Challenges facing the African novel

According to the director of the African Writers Trust, Goretti Kyomuhendo, a great African novel is one that is accessible and one can relate to. She said: “It is about accessibility and readability. For me, a great novel is one whose storyline or plot I can engage with, access, read and enjoy. A great novel is one whose characters I can empathise with (be able to cry and laugh with them) and remember, several years after I read the book.”

“A great novel is also one where the writer succeeds in transporting me to the setting or location of their story, so that I can experience that setting, feel it and live in it for the duration that I’m reading the novel,” Kyomuhendo, a Ugandan author, added.

The greatest African novel?
For Kyomuhendo its Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart that stands out as one of her great African novels. “It ticked all the characteristics I mention above. But more crucially, it also inspired me to start writing my own stories; it created in me a sublime feeling of what it meant to be an African, it made Africa look and feel familiar.”

Among Kyomuhendo’s other great novels are Harvest of Thorns by Shimmer Chinodya, Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie and Heart of Redness by Zakes Mda.

“A great novel is one that has accessibility and readily available. It has to be read to make it great and loved,” Prof. Wangusa said.

According to another Ugandan writer, Pamela Acaye, “A great African novel is one which highlights a realistic picture of Africa. One Day I Will Write About This Place is one such novel by Binyavanga Wainana. His perspective is very honest and also unique in regards to the Kenyan Nuances that makes that story his within the novel.”

“The great African novel is that novel that makes us feel at home as Africans, partly or fully, addressing our culture and drives us into the African mystery,” Moses Quinion Galabuzi, a literature teacher at St. Mary’s College Kisubi, said.

James Tumusiime, the group managing director of Fountain Publishers Limited, told Sunday Monitor that a great African novel is: “One that has all the qualities of any great novel, a captivating story to tell; full of life with a gripping narrative style. It should carry the reader along, but in this case using an African experience, setting or characters.”

The event that was held on May 31, 2012, at Fairway Hotel in Kampala was organised by African Writers Trust, a UK-based organisation that facilitates interactions between African writers in the Diaspora and writers on the continent by promoting sharing of skills and learning between the two groups, in partnership with Doen Foundation and the British Council.

The burdened mind
Acaye thinks the major challenge facing the African novel is the lack of resources to make time to be creative and innovative. “A burdened mind is rarely creative; innovative, maybe but hardly creative. This challenge most often leads to writers turning to commercial writing for the sake of earning money and in so doing, the creative edge and identity is lost to the market mix and demands of businesses.”

“There a scarcity of access to creative minds to offer honest critique and editing. Most of these creative minds are also busy doing things other than literal critique to earn a living, which leaves a potentially good novel unrefined and thus mediocre in quality,” Acaye adds.

Acaye has to comprehend with the economics of daily survival and at the same time try to finish writing her novel of which she is still struggling to get a title.

As to how we can improve the low literacy levels in Africa and make the novel accessible to the majority of Africans, Kyomuhendo suggests socialising, poetry and public readings.

“We can improve this by socialising the reading actively. By nature, reading is an isolating exercise. You need to lock yourself away, go to a quiet place in order to read. Many African societies are oral by nature and prefer to engage in spoken activities (see how engaging, popular and all-inclusive ebyevugo, or praise poetry, or even drama is). I think we should encourage more public readings, where we invite authors to read to a group of people and later discuss the book - something like that,” Kyomuhendo argues.

“By telling good stories that capture the imagination of those who have interest in African experiences and sharing the stories through the various book distribution channels like schools, bookshops, and through the growing outlets on the internet. Authors should write from the heart and not merely to please Western readers,” Tumusiime says.

Baingana suggests providing quality education to the masses in order to improve the low literacy levels in Africa and making the novel more accessible.
On her part the folklorist and playwright, Mercy Mirembe Ntangaare emphasised the importance of writing in mother tongues to have literature popularised.

African novelists are seen as not expressing the African experience but imitating the Western experience - in other words, targeting the Western market. While Tumusiime agrees with this observation both Kyomuhendo and Baingana differ.

“The colonial and immediate post-colonial novelists like Chinua Achebe, Ngugi, among others, were driven by genuine African experiences of colonialism and the African experiences under those systems, and were therefore able to strike a chord with both African and international readers. The more contemporary novelists, however, have taken up subjects that are popular with Western thinking, hence the apparent success of women authors most of whom tackle trendy issues like women emancipation, among others,” Tumusiime observes.

“First of all, every writer should be allowed the space (both emotionally and physically) to express themselves. They should have the courage to write about what they wish and choose to write about. I really don’t think it should be about whether a writer is expressing an African or Western experience; rather, we should be more concerned about if these narratives possess the artistic qualities that makes the books ‘great novels,’” Kyomuhendo contends.

Literature and education
Tumusiime then observes that publishing and writing in Africa has not expanded with the education sector. “They are still lagging behind the pace of other sectors like communication and IT development. The paradox is that while the education sector has expanded massively right from primary levels to university, there hasn’t been corresponding growth in writing and publishing. Most publishing services are sourced from abroad although writing of primary and secondary school books are largely written by locals in the different African countries,” he says.

According to Tumusiime the low numbers of readers and libraries are the major challenges facing the publishing industry in Africa.

“Schools should buy books of different categories and have libraries where students can read for leisure and not simply to pass exams. The network of libraries that existed at independence should be expanded and stocked. Leaders should associate themselves with books, read them, buy them, and quote them, and be seen to read them. The media should equally weigh in on the side of books and raise the profile of authors as is the case in western countries,” Tumusiime adds.

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