African Writers, Readers, Historians Gather in London

By Robert Gates, London

African writers-novelists, playwrights, poets and their readers as well as art critics and historians would gather in the United Kingdom’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) on October 28. It is to remember an event in 1962 that is said to have partly defined ‘modern’ Africa literary awareness.

Fifty-five years ago, Chinua Achebe, riding on the fame of Things Fall Apart together with other Nigerian playwrights and poets that included Wole Soyinka, JP Clark, Christopher Okigbo (who would die in the Biafra War) and others from West Africa- Kofi Awoonor, Cameron Duodu, Frances Ademola met in Kampala, Uganda. It was to be in communion with their kindred who had also travelled from East and South Africa : Ngugiwa Thiong’o, Ali Mazrui, Dennis Brutus, Lewis Nkosi, Es’ kia Mphahlele. From the Diaspora the African-American, Langston Hughes…