Read African Books

Anton Krueger

#Interviews

Salimah Valiani interviews Anton Krueger about his poetry collection, Everybody is a Bridge: Poems, Prose-Poems, Notes & Fragments (Botsotso Publishing).

African Arguments Interviews Mkuki Bgoya

#Interviews

Karen Chalamilla, African Arguments, interviews Mkuki Bgoya, publisher at Mkuki na Nyota. 

Samuel Ajibiye

#Interviews

Interview with debut novelist Samuel Ajibiye on his book The Master of Fate (Malthouse Press).

We Can Re-invent Ourselves and Our Future

#Featured on Homepage

Guerrilla Incursions into the Capitalist Mindset

#Reviews

John Graversgaard reviews Guerrilla Incursions into the Capitalist Mindset by Shiraz Durrani for Countercurrents. 

Tanure Ojaide

#Interviews

Interview with multi-award-winning poet and academic Tanure Ojaide on his new collection History and its True Colors (Spears Media Press).

Windows Into Zimbabwe

#Reviews

Franziska Kramer and Jürgen Kramer share part of their Introduction to the Weaver Press short story collection, Windows into Zimbabwe. 

Cameroonian Book Publishing as ‘Defiant Scholarship’

#Opinion

Stephanie Kitchen presented on ‘Book Publishing and Publishing Collectives in Africa’ at a British Academy Writing Workshop on ‘Defiant Scholarship in Africa’.

Centring Africana Voices in Contemporary Publishing

#Opinion

An opinion piece by Jude Fokwang, presented at the Workshop on Defiant Scholarship in Africa, Yaoundé, Cameroon, 18 – 20 June 2024.

Salimah Valiani

#Interviews

Sarah Lubala interviews Salimah Valiani on her new book, IGoli EGoli (Botsotso Publishing).

Report on the Publishing and Book Sector in Morocco, 2022-2023

#Resources

New report on the publishing and book sector in Morocco, which focuses on literature, the humanities, and social sciences (2022–2023).

David Mann

#Interviews

Interview with award-winning editor and arts writer, David Mann, on his new short story collection, Once Removed (Botsotso Publishing).

Books in African Languages Catalogue

#Featured on Homepage

Take a look at the African Books Collective Books in African Languages Catalogue

Wilfred Kanu Jr., Badson Publishing

#Publisher Profiles

Wilfred Kanu Jr., CEO of Badson Publishing, talks about the roots of his publishing venture and how he is working with African Books Collective. 

Zaheera Jina Asvat

#Interviews

Read African Books interviews short story writer, Zaheera Jina Asvat, about her new collection, The Tears of the Weaver (Modjaji Books).

Ashti Juggath

#Interviews

Read African Books interviews South African author Ashti Juggath about her new book, the award winning Peaches and Smeets (Modjaji Books).

Publishing & Book Culture in Africa: A Repository of Selected Resources

#Catalogues

In February 2024, Hans Zell published a new third updated and expanded edition of Publishing & Book Culture in Africa: A Repository of Selected Resources. The repository aims to provide quick access to key literature about the many aspects of book culture, and publishing and book development in sub-Saharan Africa. Zell presents the repository here along with some of the needs of African publishing in the future.

Outstanding African Studies Award

#Featured on Homepage

ABC was delighted to learn that the Publisher of Mkuki na Nyota Publishers  and founding Chair of the Council of Management of ABC, Walter Bgoya, and Mary Jay, earlier consultant, CEO and director of ABC, have been awarded the Outstanding African Studies Award by the African Studies Association of the UK. We congratulate both on this achievement and note their groundbreaking and longstanding contributions to ABC's collective efforts to publish and disseminate African books, literature and research globally.

ABC's Statement on Gaza

#Opinion

African Books Collective's Statement on Gaza

Henry Chakava 1946-2024: The Publisher Who Pricked the People into Consciousness

#Featured on Homepage

Hawthornden Foundation and ABC

#Featured on Homepage

Press release: Grant fund from the Hawthornden Foundation

Henry Chakava: In memoriam

#Featured on Homepage

ABC Spring Catalogue 2024

#Catalogues

Take a look at the African Books Collective Spring 2024 Catalogue!

Stephanie Kitchen

#Interviews

Stephanie Kitchen, African Books Collective Director, speaks to the Independent Publishers Guild podcast about all things ABC.

David Mills

#Interviews

Interview with David Mills, University of Oxford academic and now African Books Collective Director!

ABC Children and Teens Books 2023-24

#Catalogues

Take a look at the African Books Collective Children and Teens 2023-24 Catalogue!

ABC Fall Catalogue 2023

#Catalogues

Take a look at the African Books Collective's Fall 2023 Catalogue!

ABC Literature Catalogue 2023

#Catalogues

Take a look at the African Books Collective's 2023 Literature Catalogue!

ABC Catalogue 2022–2023

#Catalogues

Welcome to the African Books Collective Catalogue 2022-2023! Explore books from 30 independent publishers from across 12 African countries.

Nii Ayikwei Parkes

#Interviews

Interview with Nii Ayikwei Parkes, British-Ghanaian writer, editor, publisher, and now African Books Collective Director.

Decolonising Knowledge and its Challenges

#Conferences & Workshops

For Africa, knowledge is a contested site that acquires affirmations, claims, and delineations. İt has to operate through many layers. In fact, is Africa a discourse, or an idea or concept? These are the questions begging to be asked. Ahmet Sait Akcay reflects on the recent ASAA conference.

Transforming African Scholarly Writing

#Conferences & Workshops

African scholarship, like all scholarship, must be conducted rigorously, follow scientific methods, account for context, and stand up to critical appraisal. Why, however, refer specifically to “African scholarly writing?”

Mad Bob Republic

#Reviews

Tendai Mwanaka is a Zimbabwean writer, editor and publisher who has published 21 books and 23 curated anthologies. Perhaps his best-known anthologies are the Best New African Poets anthologies that have provided a forum for poets across the African continent.

Babingo, the Nobel Rebel

#Reviews

At the last count there were 48,400,000 fictional accounts on the theme of Colonialism globally.

Zeb Silhouette

#Reviews

It is amazing that in a year when an African novelist, Abdulrasaq Gurhni won the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Norwegian Academy referred to as "his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents," a phenomenal new book on ‘the cause of women, love and immigration’ would be published.

A good reading culture: Potential game changer in Africa

#Opinion

I made a deal with my eight-year-old son that for every book above 110 pages that he reads, I’ll pay him 15 rands, an equivalent of one United States Dollar (US$1).

Literature Catalogue 2021

#Literature and Writers

Welcome to the African Books Collective Literature Catalogue 2021, a double-issue which features titles published since March 2020. Inside are books from 30 independent publishers across 12 African countries.

The Disillusioned African

#Reviews

Published in 1995, The Disillusioned Africans consists of letters about the observations and experiences of a black student-academic living in London in the 1980s. The novel brings up many issues that determine the present and future of the continent, from the African discourse to the administrations in the postcolonies.

Henry Chakava

#Interviews

After graduating from the University of Nairobi in 1972, Henry Chakava was looking at postgraduate scholarship offers from local and international universities. While thinking through his options, his lecturer at the Department of Literature, Professor Andrew Gurr, arranged a temporary job at the Nairobi office of Heinemann Educational Books Limited (HEB). This temporary job instead became a life dedicated to books as he fell in love with publishing.

Vitabu kwa Swahili 2021

#Publishers and Publishing

Karibu ABC na karibu upitie katalogi ya Vitabu vya Kiswahili kutoka kwa wachapishaji wa vitabu kutoka Afrika ya Mashariki, na mmoja kutoka Afrika ya Kusini, jambo la kushangaza na kuvutia. Kiswahili kinaenea kote Mashariki na Kusini mwa Afrika.