THE ANCHOR BOOK OF MODERN AFRICAN STORIES

An expansive and engaging collection, updated from the original 1994 edition.

Thirty-four voices gathered from an entire continent populate this expanded anthology proving that the art of the story is alive and well in modern Africa. One of the most widely read chroniclers of Africa’s past, Chinua Achebe, provides the adroit foreword but quickly steps out of the way to allow the newer voices to come center stage. Even though certain countries—South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt—dominate the proceedings, the fiction comes from every possible direction. One of the better selections, Ben Okri’s “What the Tapster Saw,” is a brash fever-dream about a man who taps wine from palm trees and has a kaleidoscopic night journey through a landscape peopled with visions, death, and the looming specter of the local oil conglomerate. Like many of the pieces, Okri’s was written in another country; in fact, a depressing number of the authors here seem to have taken writing and teaching positions in Europe and America. They are also predominantly men. One of the few contributions by a woman, Alifa Rifaat’s “At the Time of the Jasmine” (born in Egypt in 1930, Rifaat published most of her work only after her husband died in 1974), is a simple but emotional look into the soul of a conflicted man taking the train to his family’s village for his father’s funeral. Not surprisingly, there’s little presence of joy in these pages—and little humor. As Nadezda Obradovic says in his introduction, “This anthology is not a happy recital any more than Africa today is a happy continent.” Still, there are voices of beauty and snatches of wonder amid the folly and despair. Moroccan Mohammed Berrata’s “A Life in Details” sails out on this sadly noted example: “We return home to write down this life that we are living by well-rationed portions.”

Writers in exile, remembering home in despair.