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Excerpt From The Intended, David Dabydeen
Excerpt From The Intended, David Dabydeen
Kunapipi
Whenever he came to my room, he no longer scrutinized the wallpaper or floor for evidence of stains and dirt. What used to be quick, hostile visits, ameloriated only by my handing over the rent, became leisurely affairs: Mr Ali, face drawn, eyes softened with grief, sitting on my bed talking endlessly about his family. The thickness of his accent and his frequent lapses into Urdu meant it was difficult to follow him, but I was a model of patience, listening intently, nodding sympathetically, breaking out with the odd apostrophe as if his suffering was also mine. Although largely bored …
Interview, David Dabydeen
Interview, David Dabydeen
Kunapipi
David Dabydeen's first novel, The Intended, was published by Seeker & Warburg in February 1991. Frank Birbalsingh interviewed David Dabydeen prior to the publication of the novel.
Engineering The Female Subject: Erna Brodber's Myal, Evelyn O'Callaghan
Engineering The Female Subject: Erna Brodber's Myal, Evelyn O'Callaghan
Kunapipi
At a recent staff-postgraduate seminar hosted by the English Department at U.W.I., Cave Hill, Glyne Griffith presented an analysis of Roger Mais's fiction in which he interrogated certain traditional notions of authorial omniscience and called attention to the power inherent in representation. The omnipotent omniscient narrator, unknowable and beyond challenge, solicits the reader's absolute trust in authorial placing or definition of characters, from whom the narrator maintains a godlike distance. Within this type of literary discourse, inherited from mainstream English fiction of the nineteenth century, characters are 'written': that is, settled, solidified or, as Harris1 would have it, 'consolidated' and …
The Life Of Myth And Its Possible Bearing On Erna Brodber' S Fictions Jane And Louisa Will Soon Come Home And Myal, Wilson Harris
The Life Of Myth And Its Possible Bearing On Erna Brodber' S Fictions Jane And Louisa Will Soon Come Home And Myal, Wilson Harris
Kunapipi
My impression is that Erna Brodber brings into play an unusual mythmaking talent in her two novels at a time when myth is denigrated or undervalued in favour of a realism divorced from the intuitive imagination. Perhaps it would be wise to attempt to sketch in a kind of backcloth to the novels which may help, in some degree, to say what are my approaches to 'myth' before I come to the novels themselves.
From Linear To Areal: Suggestions Towards A Comparative Literary Geography Of Canada And Australia, Martin Leer
From Linear To Areal: Suggestions Towards A Comparative Literary Geography Of Canada And Australia, Martin Leer
Kunapipi
Geography has been for too long a hidden dimension of literary studies, compared to history. This is all the more surprising since historians have long seen the two as complementary: geography is the other side of history as space is the other side of time. Especially the work of the French Annals school of history springs to mind: Lucien Febvre, Fernand Braudel and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie are cultural geographers as much as historians. And it is thought-provoking that while literary scholars have feared to tread on geographical ground, scared perhaps that it would give way to Montesquieu's theory of …
Poems, Ian Saw
Poems, Ian Saw
Kunapipi
The Mime-artist becoming a blind-man, It's her motion, Death of Ginger Meggs, Every child knows one
Sonnet 35, E Speers
Sonnet 35, E Speers
Kunapipi
Oh, my Tubby Wubbins! Beautiful cat! How did I get so lucky in this world That it's my humble home in which you' re curled, Silvery tabby tom, so fine and fat. Your pale green eyes are rimmed with kohl, or so It seems. Your face is tigerish and square. A mink, or a movie star, would love to wear A coat like yours. You've blessed my life, you know.
A Gentle Consummation, Zeny Giles
A Gentle Consummation, Zeny Giles
Kunapipi
Kathleen stands on the verandah and looks out. It is after four and the cars come one after another, turning from Maitland Road and moving past her house in an endless stream. She can feel their vibration as she leans against the doorway. Now they have stopped. The gates will be down at Clyde Street. She can see the impatience on the faces, the irritation as the cars bank up. AU those men going home, tired after work, needing to be cosseted and fed. She wishes she could put her arms around them all to give them comfort. The cars …
A View Of Newcastle, Braye Park
A View Of Newcastle, Braye Park
Kunapipi
There's a reservoir but nowhere for a drink of water and not even a tree if you need to go to the toilet.
Poems, Charles Jordan
Poems, Christopher Pollnitz
My Holiday At My Gran's, Kate Walker
My Holiday At My Gran's, Kate Walker
Kunapipi
My name is Annie and when I was eleven I went to my Gran's for a holiday. I packed my own bags and caught the train by myself to the country town where she lived in a big house with verandahs all around.
Coal River On A Sunday, Russell Mcdougall
Coal River On A Sunday, Russell Mcdougall
Kunapipi
In 1797, when Lieutenant John Shortland sailed into the unknown waters of what is now Newcastle Harbour, he discovered 'a very fine coal river' - and, although the official name of the settlement that grew up in the 'valley about a quarter of a mile from the harbour entrance' was Newcastle, it became known as Coal River (also for a time King's Town). The reasons for settlement were coal and convicts. In the early 1800s Newcastle rivalled notorious Norfolk Island as a place of 'secondary' punishment, that is as a prison location for the worst convicts from Sydney, who, having …
Poems, Paul Kavanagh
The Newcastle That Henry Lawson Knew, Rosemary Melville
The Newcastle That Henry Lawson Knew, Rosemary Melville
Kunapipi
In 1884, Henry Lawson left Sydney by steamship for Newcastle, a sea port and coal-mining centre sixty nautical miles to the north. An apprentice coach painter employed by the Hudson Brothers, railway rolling stock manufacturers of Sydney, Lawson was to spend some months working at the firm's Wickham branch at the western end of the port of Newcastle. This experience brought the young writer into an environment unique in Australia, for Newcastle was an odd mix of coal-miners, railway men, wharf labourers, soap makers, brewery hands and coach-builders. That Lawson lived and worked in this environment at a formative stage …
The Loquat Tree, P. A Jeffery
The Loquat Tree, P. A Jeffery
Kunapipi
There we are for the last time, Grandpa and I under the loquat tree. He is sitting on the highbacked oak chair and his expression, captured forever in black and white, is one of mild surprise.
Poems, Julian Croft
Poems, Julian Croft
Kunapipi
Trepidations, Earthquake, Faults, Suburbs, Assessing the damage, After shock
Hospitalizing, Marion Halligan
Hospitalizing, Marion Halligan
Kunapipi
Veronica Ballod sits in a train travelling north. She has forgotten that once trains meant connection with glamorous places, so that whenever she saw or heard one her heart yearned to be on it, going there. Not staying here. Or rather, she hasn't forgotten, she remembers it as a fond desultory fact, long past its use-by date. Train travel is a chore, now. Planes are what is glamorous, planes to Europe. The destination, if not the vehicle. The cities of home are known.
Kunapipi 12 (3) 1990, Contents, Editorial, Anna Rutherford
Kunapipi 12 (3) 1990, Contents, Editorial, Anna Rutherford
Kunapipi
A Personal Note, G D. Killam
A Personal Note, G D. Killam
Kunapipi
We met only briefly at Derry Jeffares' home in Leeds in 1964 on the evening of the day Chinua read his paper 'The Novelist as Teacher'. We met again at Nsukka in the month preceding the separation of Biafra. Geoffrey Hill, the British poet, had come to Ibadan for a term on leave from Leeds. Desmond Maxwell, Dean of Arts at lbadan at the time, very kindly let us have the Peugeot 404 Faculty wagon for our journey. We trekked to Benin and then to Nsukka on a two-day hop. On the west of the Niger it was easy enough: …
Working With Chinua Achebe: The African Writers Series James Currey, Alan Hill And Keith Sambrook In Conversation With Kirsten Holst Petersen
Kunapipi
The following contribution is based on two interviews, one with James Currey and Keith Sambrook, and one with Alan Hill, both recorded in August 1990 in London.
Anthills Of The Savannah And The Ideology Of Leadership, David Maughan-Brown
Anthills Of The Savannah And The Ideology Of Leadership, David Maughan-Brown
Kunapipi
The publishers' contribution to the back-cover blurb on the paperback edition of Anthills of the Savannah consists of a single, wholly unexceptionable, sentence: 'Chinua Achebe's new novel, his first for 21 years, has been received with great acclaim.' The message is clear: Achebe is so well known that there is no need for biographical notes; this novel has been 21 years in the gestation and critics, as one might expect, have recognised the greatness of so long-awaited a novel from so fine an author.
Repossessing Time: Chinua Ache Be's Anthills Of The Savannah, David Richards
Repossessing Time: Chinua Ache Be's Anthills Of The Savannah, David Richards
Kunapipi
The first one-and-a-half pilges of Anthills of the Savannah2 contain over twenty references to time. In a sense, it would be surprising indeed if a novel by Achebe did not concern itself with the past and the movement of time and its effects. All his previous novels have blended and reworked the often contradictory forms of classical realism and historical romance into an African context to the extent that he has largely set the agenda for the subsequent development of the African novel. An early critic of Achebe's, the Canadian novelist, Margaret Laurence, recognised the importance of his achievement and …
Achebe As Artist: The Place And Significance Of Anthills Of The Savannah, Emmanuel Ngara
Achebe As Artist: The Place And Significance Of Anthills Of The Savannah, Emmanuel Ngara
Kunapipi
Before we assess Achebe's contribution to the development of African literature we must put the record straight and see things in their proper perspective. It is necessary to start by stating categorically that Achebe was not the first to write realistic fiction in Anglophone Africa. It is a well-known fact that Cyprian Ekwensi, the Nigerian writer, published his People of the City in 1954, four years before Things Fall Apart saw the light of day. In South Africa the first novel in English by a black writer, Sol Plaatje's Mhudi, was published in 1930. In Zimbabwe the first novel to …
Of Goddesses And Stories: Gender And A New Politics In Ache Be's Anthills Of The Savannah, Elleke Boehmer
Of Goddesses And Stories: Gender And A New Politics In Ache Be's Anthills Of The Savannah, Elleke Boehmer
Kunapipi
Nearly twenty-one years in the coming, it was to be expected that, when compared to his last novel, A Man of the People (1966), Anthills of the Savannah (1987) would show a marked elaboration in Chinua Achebe's novelistic interests.1 The novel, as Ben Okri remarks, is 'his most complex and his wisest book to date'.2 Dealing with the cynical calculations and calcifications of Africa's latter-day power-elite, and the bankruptcy of Sixties and Seventies nepotistic politics, Anthills of the Savannah is in a sense a sequel to A Man of the People, which explored themes of political corruption and military takeover …
Chinua Ache Be's Things Fall Apart: A Classic Study In Colonial Diplomatic Tactlessness, Ernest N. Emenyonu
Chinua Ache Be's Things Fall Apart: A Classic Study In Colonial Diplomatic Tactlessness, Ernest N. Emenyonu
Kunapipi
Does the white man understand our custom about land?' 'How can he when he does not even speak our tongue? But he says that our customs are bad; and our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say that our customs are bad. How do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned against us? The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. …
Things Standing Together: A Retrospect On Things Fall Apart, Derek Wright
Things Standing Together: A Retrospect On Things Fall Apart, Derek Wright
Kunapipi
Two voices there are but, unlike those in the J.K. Stephen Wordsworthparody, both are deep and highly articulate and, though they betoken conflicting forces, they are themselves seldom at odds in Achebe's novel. 'Wherever something stands,' runs an Ibo proverb, 'something else will stand beside it.' The dual vision of Things Fall Apart1 is evidence, at least at the narrative level, of things not falling apart.
Poems, Ama Ata Aidoo
Poems, Ama Ata Aidoo
Kunapipi
QUESTIONS - for us: 'Today' s African Leadership', MODERN AFRICAN STORIES 11, NEW IN AFRICA 1
For Chinua Achebe: The Resilience And The Predicament Of Obierika, Biodun Jeyifo
For Chinua Achebe: The Resilience And The Predicament Of Obierika, Biodun Jeyifo
Kunapipi
To write a critical tribute to any writer at the present time calls for a special kind of political criticism.1 This is perhaps even more daunting when that writer happens to be Chinua Achebe who, beyond the fact of his being one of contemporary literature's most widely read and internationally prominent authors, has always figured as a complex, ambiguous presence in the post-colonial politics of identity and ideological affiliation. Perhaps nothing better expresses this ambiguity than the fact that much as Achebe's works have been invoked as powerful, exemplary texts of nationalist contestation of colonialist myths and distortions of Africa …
Chinua Achebe And The Possibility Of Modern Tragedy, Alastair Niven
Chinua Achebe And The Possibility Of Modern Tragedy, Alastair Niven
Kunapipi
It is often said that the conditions for the creation of tragedy in art do not exist in the twentieth century. Modern man has lost a universal acquiescence in the existence of God. We all aspire to be materially prosperous members of a small nuclear family, neglecting or even unaware of our extended family. Modern government and taxation encourages self-interest rather than a sense of community. The lines which Calphurnia, Caesar's wife, speaks on the morning of the fatal Ides of March - 'When beggars die there are no comets seen;/ The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes' …