of poems and an entertaining travelogue/memoir.

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: A Memory Trip
Partly in Tandem, Partly Quadrilogical

AFRICA, MY AFRICA

Holger EHLING
Publishing in Africa: An Overview

Brian CROW
Charisma and Leadership in African Drama

Jurgen MARTINI
The Little White Ship

Elmarr LEHMANN
"The Fateful 13": Sol Plaatje and the Natives' Land Act

Andrew MARTIN
Come Back, Dennis Brutus! Geoffrey Davis and the Rediscovery of Apartheid-Era South African Literature

Jamie S. SCOTT
Space, Time, Solitude: The Liberating Contradictions of Ruth First's 117 Days

Anne FUCHS
Njabulo Ndebele: From Rediscovering the 'Ordinary' to Redefining South African 'Renaissance'

Brian WORSFOLD
To Every Miracle Its Gods: Mongane Wally Serote's Gods of Our Time as a Post-Apartheid Perception of Black Experience

Christine MATZKE
Girls with Guts: Writing a South African Thriller: Angela Makholwa in Conversation

Marcia BLUMBERG
The Politics of Hope: Engaging Lara Foot Newton's Tshepang: The Third Testament

John A. STOTESBURY
Rayda Jacobs's Confessions of a Gambler as Post-Apartheid Cinema

MbongeniI MALABA
Exile and Return in Kavevangua Kahengua's Dreams

M.J. DAYMOND
Making a 'Home' Elsewhere: The Letters of Bessie Head, 1963-1974

James GIBBS
The Portrait of the Artist as a Younger Traveller: A Reader's Response to Wole Soyinka's You Must Set Forth at Dawn

Shirley CHEW
Putting Freedom to the Test: Wole Soyinka's You Must Set Forth at Dawn

Bernth LNDFORS
The Lion and the Jewel on BBC Radio: An Audience Survey

Stella BORG BARTHET
The Politics of Myth in Ayi Kwei Armah's Fragments

Christiane SCHLOTE
Oil, Masquerades, and Memory: Sokari Douglas Camp's Memorial of Ken Saro-Wiwa

Monika REIF-HOLSER
Ways of Transition: Truth and Reconciliation Commissions: Controversial Strategies for Dealing with Past Violence in Societies in Transition

Frank SCHULZE-ENGLER
Freedom vs. Anticolonialism in Zimbabwe: Subversions of the 'Third Chimurenga' Myth in African Literature

Gareth GRIFFITHS
Narrative, Identity and Social Practice in Tanzania: Abdulrazak Gurnah's Ironic Paradise

Jane PLASTOW
Finding Children's Voices: Using Theatre to Critique the Education System in England and Eritrea

WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT

Richard MARTIN
Three poems for Geoff from around the world

Jacques ALVAREZ-PEREYRE
Les revenants I They are back!

Stephen GRAY
Interview with the Last Speaker

Karen KING-ARIBISALA
The Nature of Tragedy

Jurgen JANSEN
he made it - very much his story

PETER STUMMER
Stock-Taking in the Guise of Some Semantic Gymnastics: A raw poem for Geoff, in honour of Hena and Anna

CODA

Hamish WALKER and Michael SENIOR
A Personal Dedication to Dr. Geoffrey Vernon Davis, or, a socialite gentleman scholar, cosmopolitan workaholic, connoisseur of fine books, films, wines, beers, and spirits

Notes on Contributors