African Review of Books still ticking

The African Review of Books, despite the long silence of this newsletter, is not dead, merely ticking over and generating verbiage of another sort. Reviews still trickle into the site and this is going to develop into a strong flow in the coming months.

The reason for ARoB's hibernation is that all the energies of the few people who maintain it have been devoted over the past year to the establishment and running of a new publishing house dedicated to fiction and poetry from Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.

It was always one of the hopes of ARoB's founders to see more of the works it highlighted getting into print in the English-reading market.

Instead of waiting for the multinationals to do this, it was decided to put ARoB's expertise to use in publishing, in conjunction with the Latin American Review of Books.

This led to the creation of Aflame Books, which is about to release its third title, From the Darkness, a novel from Guatemala. So far Aflame has published a collection of poetry about Nelson Mandela and has translated into English the detective novel by Angola's Pepetela, Jaime Bunda, Secret Agent.

Halala Madiba: Nelson Mandela in Poetry brings together almost 100 poems from 26 countries which, more than just praising one man, tell the history of South Africa through the eyes of its poets.

Jaime Bunda, Secret Agent is a hilarious, post-modernist tale of an incompetent detective who stumbles from one meal to the next.

Review of both books are available on African Review of Books website.

Both of these books are available through Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Kalahari.net as well as other booksellers in the UK, USA and South Africa .

Other titles to be published by Aflame include two of Africa's 100 best books - Ualalapi by Ungula commercial face to the African Review of Books and the two must work together to succeed, and we are counting on your continued support in our drive to make the literature of Africa more accessible.

And there is another appeal: ARoB needs contributors. If you have a review, or a news item to contribute, please send it to us.

We shall be building up our archive of news items and welcome snippets of book related news from around the world.

Thank you for your continued support and we look forward to offering you more from Africa.

Richard Bartlett African Review of Books Richard Bartlett [mailto:richard@africanreviewofbooks.com]