Publishers’ Networks and the Making of 21st Century African Literature in English

Abstract

This chapter brings into view the ways in which African literary production can be read through the frame of publishers’ networks and in particular argues for book launches as offering moments of instantiation in relation to these networks. The chapter opens by exploring some of the interactions that surrounded the launch of Achebe’s Arrow of God in Lagos and Ngũgĩ’s Weep Not, Child in Nairobi in 1964, making visible the role of key individuals and their relationships in the construction of literary institutions, and in particular relationships between writers (Achebe and Ngũgĩ) and between editors (Higo and Okigbo) which are focused on craft and generative of new writing and publishing. It then provides an overview of previously published work that has shaped an understanding of and approaches to the role of publishers and networks in African cultural production. Building on this, the chapter moves to explore the launch events for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus in Nigeria in 2004 organised by Farafina and Binyavanga Wainaina’s One Day I Will Write About This Place in Kenya in 2012 organised by Kwani Trust. Through this it examines the complex and shifting relationships at stake in the publishing of anglophone African literature over the last two decades from both outside the continent by publishers in New York and London, and inside the continent by publishers in Lagos and Nairobi.