2024 was a year that saw African literature flourish despite an ultra-competitive landscape …
With several writers of African descent proving their mettle as shining stars in a galaxy of literary talents.
In previous years, essays asserting that African literature was in a state of decline had made the rounds. Still, these creatives have disproved those averments, with huge strides that spoke to the gradual emergence of African stories in spaces that were hitherto inaccessible.
Ghanaian-British writer Caleb Azumah Nelson won the 2024 Dylan Thomas prize (which comes with a £30,000 remuneration) for his second novel, Small Worlds. This exhilarating and expansive book explores the intricacies of fatherhood, faith, and friendship. The 31-year-old will also serve as director, lead writer, and executive producer on a BBC-commissioned drama adaptation of his award-winning debut novel Open Water.
Nigeria’s Frances Ogamba was named a Jacobson Scholar by the Hawkinson Fund for Peace and Justice in honour of her writing and work at Idembeka, a multi-genre creative writing workshop which she co-founded. Her manuscript, The Further, was longlisted for the 2024 First Pages Prize, and she emerged as one of the four winners of the 2024 Miles Morland African Writing Scholarships.
Zambian writer and attorney Mubanga Kalimamukwento won the 2024 Drue Heinz Literature Prize for her short story collection Obligations To The Wounded. The book made the list of Debutiful’s Best Debut Books of 2024 and Boston Globe’s 75 Best Books of 2024. Kalimamukwento also won the Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction for her manuscript Shipikisha.
Nigerian poet Romeo Oriogun, who won the 2022 NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature, was shortlisted for the 2024 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, and his poetry collection The Gathering of Bastards won this year’s Nebraska Book Award for Poetry. His latest offering, The Mystic of Small Dreams, was listed among Brittlepaper’s 100 Notable African Books of 2024.
Motswana author Gothataone Moeng emerged as one of ten authors to receive this year’s Whiting Awards, one of the biggest awards granted to new authors. She earned the award for her short story collection Call and Response and received $50,000 to support her craft.
Another African writer who had a fantastic 2024 is Nigeria’s Pemi Aguda, whose collection of short stories, Ghostroots, has enjoyed critical acclaim since its release. The book was shortlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction, and “Breastmilk”, one of the stories in the collection, was shortlisted for the 2024 Caine Prize for African Writing. Ghostroots was listed as one of TIME’s Top 10 Fiction Books of 2024, and one of NYT’s 100 Notable Books of 2024. It was also a 2024 favourite for Apple Books, Library Journal, Vulture, and one of Electric Literature‘s best story collections of the year.
Africa’s literary ecosystem is far from perfect, with opportunities on the home front few and far between and publishing on the continent bedevilled by poor funding, but these individual gains could be the herald of positive change. If these wins are anything to go by, African literature looks to be on the cusp of an evolution.