The Ordeal of the African Writer [Paperback]

This book was published in 2001 by Charles Larson, an American scholar who has studied, taught and written about African lit for some 40 years. It was mainly a survey of the problems faced today by writers in Africa, based on his queries to local writers, critics, educators and publishers as well as other scholars.

The author cited a 1996 statistic that Africa contributed only 1.2% of the total of the world's book production. The author estimated the population of Sub-Saharan Africa at 360 million (it's around 690 million now, about 11% of the world total). However, the author judged that only one writer, Chinua Achebe, could support himself comfortably solely on royalties from his writing, and that only a few others such as Wole Soyinka, Ben Okri and Nuruddin Farah could do so based on the prestigious literary prizes and financial awards they'd received.

The book argued that while the number of dedicated writers in Africa is large, they face a host of problems. These include
---a lack of literate readers; the literacy rate, although rising, has been estimated at just 40-50% for the continent as a whole.
---a lack of book buyers in Africa with disposable incomes; the cost of many books is beyond the ability of many people to purchase, which makes them luxury items.
---the lack of educational infrastructure: there's a dearth of computers and fax machines, the number of libraries in sub-Saharan Africa is comparatively small in terms of both their number and the size of the collections (the number of libraries is estimated at 1/40th that in the United States), and in many of the countries educational and library budgets have been cut drastically.
---an insufficient number of newspapers and magazines willing to pay creative writers for their efforts.
---a lack of adequate local publishers; economic limitations such as the high cost of paper encourage concentration on textbook publishing, the number of publishing houses for creative work is comparatively small and many don't nurture creative writers; amateurish production often results in poor editing, bad design, and slipshod printing; and marketing is often incompetent, with little advance publicity, few promotional leaflets, or even annual catalogs.
---meager and sometimes sporadic payment of royalties, particularly by local publishers.
---a lack of informed, understanding, supportive critics (a problem also heard of in other regions).
---a lack of social and political stability, characterized in many countries by corrupt regimes, political unrest, capital flight, drought and famine.
---and not least, in many places, the real threat of censorship, imprisonment, exile or death.

As a result, most well-known African writers published in Europe, rather than Africa, in English through publishers such as Heinemann and Fontana, or in French through publishers such as Hatier, Presence Africaine or L'Harmattan.

The situation in Africa was compared unfavorably with India, which shared similar problems such as a high rate of illiteracy, multiple languages and substantial poverty but where book publishing was said to be thriving.

Elements described as forces for good for creative writers in Africa included the African Book Publishing Record, a quarterly book trade and bibliographic journal, edited by Hans Zell; the African Publishers Network (APNET); prestigious literary awards such as the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, funded by the Japanese publisher Kodansha, and the Swedish Voice of Africa Literary Award; and successful publishers such as Walter Bgoya of Tanzania, Kenya's East African Educational Publishers (Henry Chakava), Nigeria's Spectrum Books (Joop Berkhout), Les Nouvelles Editions Ivoiriennes of the Ivory Coast.

Also mentioned was the Zimbabwe International Book Fair, inaugurated in 1983 and held annually from 1989, organized by Trish Mbanga and Margaret Ling, although currently dormant. Baobab Books of Zimbabwe, also mentioned, was subsequently put up for sale.

In his conclusion, as a way to start addressing the problems cited, the author called for a pan-African publishing house, with funding from both Africa and the West, with an unpaid advisory board primarily from the African continent, with selection of books controlled by Africans.

Those seeking an overview of the situation faced by writers in Africa should find the book enlightening. A criticism of the book would be that the author's expositions could've been condensed a great deal. And that the matter of "appropriation" of African writers by non-African critics, briefly mentioned, appeared among the least of the many problems faced, if it was one at all. In any case, mentioning a few of the author's own experiences didn't seem like sufficient treatment of the matter.

Also, the author could've devoted some space to the important role that literary journals edited in Africa or the West---Drum, Black Orpheus, Okike, Transition, Staffrider, Black Renaissance/Noir, and Revue Noir---have played in promoting African writers.

One of the remarkable anecdotes in the book, mentioned in passing, was that in 1957, after finishing the writing of Things Fall Apart, Achebe mailed a handwritten manuscript of the only copy to London to have it typed. It was mislaid for some months and found only after a friend who was traveling to London investigated on his behalf. "One wonders how many manuscripts by African writers have been lost in the post or mislaid in publishing houses."

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