Binyavanga Wainaina talks to Ellah Allfrey about meeting the expectations of an African readership and what to do with a bad review.
Photograph © Internaz
Ariel Saramandi on her experience teaching in a lycée in Mauritius.
Fiction by Sidik Fofana, set in the South.
Kevin Maxwell on the police in the UK.
Morgan Parker and Rachel Long in conversation.
Poetry by Danez Smith, author of Don't Call Us Dead.
‘My first name, Binyavanga, has always been a sort of barometer of public mood.’
‘Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.’
After a sudden stroke, Binyavanga Wainaina and his lover travel to Nairobi to reconcile with his father.
‘We are, it seems, in the middle of nowhere.’
‘People are obsessed with authenticity – in a post-reality-TV, post-confessional-journalism world, fiction is simply not enough.’
‘To pick the right heart, the old man said, you had to look for depth in the ruby, to prize a raw intensity of colour and a bright gold fat blanketing the angry muscle.’
