Friday, October 28, 2011

The Umaisha Dialogues goes to press!

At last the first of the four volumes of my interviews with Nigerian authors, The Umaisha Dialogues, has gone to press! The volume, which features new Nigerian writers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Remi Raji, Toni Kan, Jude Dibia, BM Dzukogi, Razinat Muhammed, Ibrahim Sheme and Sefi Atta, will be available at the International Conference of Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA, taking place from 30th November, 2011, in Abuja.

***

Comments on the book

This first volume of Umaisha’s series of interviews with writers celebrates the achievements of some of the best among new Nigerian writers. The interviews are interesting, perceptive, witty and sometimes critically illuminating, presenting succinctly useful information about the writers, their backgrounds and their works. The book is a landmark publication - one of the best in its field...

Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, Ph.D.
Award-winning writer & Professor of English
University of Lagos.

Umaisha has done what most critics should learn to do, let the writer speak for himself/herself – guide the writer by all means with artful, thoughtful questions, but don’t pretend that your own views and quarrels are the writers’… Apart from the interviews themselves, Umaisha has thoughtfully provided for each writer a bibliography, a brief biography, a picture, and a brief excerpt, thus making this not only a valuable pedagogical tool for our schools, but also a timely historical document… We can point at any of the authors covered here and say, he or she became a writer for so and so reason; or he or she wrote this particular book at this moment in his or her life...

Helon Habila
Caine Prize winner.

0 comments: