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Contemporary African Literature Congress: We Need New Stories!

„The 9 and 10 of June the Deutsche Afrika Stiftung proposes a discussion about contemporary African literature

May 20th, 2016
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African literature is rich but not known well enough. To remedy to that situation, the Deutsche Afrika Stiftung willorganize a congress to discuss African contemporary literature. The event will take place in Theater im Aufbauhaus the 9 and 10 of June.

There are many things to discover with the contemporary African literature. Unfortunately, African authors are too rarely translated into German or if so it is generally with long delays. During two days, the congress “We Need New Stories!” has the ambition to raise the attention given to contemporary African literature through readings, discussions and presentations of authors.

The congress will start on Thursday, June 9th with “The Literature Quartet,” a discussion between four prominent German book critics (Sigrid Löffler, Jörg Plath, Sabine Vogel and Jörg Petzold) about the place and influence of African literature. On Friday June 10th, two roundtables will take place on the following subjects: “which Africans books are not translated into German,” “is African literature suffering from stereotypes” and finally about the “economic constraints lying on African writers and their will to succeed.”

The roundtables will be followed by two panel discussions. The first panel discussion, entitled “What do we want to read?”, will be about the place of the African literature in Germany and how it can reach the readers and to discuss the expectations of the German public and the stereotypes that it can have regarding African literature. This panel discussion will host several guests, including the professor Susanne Gehrmann from the African studies department in Humboldt University and Manfred Metzner, editor for Africa Wunderhorn.

The second panel discussion is named “The power of language. Cultural domination, economic needs and the question of the authentic African writing”. Several questions will be discussed, such as if a book must be attractive for the occidental reader in order to be successful and if the African writers should make some concessions if they want to be read by a large audience. African writers, such as Amma Darko (Ghana), Elnathan John (Nigeria) or Yewande Omotoso (Barbados) will be present to explain their point of view on that topic.

The evening will end with some readings made by the authors and some discussions between the writers and the audience.

References:

News from Berlin
Gaspard Fontaine, Berlin Global