LitHouse podcast

When Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie publishes her first novel in 12 years, it is a real event. With award winning and critically acclaimed titles such as Americanah, Half of a Yellow Sun and We S…

Wole Talabi is a Nigerian science fiction author. He is best known for his short stories, most of them collected in the collections Incomplete Solutions and Convergence Problems. His latest novel Shi…

Youssef Rakha is an award-winning author of both novels and poetry, as well as a journalist and a photographer. I 2009, he was selected by the Hay Festival as one of the best Arabic writers under 40.…

What characterizes the new Arabic literature? Writers involved in the Arab Spring are now imprisoned, exiled or living with the political repression, wars and disillusionment that has marked the regi…

The Arab Spring is when Egyptian Youssef Rakha first starts writing novels. Moroccan Soukaina Habiballah publishes her first poetry collection shortly after, while French Moroccan Leïla Slimani works…

Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2021, as the first African-born writer in almost 20 years, for having, in the jury’s reasong, «highlighted the impact of colonialism and…

French Moroccan Leïla Slimani‘s own family was the inspiration when she started her critically acclaimed trilogy: The Country of Others, Watch Us Dance and this year’s publication, J'emporterai le fe…

With her deep and fearless portrayals of German and European history, Jenny Erpenbeck is a unique voice in world literature. Her authorship is widely considered to be among the most important of our …

«The security guard adores babies. Perhaps because babies do not shoplift.

Babies adore the security guard. Perhaps because he does not drag babies to the sales.»

In a Sephora-store on the Avenue des C…

«Water remembers. It is humans who forget.»

A droplet of water finds its way from ancient Mesopotamia to a street urchin in 1840’s London and on to a Yazidi family in present day Iraq. Three people’s …

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a Ugandan British writer, known for her debut novel Kintu, as well as the short story collection Manchester Happened and the novel The First Woman. She has been awarded …

From intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois to activist Malcolm X, from heads of state Kwame Nkrumah and Muammar Gaddafi to poet Aimé Césaire and artist Bob Marley – they have all played a role in the history…

In the wake of #metoo, the French literary scene has been marked by multiple stories of sexual abuse. Books like Vanessa Springora's Consent and Camille Kouchner's The Familia Grande have sparked deb…

For decades, African speculative fiction has weaved together past and future, combining myths and legends with space exploration and social criticism and broadening the scope of both African and spec…

The word «dictator» might make you think of a select few evil men of the past, who sat alone on their thrones and ruled far-flung kingdoms with an iron fist. Today’s reality is something very differe…

When British-Ugandan Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi wanted her debut novel Kintu published in Europe, publisher after publisher told her no – the novel was “too African”: It was neither about the colonia…

Sonia Nasir is a somewhat successful actor in London. After a distressing end to a love affair, she travels to see her sister in Haifa, Israel, where their father’s family is from, and where she’s ha…

When she began her masterpiece The Handmaid’s Tale in 1984, Margaret Atwood was living in West Berlin, just a stone’s throw away from the Wall to East Berlin, with its omnipresent secret police. The …

Canadian author Margaret Atwood is a living legend. Since her debut in 1961 with the poetry collection Double Persephone, she has published more than 70 books of poetry, short story collections, nove…

How can Africa reach its full potential when Europe is still the blueprint to model oneself after? Not only has centuries of colonization and exploitation stripped the continent of opportunities, but…