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The Wanderers by Ezekiel Mphahlele. New York. 1971. Macmillan. 351 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by digeorge.  

DESCRIPTION - The Wanderers is a complex, brilliant, and unprecedented novel; the most ambitious and panoramic work yet to come out of modern Africa. Exposing, for the first time, the South African in exile, it extends beyond the confines of one nation to explore the problems of Pan Africanism and the reasons for the wars that shattered Nigeria and continue to plague the entire continent. ‘How can I make my children understand we have all wandered away from something - all of us blacks; that we are not in close contact with the spirit of Nature, although we may be with its forces, that growing up for us is no more the integrated process it was for our forbears, but that this is also a universal problem?' A stranger in his hostile homeland of South Africa, an exile in ravaged Nigeria and black colonial Kenya, Timi Tabane is one of The Wanderers, a group of intellectuals and political activists - both black and white - stripped of home, country, and hope. A teacher-journalist who dared investigate and print the truth about kidnapping and murder South African slave farm, Tabane is condemned to run for his life - forever. And so the odyssey of Tabane his family begins; a harrowing trek along the west coast of Africa in search of refuge. Teaching in high schools and universities; watching, listening, and understanding that there is no asylum for the black exile - not even in ‘black' Africa. And so they move again, to East Africa and the comic-opera rule of a black government dressed in British colonial convention and white imperialist money. Inevitably, the years of rootlessness and frustration take their toll: In nightmares of pursuit; in forcibly abandoned intimacies; and in the violent, tragic death of Timi's rebellious son who chooses to die for freedom rather than flee for life. The Wanderers are black and white, colorless in their exile and equal in their alienation. Political nomads, they move through a tragic ritual search for shelter, drifting from one turbulent country to another, victims - and perpetrators - of the violence that has enslaved them. EZEKIEL MPHAHLELE grew up in Praetoria, South Africa, and was educated at the University of South Africa. He lived in Nigeria for four years, teaching at the University of Ibadan. He is the author of Down Second Avenue, a novel, and three volumes of collections of his own short stories.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Es'kia Mphahlele (December 17, 1919 - October 27, 2008) was a South African writer, academic, artist and activist. He was born as Ezekiel Mphahlele but changed his name to Es'kia in 1977. Mphahlele's first book of short stories, MAN MUST LIVE, was published in 1947. Banned from teaching by the apartheid government in 1951, Mphahlele supported himself and his family through a series of clerical jobs before leaving South Africa to teach in the British Protectorate of Basutoland. On his return to South Africa, Mphahlele soon found a job as a political reporter, sub-editor and fiction editor on the innovative popular magazine Drum, under its editors Anthony Sampson and later under Sylvester Stein, while studying for a Master's degree by correspondence at UNISA (The University of South Africa). Es'kia Mphahlele's life and work is currently found in the efforts of The Es'kia Institute, a non-governmental, non-profit organization based in Johannesburg. During the 1950s Mphahlele became increasingly politicized, and joined the African National Congress in 1955. Disappointed in ANC approach to matters of education - he later disassociated himself from the organization. In 1957, Mphahlele was offered a job teaching in a Church Mission Society school in Lagos, Nigeria. Unwilling to permit him to travel abroad because of his political activities, the South African government finally granted him a passport in September 1957. Mphahlele spent the following twenty years in exile: first in Nigeria, and subsequently in Kenya, where he was director of the Chemchemi Cultural Centre; Zambia; France and the United States, where he earned a doctoral degree from the University of Denver and taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Mphahlele returned to South Africa in 1977 and joined the faculty of the University of the Witwatersrand.

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The African Image by Ezekiel Mphahlele. London. 1962. Faber & Faber. 240 pages. hardcover.  

DESCRIPTION -  ‘I personally cannot think of the future of my people in South Africa as something in which the white man does not feature. Whether he likes it or not, our destinies are inseparable. I have seen too much that is good in Western culture - for example its music, literature and theatre - to want to repudiate it.' It is in the context of this personal declaration that Ezekiel Mphahlele examines the political and cultural aspirations, not only of his countrymen, but of Africans in general; particularly as formulated in concepts as 'Negritude', 'The African Personality' and Pan-Africanism. Experience of social conditions in both South Africa and Nigeria as well as his own keen intelligence enable him to discuss these concepts and their background with an incisiveness which leaves little room for complacency on the part of black or white. second half of the book pursues the enquiry in a literary context, being a much-needed critical survey of the black man's image in white and non-white fiction, ranging from William Faulkner to Amos Tutuola, Richard Wright to Doris Lessing.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Es'kia Mphahlele (December 17, 1919 - October 27, 2008) was a South African writer, academic, artist and activist. He was born as Ezekiel Mphahlele but changed his name to Es'kia in 1977. Mphahlele's first book of short stories, MAN MUST LIVE, was published in 1947. Banned from teaching by the apartheid government in 1951, Mphahlele supported himself and his family through a series of clerical jobs before leaving South Africa to teach in the British Protectorate of Basutoland. On his return to South Africa, Mphahlele soon found a job as a political reporter, sub-editor and fiction editor on the innovative popular magazine Drum, under its editors Anthony Sampson and later under Sylvester Stein, while studying for a Master's degree by correspondence at UNISA (The University of South Africa). Es'kia Mphahlele's life and work is currently found in the efforts of The Es'kia Institute, a non-governmental, non-profit organization based in Johannesburg. During the 1950s Mphahlele became increasingly politicized, and joined the African National Congress in 1955. Disappointed in ANC approach to matters of education - he later disassociated himself from the organization. In 1957, Mphahlele was offered a job teaching in a Church Mission Society school in Lagos, Nigeria. Unwilling to permit him to travel abroad because of his political activities, the South African government finally granted him a passport in September 1957. Mphahlele spent the following twenty years in exile: first in Nigeria, and subsequently in Kenya, where he was director of the Chemchemi Cultural Centre; Zambia; France and the United States, where he earned a doctoral degree from the University of Denver and taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Mphahlele returned to South Africa in 1977 and joined the faculty of the University of the Witwatersrand.

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Down Second Avenue by Ezekiel Mphahlele. Garden City. 1971. Anchor Books. 210 pages. paperback. Cover design by Bob Cunningham. Cover typography by Jim McWilliams.  

DESCRIPTION - This classic is the autobiography of a black South African, describing the struggle for human dignity in the quagmire of poverty, violence and apartheid. The scene moves briskly from the rural reserves to the slums and shantytowns of Pretoria and Capetown as the protagonist reconstructs his development from child to adult and his growing awareness of the limits imposed by the system on his horizon. In narrating the author's life story, this book illuminates the whole South African scene, revealing life in all its luridness, the raw unpleasantness of everyday life, the endless silly restrictions imposed by the petty bureaucracy and the savage environment in which violence and brutalization are accepted as mundane facts of life. This is also the story of a people and their way of survival, a story studded with portraits of indefatigable characters whose experiences speak volumes about the frightful pressures and contradictions of the South African pigmentocracy. A Doubleday Anchor Original.

In a Penguin Classic edition:

Down Second Avenue by Es'kia Mphahlele. New York. 2013. Penguin Books. 9780143106791. Foreword by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. 236 pages. paperback. Cover art by Eric White.

  
DESCRIPTION - Es'kia Mphahlele's seminal memoir of life in apartheid South Africa - available for the first time in Penguin Classics. Nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1969, Es'kia Mphahlele is considered the Dean of African Letters and the father of black South African writing. Down Second Avenue is a landmark book that describes Mphahlele's experience growing up in segregated South Africa. Vivid, graceful, and unapologetic, it details a daily life of severe poverty and brutal police surveillance under the subjugation of an apartheid regime. Banned in South Africa after its original 1959 publication for its protest against apartheid, Down Second Avenue is a foundational work of literature that continues to inspire activists today. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Es'kia Mphahlele (December 17, 1919 - October 27, 2008) was a South African writer, academic, artist and activist. He was born as Ezekiel Mphahlele but changed his name to Es'kia in 1977. Mphahlele's first book of short stories, MAN MUST LIVE, was published in 1947. Banned from teaching by the apartheid government in 1951, Mphahlele supported himself and his family through a series of clerical jobs before leaving South Africa to teach in the British Protectorate of Basutoland. On his return to South Africa, Mphahlele soon found a job as a political reporter, sub-editor and fiction editor on the innovative popular magazine Drum, under its editors Anthony Sampson and later under Sylvester Stein, while studying for a Master's degree by correspondence at UNISA (The University of South Africa). Es'kia Mphahlele's life and work is currently found in the efforts of The Es'kia Institute, a non-governmental, non-profit organization based in Johannesburg. During the 1950s Mphahlele became increasingly politicized, and joined the African National Congress in 1955. Disappointed in ANC approach to matters of education - he later disassociated himself from the organization. In 1957, Mphahlele was offered a job teaching in a Church Mission Society school in Lagos, Nigeria. Unwilling to permit him to travel abroad because of his political activities, the South African government finally granted him a passport in September 1957. Mphahlele spent the following twenty years in exile: first in Nigeria, and subsequently in Kenya, where he was director of the Chemchemi Cultural Centre; Zambia; France and the United States, where he earned a doctoral degree from the University of Denver and taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Mphahlele returned to South Africa in 1977 and joined the faculty of the University of the Witwatersrand.

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Renewal Time by Es'kia Mphahlele. Columbia. 1988. Readers International. 0930523555. 215 pages. hardcover.  

DESCRIPTION - Es'kia Mphahlele's 1988 publication RENEWAL TIME, contains stories he published previously as well as an autobiographical afterword on his return to South Africa and a section from AFRIKA MY MUSIC, his 1984 autobiography. Stories like ‘Mrs. Plum' and ‘The Living and the Dead' have received praise by critics reviewing Mphahlele's work. Charles R. Larson, reviewing the work in the Washington Post Book World, says that the stories in the book present ‘almost ironic images of racial tension under apartheid.' He cites ‘Mrs. Plum' as ‘the gem of this volume.' The story is a first-person narrative by a black South African servant girl, and through her words, says Larson, ‘Mphahlele creates the most devastating picture of a liberal South African white.' Includes - The Sounds Begin Again, The Stories, The Living and the Dead, He and the Cat, The Barber of Bariga, The Ballad of Oyo, A Point of Identity, Grieg on a Stolen Piano, In Corner B, Mrs Plum and Renewal Time.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Es'kia Mphahlele (December 17, 1919 - October 27, 2008) was a South African writer, academic, artist and activist. He was born as Ezekiel Mphahlele but changed his name to Es'kia in 1977. Mphahlele's first book of short stories, MAN MUST LIVE, was published in 1947. Banned from teaching by the apartheid government in 1951, Mphahlele supported himself and his family through a series of clerical jobs before leaving South Africa to teach in the British Protectorate of Basutoland. On his return to South Africa, Mphahlele soon found a job as a political reporter, sub-editor and fiction editor on the innovative popular magazine Drum, under its editors Anthony Sampson and later under Sylvester Stein, while studying for a Master's degree by correspondence at UNISA (The University of South Africa). Es'kia Mphahlele's life and work is currently found in the efforts of The Es'kia Institute, a non-governmental, non-profit organization based in Johannesburg. During the 1950s Mphahlele became increasingly politicized, and joined the African National Congress in 1955. Disappointed in ANC approach to matters of education - he later disassociated himself from the organization. In 1957, Mphahlele was offered a job teaching in a Church Mission Society school in Lagos, Nigeria. Unwilling to permit him to travel abroad because of his political activities, the South African government finally granted him a passport in September 1957. Mphahlele spent the following twenty years in exile: first in Nigeria, and subsequently in Kenya, where he was director of the Chemchemi Cultural Centre; Zambia; France and the United States, where he earned a doctoral degree from the University of Denver and taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Mphahlele returned to South Africa in 1977 and joined the faculty of the University of the Witwatersrand.

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Chirundu by Es'kia Mphahlele. Westport. 1981. Lawrence Hill & Company. 0882081225. 158 pages. paperback.  

DESCRIPTION - In this novel, noted South African writer Es'kia Mphahlele pursues through the dominant symbol of the python the sinister power wielded by his chief character, Chirundu. Chirundu, minister of transport and public works in an independent African country, is brought down by a bigamy charge initiated by his wife Tirenje and a transport strike led by his nephew Moyo. In the narratives of these three characters author Mphahlele weaves together the strands of contemporary Africa  - of the new bureaucracy that has taken over the reins of power from white European administrators against the new and progressive forces. There is no resolution. The novel ends with the reflection that ‘once they have tasted power, they will always try to come back.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Es'kia Mphahlele (December 17, 1919 - October 27, 2008) was a South African writer, academic, artist and activist. He was born as Ezekiel Mphahlele but changed his name to Es'kia in 1977. Mphahlele's first book of short stories, MAN MUST LIVE, was published in 1947. Banned from teaching by the apartheid government in 1951, Mphahlele supported himself and his family through a series of clerical jobs before leaving South Africa to teach in the British Protectorate of Basutoland. On his return to South Africa, Mphahlele soon found a job as a political reporter, sub-editor and fiction editor on the innovative popular magazine Drum, under its editors Anthony Sampson and later under Sylvester Stein, while studying for a Master's degree by correspondence at UNISA (The University of South Africa). Es'kia Mphahlele's life and work is currently found in the efforts of The Es'kia Institute, a non-governmental, non-profit organization based in Johannesburg. During the 1950s Mphahlele became increasingly politicized, and joined the African National Congress in 1955. Disappointed in ANC approach to matters of education - he later disassociated himself from the organization. In 1957, Mphahlele was offered a job teaching in a Church Mission Society school in Lagos, Nigeria. Unwilling to permit him to travel abroad because of his political activities, the South African government finally granted him a passport in September 1957. Mphahlele spent the following twenty years in exile: first in Nigeria, and subsequently in Kenya, where he was director of the Chemchemi Cultural Centre; Zambia; France and the United States, where he earned a doctoral degree from the University of Denver and taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Mphahlele returned to South Africa in 1977 and joined the faculty of the University of the Witwatersrand.

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Afrika My Music: An Autobiography 1957-1983 by Es'kia Mphahlele. Johannesburg. 1984. Ravan Press. 0869752375. 260 pages. paperback. Cover painting by Eli Kyeyune. Cover design by The Graphic Equalizer.  

DESCRIPTION - Es'kia Mphahlele's first work of autobiography, Down Second Avenue, is one of the classics of African literature. After that seedtime came the years of exile - during which - he was 'listed' person - none of his works could be read in South Africa. His second autobiography, Afrika My Music, is set amidst the tumultuous years of his return to South Africa after 1976. 'Bantu Education' - the system which had forced him out of teaching and into exile when it was introduced in the Fifties  - had triggered the Soweto revolt barely a month before he returned to his native land after twenty years in Europe, Africa and the United States. Drawing strength from ancestral ground he begins to grapple with old cultural dilemmas that haven't gone away, and new ones that plague an age of pseudo-reform. Meanwhile he unpacks his traveller's trunk of memories. African writers, artists, musicians, educationists and politicians crowd his pages, in settings ranging from Ibadan through Paris to Philadelphia. Friendships and conversations with the living and the dead, university teaching, work as an organiser of arts programmes in Africa - against this backdrop the mature views of Mphahlele the African Humanist come into focus. We begin to understand his controversial decision to return, and what it was he, came back to do.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Es'kia Mphahlele (December 17, 1919 - October 27, 2008) was a South African writer, academic, artist and activist. He was born as Ezekiel Mphahlele but changed his name to Es'kia in 1977. Mphahlele's first book of short stories, MAN MUST LIVE, was published in 1947. Banned from teaching by the apartheid government in 1951, Mphahlele supported himself and his family through a series of clerical jobs before leaving South Africa to teach in the British Protectorate of Basutoland. On his return to South Africa, Mphahlele soon found a job as a political reporter, sub-editor and fiction editor on the innovative popular magazine Drum, under its editors Anthony Sampson and later under Sylvester Stein, while studying for a Master's degree by correspondence at UNISA (The University of South Africa). Es'kia Mphahlele's life and work is currently found in the efforts of The Es'kia Institute, a non-governmental, non-profit organization based in Johannesburg. During the 1950s Mphahlele became increasingly politicized, and joined the African National Congress in 1955. Disappointed in ANC approach to matters of education - he later disassociated himself from the organization. In 1957, Mphahlele was offered a job teaching in a Church Mission Society school in Lagos, Nigeria. Unwilling to permit him to travel abroad because of his political activities, the South African government finally granted him a passport in September 1957. Mphahlele spent the following twenty years in exile: first in Nigeria, and subsequently in Kenya, where he was director of the Chemchemi Cultural Centre; Zambia; France and the United States, where he earned a doctoral degree from the University of Denver and taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Mphahlele returned to South Africa in 1977 and joined the faculty of the University of the Witwatersrand.

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In Corner B: Short Stories by Ezekiel Mphahlele. Nairobi. 1967. East Africa Publishing House. 208 pages. paperback. 

 
DESCRIPTION - In this exciting collection of short stories he has chiefly drawn on his experiences in Nigeria and South Africa. The book ends with a disturbing short novel called MRS. PLUM which is one of the most damning and bitter indictments of the white ‘liberals' in South Africa yet printed.

And in a Penguin Classic edition:

In Corner B by Es’kia Mphahlele. New York. 2010. Penguin Books. 9780143106029. Introduction by Peter N. Thuynsma. 237 pages. paperback. Cover art by Eric White. 

 
DESCRIPTION - The quintessential story collection - from the father of modern black South African writing. Ezekiel Mphahlele was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969. Originally published in 1967, IN CORNER B contains the core stories of his landmark collection about life in rural and urban South Africa during the days of Apartheid, together with stories written after his return to South Africa as Es'kia Mphahlele. In a new introduction for the first new edition of Mphahalele's work since his death in 2008, South African scholar Peter Thuynsma presents the ‘dean of African letters' to a new general of readers.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Es'kia Mphahlele (December 17, 1919 - October 27, 2008) was a South African writer, academic, artist and activist. He was born as Ezekiel Mphahlele but changed his name to Es'kia in 1977. Mphahlele's first book of short stories, MAN MUST LIVE, was published in 1947. Banned from teaching by the apartheid government in 1951, Mphahlele supported himself and his family through a series of clerical jobs before leaving South Africa to teach in the British Protectorate of Basutoland. On his return to South Africa, Mphahlele soon found a job as a political reporter, sub-editor and fiction editor on the innovative popular magazine Drum, under its editors Anthony Sampson and later under Sylvester Stein, while studying for a Master's degree by correspondence at UNISA (The University of South Africa). Es'kia Mphahlele's life and work is currently found in the efforts of The Es'kia Institute, a non-governmental, non-profit organization based in Johannesburg. During the 1950s Mphahlele became increasingly politicized, and joined the African National Congress in 1955. Disappointed in ANC approach to matters of education - he later disassociated himself from the organization. In 1957, Mphahlele was offered a job teaching in a Church Mission Society school in Lagos, Nigeria. Unwilling to permit him to travel abroad because of his political activities, the South African government finally granted him a passport in September 1957. Mphahlele spent the following twenty years in exile: first in Nigeria, and subsequently in Kenya, where he was director of the Chemchemi Cultural Centre; Zambia; France and the United States, where he earned a doctoral degree from the University of Denver and taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Mphahlele returned to South Africa in 1977 and joined the faculty of the University of the Witwatersrand.

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Voices in the Whirlwind and Other Essays by Ezekiel Mphahlele. New York. 1969. Hill & Wang. 0809096277. 215 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Paul Randall Mize.

  
DESCRIPTION - Six essays by a notable South African novelist and scholar offer profound insights into the literature and culture of Africa and Black America. This is a pioneering work that defines and delineates the aesthetics of black writing, showing how and why it differs from the traditions of Western white literature, why the best black writing is committed and revolutionary while its white counterpart is experimental, introspective, and concerned with styles and techniques. Dr. Mphahlele explores the meaning and function of a poetry that is born of political controversy and conflict, and reveals the riches of a live mythology and an oral tradition. Examples from LeRoi Jones, Gwendolyn Brooks, Samuel Allen, Audre Lorde, Sonia Sanchez, Wole Soyinka, Dennis Brutus, and many others illustrate a rich and vibrant culture, a growing tradition that is both powerful and sophisticated. Ezekiel Mphahlele, who has lived and worked in both Africa and America, writes from the heart of this tradition with penetration, anger, and pride.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Es'kia Mphahlele (December 17, 1919 - October 27, 2008) was a South African writer, academic, artist and activist. He was born as Ezekiel Mphahlele but changed his name to Es'kia in 1977. Mphahlele's first book of short stories, MAN MUST LIVE, was published in 1947. Banned from teaching by the apartheid government in 1951, Mphahlele supported himself and his family through a series of clerical jobs before leaving South Africa to teach in the British Protectorate of Basutoland. On his return to South Africa, Mphahlele soon found a job as a political reporter, sub-editor and fiction editor on the innovative popular magazine Drum, under its editors Anthony Sampson and later under Sylvester Stein, while studying for a Master's degree by correspondence at UNISA (The University of South Africa). Es'kia Mphahlele's life and work is currently found in the efforts of The Es'kia Institute, a non-governmental, non-profit organization based in Johannesburg. During the 1950s Mphahlele became increasingly politicized, and joined the African National Congress in 1955. Disappointed in ANC approach to matters of education - he later disassociated himself from the organization. In 1957, Mphahlele was offered a job teaching in a Church Mission Society school in Lagos, Nigeria. Unwilling to permit him to travel abroad because of his political activities, the South African government finally granted him a passport in September 1957. Mphahlele spent the following twenty years in exile: first in Nigeria, and subsequently in Kenya, where he was director of the Chemchemi Cultural Centre; Zambia; France and the United States, where he earned a doctoral degree from the University of Denver and taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Mphahlele returned to South Africa in 1977 and joined the faculty of the University of the Witwatersrand.

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Writers in Politics by Ngugi wa Thiong’o. London/Nairobi. 1981. Heinemann. 0435917528. 142 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Christie Archer.

DESCRIPTION - Ngügi's detention without trial in Kenya during most of 1978 has marked a new phase in his development as a writer. While his first collection of essays, HOMECOMING, focused on African and Caribbean politics and culture, the title of this second volume gives notice of a declared political commitment that is reflected in Ngügi's own words: ‘We writers and critics of African literature should form an essential intellectual part of the anti-imperialist cultural army of African peoples for total economic and political liberation from imperialism and foreign domination.' This firm commitment, which was first evident in Ngügi's novel PETALS OF BLOOD (AWS 188), has been elaborated in his most recent work, especially in DETAINED: A WRITER'S PRISON DIARY (AWS 240). It inspired the Kikuyu play believed to be responsible for his detention Ngaahika Ndeenda (I WILL MARRY WHEN I CHOOSE, written with Ngügi wa Mini). 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ngugi wa Thiong'o (born January 5, 1938) is a Kenyan author, formerly working in English and now working in Gikuyu. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal, Mutiiri. In 1977, Ngugi embarked upon a novel form of theater in his native Kenya which sought to liberate the theatrical process from what he held to be ‘the general bourgeois education system', by encouraging spontaneity and audience participation in the performances. Ngugi's project sought to ‘demystify' the theatrical process, and to avoid the ‘process of alienation [which] produces a gallery of active stars and an undifferentiated mass of grateful admirers' which, according to Ngugi, encourages passivity in ‘ordinary people'. Although Ngaahika Ndeenda was a commercial success, it was shut down by the authoritarian Kenyan regime six weeks after its opening. Ngugi was subsequently imprisoned for over a year. Adopted as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, the artist was released from prison, and fled Kenya. In the United States, he taught at Yale University for some years, and has since also taught at New York University, with a dual professorship in Comparative Literature and Performance Studies, and the University of California, Irvine. Ngugi has frequently been regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His son is the author Mukoma wa Ngugi. Ngugi was born in Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kiambu district, Kenya, of Kikuyu descent, and baptised James Ngugi. His family was caught up in the Mau Mau War; his half brother Mwangi was actively involved in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, and his mother was tortured at Kamriithu homeguard post. He received a B.A. in English from Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, in 1963; during his education, a play of his, THE BLACK HERMIT, was produced in Kampala in 1962. He published his first novel, WEEP NOT, CHILD, in 1964, which he wrote while attending the University of Leeds in England. It was the first novel in English to be published by an East African. His second novel, THE RIVER BETWEEN (1965), has as its background the Mau Mau rebellion, and described an unhappy romance between Christians and non-Christians. THE RIVER BETWEEN is currently on Kenya's national secondary school syllabus. His novel A Grain of Wheat (1967) marked his embrace of Fanonist Marxism. He subsequently renounced English, Christianity, and the name James Ngugi as colonialist; he changed his name back to Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and began to write in his native Gikuyu and Swahili. The uncensored political message of his 1977 play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I WILL MARRY WHEN I WANT) provoked then Vice President Daniel arap Moi to order his arrest. While detained in the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, he wrote the first modern novel in Gikuyu, Caitaani mutharaba-Ini (DEVIL ON THE CROSS), on prison-issued toilet paper. After his release, he was not reinstated to his job as professor at Nairobi University, and his family was harassed. Due to his writing about the injustices of the dictatorial government at the time, Ngugi and his family were forced to live in exile. Only after Arap Moi was voted out of office, 22 years later, was it safe for them to return. His later works include Detained, his prison diary (1981), DECOLONISING THE MIND: THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE IN AFRICAN LITERATURE (1986), an essay arguing for African writers' expression in their native languages, rather than European languages, in order to renounce lingering colonial ties and to build an authentic African literature, and MATIGARI (1987), one of his most famous works, a satire based on a Gikuyu folktale. In 1992 he became a professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University, where he held the Erich Maria Remarque Chair. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature as well as the Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine. On August 8, 2004, Ngugi returned to Kenya as part of a month-long tour of East Africa. On August 11, robbers broke into his apartment: they assaulted both the Professor and his wife, and stole money and a computer. Since then, Ngugi has returned to America, and in the summer 2006 the American publishing firm Random House published his first new novel in nearly two decades, WIZARD OF THE CROW, translated to English from Gikuyu by the author. On November 10, 2006, while in San Francisco at Hotel Vitale at the Embarcadero, Ngugi was harassed and ordered to leave the hotel by an employee. The event led to a public outcry and angered the Kenyan community in the San Francisco Bay area and abroad, prompting an apology by the hotel.

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The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises by Nikos Kazantzakis. New York. 1960. Simon & Schuster. Translated from the Greek, with an introduction, by Kimon Friar. hardcover.  

DESCRIPTION - The Saviors of God is the spiritual testament of Nikos Kazantzakis, author of The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, Zorba the Greek, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Report to Greco. Containing the core of his philosophy, it is, in the legacy of his work, the equivalent of Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra. The Saviors of God provides a key to all of Kazantzakis' work even as it stands on its own as a passionate and systematic view of the relationship between Man and God.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Nikos Kazantzakis (18 February 1883 - 26 October 1957) was a Greek writer and philosopher, celebrated for his novel Zorba the Greek, considered his magnum opus. He became known globally after the 1964 release of the Michael Cacoyannis film Zorba the Greek, based on the novel. He gained renewed fame with the 1988 Martin Scorsese adaptation of his book The Last Temptation of Christ.

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The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel by Nikos Kazantzakis. New York. 1958. Simon & Schuster. Translated by Kimon Friar. 824 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - The 1938 publication of this modern Greek epic -- the author had to append a lexicon of thousands of words familiar to Greek shepherds and fishermen but not to Athenian scholars, and he had the nerve to delete most of the language's archaic Byzantine accent marks -- caused as much furor in Greek literary circles as had the publication of Joyce's "Ulysses" in English.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Nikos Kazantzakis (18 February 1883 - 26 October 1957) was a Greek writer and philosopher, celebrated for his novel Zorba the Greek, considered his magnum opus. He became known globally after the 1964 release of the Michael Cacoyannis film Zorba the Greek, based on the novel. He gained renewed fame with the 1988 Martin Scorsese adaptation of his book The Last Temptation of Christ.

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The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis. New York. 1960. Simon & Schuster. Translated by P.A. Bien. 506 pages. hardcover.  

DESCRIPTION - Hailed as a masterpiece by critics worldwide, The Last Temptation of Christ is a monumental reinterpretation of the Gospels that brilliantly fleshes out Christ's Passion. This literary rendering of the life of Jesus Christ has courted controversy since its publication by depicting a Christ far more human than the one seen in the Bible. He is a figure who is gloriously divine but earthy and human, a man like any othersubject to fear, doubt, and pain. "A searing, soaring, shocking novel: (Time). 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Nikos Kazantzakis (18 February 1883 - 26 October 1957) was a Greek writer and philosopher, celebrated for his novel Zorba the Greek, considered his magnum opus. He became known globally after the 1964 release of the Michael Cacoyannis film Zorba the Greek, based on the novel. He gained renewed fame with the 1988 Martin Scorsese adaptation of his book The Last Temptation of Christ.

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The Greek Passion by Nikos Kazantzakis. New York. 1954. Simon & Schuster. Translated from the Greek by Jonathan Griffin. 433 pages. hardcover. Jacket Design by Sam Fischer.  

DESCRIPTION - Like all great novels, this book is about the deepest passions and thoughts of man. Its story is the story of a Greek village under Turkish domination. The story begins when wily Priest Grigoris gathers the Elders of Lycovrissi together and selects from among the villagers a Christ and his followers for the Passion. Then the deep peace in which the little village has prospered and grown fat suddenly is shattered. Like a finger of God, demanding proof of faith, the exhausted survivors of a sacked and gutted village wander into the square, begging asylum. They are turned away in wrath by the prosperous to seek refuge on the rocky mountains, there to feed their hunger with wild herbs and their hearts with renewing prayer. But as they go, led in their anguish by the blazing spirit of Father Fotis, their unconquerable priest and leader, the hearts of the newly chosen Holy Ones go with them. As the days run, the lives these men had known gradually disappear; the force of their faith and of their roles in the Passion-to-come begins to shape their souls anew into maturity. Manolios, the dreamy shepherd, endures a horrible scourge as he struggles to portray the Christ; a naïve, jolly peddler forgets his petty thievery; the son of the village aristocrat forgoes his wealth and his idleness. The luscious widow, Katerina, the Mary Magdalen, pays dearly for her new faith, and wild Judas finally fulfills his destiny. In the midst of the struggle sits the tyrant of the village, Agha the Turk. Like a bloated spider he draw~ in perversion and lust to spin a web of death. About him, hating and fearing him, cluster the Elders, each busy with his own sins: Priest Grigoris, pride; archon Patriarcheas, gluttony; old Ladas, avarice; schoolmaster Hadji Nicolas, cowardice. Through all the vast warmth and richness of the novel, a masterful unfolding of character takes place; we come to know each man and woman in the recesses of his soul, always furiously, alive and bursting with a fierce energy to achieve his own goals. We share the joyous warmth of summer and harvest; the wild, pan-like mating of Lenid and Nikolio; the half-wanton, half-sacred feast of Prophet Elijah; the brutal death of Hussein; the desperate battle at the town gate between the wanderers and the villagers. Like thin rivers of blood run the two great themes: Man's inheritance of the Christian virtues, and his duty to humanity. Those who stride with high faith toward love of all men find their way blocked by those who refuse to give out of selfishness. Each man gradually turns toward that which he must do, evil or good. The monumental forces that have boiled underground erupt to sweep them all toward a devastating climax - the great Passion.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Nikos Kazantzakis (18 February 1883 - 26 October 1957) was a Greek writer and philosopher, celebrated for his novel Zorba the Greek, considered his magnum opus. He became known globally after the 1964 release of the Michael Cacoyannis film Zorba the Greek, based on the novel. He gained renewed fame with the 1988 Martin Scorsese adaptation of his book The Last Temptation of Christ.

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Freedom or Death by Nikos Kazantzakis. New York. 1956. Simon & Schuster. Translated from the Greek by Jonathan Griffin. 435 pages. hardcover.  

DESCRIPTION - The author of ZORBA THE GREEK and THE GREEK PASSION has built his new novel on a heroic scale and set it on the island of Crete. It is about the suffering, patience, and rebellion of a suppressed people. In 1897 the Greek Christians rose up in arms against the tyranny of the Turkish conquerors; in 1913 the island was finally reunited with the Greek motherland. The provocations, the guerrilla warfare, and the detonation of the forces of liberty are the main subjects of the book. FREEDOM OR DEATH is the banner and the battle cry of the Greek patriots. Sun-drenched Crete contained an explosive mixture of races and religions, poverty and pride, arrogance and hatred. Against a background of compelling reality - the odors of lemon trees and saddle leather, guerrilla fighters, pack animals, and tobacco, the bustle of Turkish bazaars and Aegean ports - Kazantzakis poses mighty opposites: Captain Michales and his blood brother, the noble Turk Nuri Bey, fighting within a relationship of love and hatred, vendettas and patriotism, while within the patriot camp there are the rivalries of love and leadership, power and manhood. These tensions erupt into violence as the patriots realize that ‘they were Cretans and had been born to die for Crete.' Kazantzakis presents insights into the savage, self-sacrificial nationalism, which develops in an oppressed nation; clear parallels with events in Cyprus today give this novel a special immediacy. To the many American admirers of Kazantzakis' work, FREEDOM OR DEATH will come as a further revelation of his power to create uncompromising and unforgettable fiction. .

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Nikos Kazantzakis (18 February 1883 - 26 October 1957) was a Greek writer and philosopher, celebrated for his novel Zorba the Greek, considered his magnum opus. He became known globally after the 1964 release of the Michael Cacoyannis film Zorba the Greek, based on the novel. He gained renewed fame with the 1988 Martin Scorsese adaptation of his book The Last Temptation of Christ.

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Daisy Miller by Henry James. New York. 1986. Penguin Books. 0140432620. Edited with an introduction by GEOFFREY MOORE and notes by PATRICIA CRICK. 126 pages. paperback. Cover: Detail from The May Sun (1907) by Jozef Mehoffer, in the Muzeum Naradowe, Warsaw (photo: Bridgeman Art Library).

DESCRIPTION - Travelling in Europe with her family, Daisy Miller, an exquisitely beautiful young American woman, presents her fellow-countryman Winterbourne with a dilemma he cannot resolve. Is she deliberately flouting social conventions in the way she talks and acts, or is she simply ignorant of them? When she strikes up an intimate friendship with an urbane young Italian, her flat refusal to observe the codes of respectable behaviour leaves her perilously exposed. In Daisy Miller James created his first great portrait of an enigmatic and independent American woman, a figure who would come to dominate his later masterpieces. Geoffrey Moore's introduction explores the themes of innocence and experience in the novel. This edition also contains notes by Patricia Crick. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Henry James (1843-1916), the son of the religious philosopher Henry James Sr. and brother of the psychologist and philosopher William James, published many important novels including Daisy Miller, The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl, and The Ambassadors.

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Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. New York. 1996. Penguin Books. 0140434267. Edited & With An Introduction and Notes by Vivien Jones. 336 pages. paperback. Cover shows 'Abbey Gate, Reading' by Paul Sandby.

DESCRIPTION - The romantic clash of two opinionated young people provides the sustaining theme of pride And prejudice. Vivacious Elizabeth Bennet is fascinated and repelled by the arrogant Mr. Darcy, whose condescending airs and acrid tongue have alienated her entire family. Their spirited courtship is conducted against a background of assembly-ball flirtations and drawing-room intrigues. Jane Austen's famous novel captures the affectations of class-conscious Victorian families with matrimonial aims and rivalries. Her people are universal; they live a truth beyond time, change, or caricature. George Eliot called Jane Austen ‘the greatest artist that has ever written,' and Sir Walter Scott wrote of her work, ‘There is a truth of painting in her writings which always delights me.' 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jane Austen (16 December 1775 - 18 July 1817) was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. Her realism and biting social commentary have gained her historical importance among scholars and critics. Austen lived her entire life as part of a close-knit family located on the lower fringes of the English landed gentry. She was educated primarily by her father and older brothers as well as through her own reading. The steadfast support of her family was critical to her development as a professional writer. Her artistic apprenticeship lasted from her teenage years into her thirties. During this period, she experimented with various literary forms, including the epistolary novel which she then abandoned, and wrote and extensively revised three major novels and began a fourth. From 1811 until 1816, with the release of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816), she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818, and began a third, which was eventually titled Sanditon, but died before completing it. Austen's works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century realism. Her plots, though fundamentally comic, highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security. Her work brought her little personal fame and only a few positive reviews during her lifetime, but the publication in 1869 of her nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced her to a wider public, and by the 1940s she had become widely accepted in academia as a great English writer. The second half of the 20th century saw a proliferation of Austen scholarship and the emergence of a Janeite fan culture. Biographical information concerning Jane Austen is ‘famously scarce', according to one biographer. Only some personal and family letters remain (by one estimate only 160 out of Austen's 3,000 letters are extant), and her sister Cassandra (to whom most of the letters were originally addressed) burned ‘the greater part' of the ones she kept and censored those she did not destroy. Other letters were destroyed by the heirs of Admiral Francis Austen, Jane's brother. Most of the biographical material produced for fifty years after Austen's death was written by her relatives and reflects the family's biases in favour of ‘good quiet Aunt Jane'. Scholars have unearthed little information since.

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The Specter of Alexander Wolf by Gaito Gazdanov. New York. 1950. Dutton. Translated from the Russian by Nicholas Wreden. hardcover.

  
DESCRIPTION -  "Among all my recollections, among all the numberless sensations of life, the memory of the one murder that I had committed weighed heaviest on my mind ..." On a searing hot day in 1919, a young Russian soldier shoots another in self-defence. As the other man lies dying, the young soldier takes his horse and rides away. Years later, as a grown man in Paris whose life is still haunted by the murder he committed all that time ago, he comes across a story by a writer calling himself "Alexander Wolf", which recounts in astonishing detail the events of that day in 1919 from the dying victim's point of view. As he attempts to find the elusive writer, the narrator becomes involved in a series of strange encounters that lead him to question life, death and his own identity.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gaito Gazdanov (6 December 1903 – 5 December 1971) was a Russian émigré writer of Ossetian descent, who lived in Paris. Gazdanov's first stories were published in France in 1926 in Russian. His novels An Evening with Claire (1929) and The Spectre of Alexander Wolf (1948) became his most well-known works, mentioned by writers Maxim Gorky, Ivan Bunin and Vladislav Khodasevich. Gazdanov was a member of the French Resistance in occupied France. In 1953, he joined Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as an editor. Although he learned perfect French whilst living in France, Gazdanov continued writing stories in Russian.

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The Man Who Wanted To Be Guilty by Henrik Stangerup. New York. 1982. Marion Boyars. 0714527335. Translated from the Danish by David Gress-Wright. 124 pages. hardcover.

  
DESCRIPTION - In a hypothetical future where the government denies human emotion, Torben, a former novelist, murders his wife, but is unable to get the state to admit his guilt

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Henrik Stangerup, 1937-98, pursued a versatile career as novelist, journalist, essayist and film director. His first novel, Slangen i brystet (1969, Snake in the Heart), influenced by the neo-realistic trend of the time, is about a Danish journalist who goes off the rails in Paris. Henrik Stangerup, 1937-98, pursued a versatile career as novelist, journalist, essayist and film director. His first novel, Slangen i brystet (1969, Snake in the Heart), influenced by the neo-realistic trend of the time, is about a Danish journalist who goes off the rails in Paris. In the 1970s his novels took a turn towards polemic social comment. Løgn over løgn (1971, Lie upon Lie) is a confrontation with the ascetic Puritanism which according to Stangerup characterised the cultural left wing of the day. Manden der ville være skyldig (1973, The Man Who Wanted to Be Guilty) is an attack on the welfare state from an existentialist perspective. Fjenden i forkøbet (1978, Forestalling the Enemy) is an autobiographical novel which, with great openness, recounts artistic and personal crises in the author's life. In the following years Stangerup wrote his principal work, a trilogy of historical novels inspired by Søren Kierkegaard's ideas about the aesthetic, ethical and religious man. Vejen til Lagoa Santa (1981, The Road to Lagoa Santa) is about the ethicist, the Danish 19th century naturalist P.W. Lund, who turned his back on European civilisation and settled in Brazil. The protagonist of Det er svært at dø i Dieppe (1985, The Seducer : It is Hard to Die in Dieppe) is the aesthete and critic P.L. Møller, who lived a dissolute life in Paris in the 1850s. Finally the religious stage is represented by the title character of Broder Jacob (1991, Brother Jacob), a Danish Franciscan driven into exile by the Reformation. He ends up as a missionary and fearless spokesman for the Indian population. The trilogy gave expression to Stangerup's criticism of Danish Puritanism in a colourful epic of international perspective and format. Stangerup's films are inspired by French culture, with which he became thoroughly familiar during several protracted sojourns in the country. The most original is Jorden er flad (1977, The Earth is Flat), which transplants the action in Ludvig Holberg's comedy Erasmus Montanus (published 1731) to 17th century Brazil. As interpreted by Stangerup, the story of the arrogant peasant student who returns to his destitute childhood environment becomes a universally valid account of the intellegentsia's betrayal of the people from which they spring. Like his novels and films, Stangerup's extensive essay writing also testifies to his international outlook and uncompromising attitude towards intellectual conformity of every kind.

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The Contract Killer by Benny Andersen. Norwich. 2012. Norvik. 9781870041782. Translated by Paul Russell Garrett. 54 pages. paperback.

  
DESCRIPTION - Karlsen is a down-on-his-luck private investigator looking for work. When the only job on offer is a contract killing, Karlsen agrees despite his lack of experience. Things don't go to plan and it seems the contract is open to negotiation. This play follows the twists and turns of an inexperienced contract killer with a weakness for turquoise dresses and wide-eyed women. This absurdist comedy by one of Denmark's best-loved playwrights sees the fates of the eponymous contract killer, his target, the employer and his wife, twist, turn and hang in the balance. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Benny Andersen (born 7 November 1929 in Vangede), is a Danish song-writer, poet, author, composer and pianist. He is the most widely read, most often sung and best loved of modern Danish lyricists, often associated with his collaboration with Povl Dissing; together they released an album with Andersen's poems from the collection Svantes viser, Povl Dissing were singing. This album with Svantes viser has been canonized by the Danish Ministry of Culture in the category Popular music. His collected poems (Samlede digte) have sold over 100,000 copies. His best known work is Svante's Songs (Svantes viser) from 1972, which is included in the Danish Culture Canon. In 1971 he was awarded with the Ministry of Culture's children book prize (Kulturministeriets Børnebogspris). He has been a member of the Danish Academy (det Danske Akademi) since 1972.

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The Tenant by Katrine Engberg. New York. 2020. Scout Press/Simon & Schuster. 9781982127572. Translated from the Danish by Tara Chace. 356 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Lisa Litwack.

  
DESCRIPTION - When a young woman is discovered brutally murdered in her own apartment with an intricate pattern of lines carved into her face, Copenhagen police detectives Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner are assigned to the case. In short order, they establish a link between the victim, Julie Stender, and her landlady, Esther de Laurenti, who's a bit too fond of drink and the host of raucous dinner parties with her artist friends. Esther also turns out to be a budding novelist - and when Julie turns up as a murder victim in the still-unfinished mystery she's writing, the link between fiction and real life grows both more urgent and more dangerous. But Esther's role in this twisted scenario is not quite as clear as it first seems. Is she the culprit or just another victim, trapped in a twisted game of vengeance? Anette and Jeppe must dig more deeply into the two women's pasts to discover the identity of the brutal puppet-master pulling the strings.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - A former dancer and choreographer with a background in television and theater, Katrine Engberg launched a groundbreaking career as a novelist with the publication of her fiction debut, The Tenant. She is now one of the most widely read and beloved crime authors in Denmark, and her work has been sold in over twenty-five countries. She lives with her family in Copenhagen.

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The Purity of Vengeance: A Department Q Novel by Jussi Adler-Olsen. New York. 2014. Dutton. 9780525954019. Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken. 503 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Daniel Rembert.  

DESCRIPTION - Jussi Adler-Olsen's Department Q series, with more than fourteen million copies sold worldwide, continues with the most chilling cold case yet. In 1987, Nete Hermansen plans revenge on those who abused her in her youth, including Curt Wad, a charismatic surgeon who was part of a movement to sterilize wayward girls in 1950s Denmark. More than twenty years later, Detective Carl Mørck already has plenty on his mind when he is presented with the case of a brothel owner, a woman named Rita, who went missing in the eighties: New evidence has emerged in the case that destroyed the lives of his two partners - the case that sent Carl to Department Q. But when Carl's assistants, Assad and Rose, learn that numerous other people disappeared around the same weekend as Rita, Carl takes notice. As they sift through the disappearances, they get closer and closer to Curt Wad, who is more determined than ever to see the vision of his youth take hold and whose brutal treatment of Nete and others like her is only one small part of his capacity for evil.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Carl Valdemar Jussi Henry Adler-Olsen (born August 2, 1950) is a Danish writer of crime fiction, as well as a publisher, editor and entrepreneur. Jussi Adler-Olsen made his debut as a non-fiction writer in 1984, and as a fiction writer in 1997. Born in Copenhagen, he was the youngest of four children and the only boy. Son of the successful sexologist and psychiatrist Henry Olsen, he spent his childhood with his family in doctors' official residences at several mental hospitals across Denmark. In his late teens, he played in a couple of pop groups as lead guitarist. He graduated from high school in Rødovre (1970), and studied medicine, sociology (passed History of Modern Politics) and film making (exam.art.) until 1978. After a manager career, he began to write full-time in 1995. Adler-Olsen's novels have been sold in more than 40 languages. Outside of Denmark he has enjoyed particular success in Norway, Germany and the Netherlands being a frequent visitor on the top of the bestseller lists e.g. on the New York Times Paperback bestseller list. Adler-Olsen's books have been on the bestseller lists in numerous other countries including Austria, Iceland, France, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

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Walpurgis Tide by Jógvan Isaksen. London. 2016. Norvik Press. 9781909408241. Translated from Faroese by John Keithsson. 282 pages. paperback.  

DESCRIPTION - Two British environmental activists are discovered dead amongst the whale corpses after a whale-kill in Torshavn, on the Faroe Islands. The detective Hannis Martinsson is asked to investigate by a representative of the organization Guardians of the Sea - who shortly afterwards is killed when his private plane crashes. Suspicion falls on Faroese hunters, angry at persistent interference in their traditional whale hunt; but the investigation leads Martinsson to a much larger group of international vested interests, and the discovery of a plot which could devastate the whole country. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jogvan Isaksen (born 25 August 1950 in Torshavn) is a Faroese writer and literary historian. He is best known for his crime novels and for his book about Faroese literature Færøsk Litteratur (1993, in Danish). He is leader of the Faroese publication house Mentunargrunnur Studentafelagsins which has its address in the Faroe Islands, but its committee is located in Copenhagen. This publication house published Faroese books, it is the oldest Faroese publication house, founded in 1910. Jogvan Isaksen is the son of Magnhild Isaksen and Reimar Isaksen, who both come from the village of Gøta. After finishing high school in 1970 he moved to Denmark in order to study Nordic Philology at Aarhus University. He finished his MA in Scandinavian Literature Science in 1982. Since 1986 he has been associate Professor in Faroese language and Faroese literature at the University of Copenhagen. Since 2000 he has been main editor of the magazine Nordisk litteratur (Nordic Literature) by the Nordic Council. Since 1978 Isaksen has also worked as a writer. His crime fiction novels are popular in the Faroe Islands and often best sellers just before Christmas. Some of these books have been translated into other languages. Isaksen has also written some children's books and books about Faroese writers and literature. For his literature work about the Faroese writer Hanus Kamban (at that time his name was Hanus Andreassen) and for his work for Faroese Literature, Isaksen received the Faroese Literature Prize in 1994. In 2006 he received one of the prizes of the Faroese Government, called Heiðursgáva landsins. The crime fiction Blíð er summarnátt á Føroyalandi was Isaksen's first crime fiction novel and one of the first crime fictions written in Faroese, where the story also happens in the Faroe Islands. It has been translated into Danish, Icelandic and German.

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Laterna Magica by William Heinesen. Seattle. 1987. Fjord Press. 0940242230. Translated from the Danish by Tiina Nunnally. 159 pages. paperback. Cover illustration & chapter friezes by William Heinesen.  

DESCRIPTION - ‘Many any readers of this wise and wry book have probably traveled or will travel to Scandinavia. If your plane departs from the Midwest or the East Coast there is a fair chance that you will be traversing above the Faroe Islands and that you will be prevented from seeing them by a solid cloud cover. If you are splendidly lucky you may, for a few moments, catch a glimpse of a group of rocky, rugged, and very green dots in the Atlantic Ocean. Those islands, situated roughly between Norway, Scotland, and Iceland and inhabited for nearly a thousand years, cover about 540 square miles and now have a population of forty thousand people. In Hedin Bronner's introduction to FAROESE SHORT STORIES (1972), he concisely sums up traditional Faroese life: ‘Their livelihood depended almost entirely on a combination of fishing and farming. Their subsistence economy forced practically every man to be a combination of builder, boatsman, fisherman, bird hunter, and farmer.' It is that vanishing way of life that William Heinesen celebrates in many of his quasi-memoirs from the capital city of Torshavn, a small town that is immense in the world of the imagination. In the 1950s, the Faroese people gained their independence from Denmark, and the nation now flies its own flag and votes for its own parliament  - even if it shares foreign policy with Denmark. Faroese is a language that, like Icelandic, has not developed as far from its medieval form as have Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. Heinesen writes, however, in Danish, for authors of his generation had to use a better known language to gain a wider audience. Although he does not use Faroese, his books capture with remarkable vividness and nuance both the social and psychic reality of his people. Heinesen was born in 1900; he was sent to study at a Danish business college, dropped out to become a journalist, published some volumes of poetry (debut, 1921), and moved back to the Faroes in 1932. In the 1930s, he switched to prose and published a couple of collective novels, but the Heinesen whose words sparkle  - as they do in LATERNA MAGICA  - did not emerge until after the Second World War. With such novels as THE LOST MUSICIANS (1950, tr. 1971) and THE KINGDOM OF THE EARTH (1952, tr. 1974) and numerous short stories  - a selection of which appeared in THE WINGED DARKNESS AND OTHER STORIES (1983) - Heinesen became an author who was eventually nominated for the Nobel Prize. In these works he bridged realism and fantasy in a manner that has been made famous by Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The reader of Heinesen will soon realize that the author has some consistent dislikes and sympathies: he exposes the dry bureaucrat, the humorless bourgeois, the pietistic preacher who stands ready to condemn his fellow human beings, and he offers some compassionate, humorous portraits of glorious and inglorious souls who who enjoy life fully in wisdom or in folly. Heinesen is, however, not a didactic author, and his humanism exudes what one could call an intense tolerance of the human race. If Heinesen has a protagonist  - a hero or a heroine  - it is the artist. That person may never put a word or a musical note on paper, but lives life intensely and fully. He or she embodies the concept of homo ludens, that playful individual who knows that life is a very serious matter, but who experiences it with undaunted joy. The older Heinesen often recalls fates from a Torshavn of an earlier day. He may be nostalgic, but never sentimental, for the author of LATERNA MAGICA has no qualms about admitting his mortality. Although he has witnessed both comedies and tragedies, he recalls the past with warmth and wit, and the reader ends up with the feeling that life  - many-faceted as it can be on those small islands - has given him insights that any reader will recognize. In spite of Heinesen's Faroese setting, he is anything but a regionalist, and it is perfectly understandable that his works are gaining popularity beyond Scandinavia. In 1981, a persistent rumor had it that Heinesen had been nominated for the Nobel Prize. Heinesen then sat down and wrote a letter to the Swedish Academy withdrawing his nomination. His reasoning was that, if he were granted the honor, it would seem that some author writing in the Danish language had been given the prize, not a Faroese author. That decision and the stories in this volume both reflect Heinesen's deep-seated loyalty to his native culture.' - from the Afterword by Niels Ingwersen, University of Wisconsin. .

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Andreas William Heinesen (15 January 1900 - 12 March 1991) was a poet, novel writer, short story writer, children's book writer, composer and painter from the Faroe Islands. The Faroese capital Torshavn is always the centre of Heinesen's writing and he is famous for having once called Torshavn 'The Navel of the World'. His writing focuses on contrasts between darkness and light, between destruction and creativity. Then following is the existential struggle of man to take sides. This is not always easy, however, and the lines between good and bad are not always clearly defined. Heinesen was captivated by the mysterious part of life, calling himself religious in the broadest sense of the word. His life could be described as a struggle against defeatism with one oft-quoted aphorism of his is that 'life is not despair, and death shall not rule'. As he was born and raised before the Faroese language was taught in the schools, he wrote mainly in Danish but his spoken language was Faroese. All his books are later translated into his native Faroese. He published his first collection of poetry when he was 21 and he had three more published before he wrote his first novel Blæsende gry (Stormy Dawn) in 1934. He read every single one of the chapters to the painter Sámal Joensen-Mikines, as he was worried that his Danish wasn't good enough. That was followed up with Noatún (1938). Noatún has a strong political message - solidarity is the key to a good society. His next book The Black Cauldron (1949) deals with the aftermath of decadent living combined with religious hysteria. In The Lost Musicians (1950) Heinesen leaves the social realism of his earlier works behind, instead giving himself over to straightforward storytelling. Mother Pleiades (1952) is an ode to his imagination. Its subtitle is 'a Story From the Beginning of Time'. Heinesen wasn't content with writing only novels. In the fifties he began writing short stories as well. Most of them have been printed in these three collections entitled The Enchanted light, Gamaliel's Bewitchment and Cure Against Evil Spirits (1969). In the novel The Good Hope, his main character the Rev. Peder Børresen is based on the historical person Rev. Lucas Debes. When Heinesen was asked how long it had taken to write it, he answered 'forty years. But then I did other things in between'

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The Old Man and His Sons by Hedin Bru. New York. 1970. Eriksson. Translated from the Faroese by John F. West. Illustrated by Barour Jacobsen. hardcover.   

DESCRIPTION - There is, in this remarkable novel out of the Faroe Islands in the North Sea, a unique earthiness and rich humanity that bridges a generation gap across the centuries. The skilfully told story of a handful of people, living their sea-washed, daring and difficult lives on these remote islands, vibrates with a spirit, almost at times a savagery that recalls the ancient Norsemen and Viking sagas. Yet this is the story of modern times: these are the people of the Faroe Islands today, from the opening chapter with its whale kill in the harbor, with all the people participating in its blood and foam and fury, to the delicate moments when Ketil and his wife, alone at home in their bleak, treeless island world, begin to deal with a problem of an unlooked-for indebtedness that could tear apart their lives.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Heðin Brú (August 17, 1901 – May 18, 1987) was the pen-name of Hans Jacob Jacobsen, a Faroese novelist and translator. Heðin Brú is considered to be the most important Faroese writer of his generation and is known for his fresh and ironic style. His novel, Feðgar á ferð (The Old Man and His Sons), was chosen as the Book of the twentieth century by the Faroese. Hans Jacobsen was born in 1901 in Skálavík. Like many of his countrymen, Jacobsen worked as a fisherman in his early years. After two seasons, he left to study agriculture in Denmark. When he returned to the Faroes, he worked as an agricultural advisor—a job that took him to all parts of the country. The contacts he made with ordinary village people he met during this time had a lasting effect on his writing. In 1930, his first novel, Lognbrá, which tells the story of a young man growing up in a Faroese village, was published. In 1935 there appeared its sequel, Fastatøkur, in which the young man works as a fisherman on a sloop. Both of these books were translated into Danish in 1946 and published under the title Høgni. Feðgar á ferð, Brú's most famous work, was published in Faroese in 1940, in Danish in 1962 (Fattigmandsære), in German in 1966 (Des armen Mannes Ehre, a translation of the Danish title), and in English in 1970 under the title of The Old Man and his Sons. This was his first novel to be translated from Faroese into English. It tells the tale of the transformation of a rural society into a modern nation of fisheries and the conflicts between generations that result. In 1963, he satirised the Faroese politics of the interwar period in his novel Leikum fagurt. His Men livið lær (1970) describes a Faroese village around 1800, and his Tað stóra takið of 1972 describes a similar village around a century later. While writing these novels, Heðin Brú also wrote three collections of novellas and translated two Shakespeare plays (Hamlet and The Tempest). He translated many pieces of world literature into Faroese. Between 1959 and 1974, he published a six-volume collection of Faroese fairy tales, Ævintýr I – VI (with illustrations by Elinborg Lützen). This is considered to be the standard work on the subject. Jacobsen died in 1987 in Tórshavn. His son, Bárður Jákupsson, is considered by the Faroese to be the country's most important contemporary visual artist.

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The Ice Princess by Camilla Läckberg. New York. 2010. Pegasus Books. 9781605980928. Translated from the Swedish by Steven T. Murray. 393 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Michael Fusco.  

DESCRIPTION - Returning to her hometown of Fjallbacka after the funeral of her parents, writer Erica Falck finds a community on the brink of tragedy. The death of her childhood friend, Alex, is just the beginning. Her wrists slashed, her body frozen in an ice-cold bath, it seems that she has taken her own life. Erica conceives a book about the beautiful but remote Alex, one that will answer questions about their own shared past. While her interest grows into an obsession, local detective Patrik Hedstrom is following his own suspicions about the case. But it is only when they start working together that the truth begins to emerge about a small town with a deeply disturbing past. Camilla Läckberg's novels have all become #1 bestsellers in Sweden, and THE ICE PRINCESS, winner of the Grand Prix de Litterature Policière for Best International Crime Novel, has been published in over twenty-five countries. She lives in Stockholm.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Camilla Läckberg's novels have all become #1 bestsellers in Sweden. Her thriller THE ICE PRINCESS, winner of the Grand Prix de LittErature Policière for Best International Crime Novel, has been published in over twenty-five countries. She lives in Stockholm.

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