LitHouse podcast

Masande Ntshanga is a writer and poet, an editor of New Contrast Magazine and a teacher of creative writing. For his debut novel The Reactive, he was awarded the Betty Trask Award, while his second n…

Maaza Mengiste is a writer, photographer and teacher of creative fiction at Wesleyan University. Her 2010 debut novel, Beneath the Lion's Gaze, depicts the bloody revolution in 1970s Ethiopia, and wa…

The year is 2043, and an astronomer at the South-African Space Agency receives a package filled with documents, which contain a warning that the earth will end in 10 years.

The documents are diary ent…

«I’ve always found Science Fiction to be a form that’s irrevocably linked to critiques of power and societal structures,» writer Masande Ntshanga has said. During his adolescence, he read a lot of sc…

What is transgender literature? Is it simply works by writers who identify as transgender? Or might it be thought of as a lens to read through, or a certain kind of attention? If it is the latter: in…

Torrey Peters rocketed into the international literary scene with her debut novel Detransition, Baby, the first novel written by a trans woman to become an international best seller. Peters explores …

«Every time we say it can’t get any worse it does,» writer Tsitsi Dangarembga has said about the situation in her home country Zimbabwe.

The UNs special envoy has reacted to the arbitrary arrests of a…

Just weeks after the historical film Ellos Eatnu/Let the River Flow had premiered, lead actress and activist Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen was back in chains – for real, this time. Together with fellow Sa…

Through more than 30 years, Zimbabwean Tsitsi Dangarembga has made her mark as a writer and director. With her trilogy of novels following Tambu, she portrays a period of upheaval for her home countr…

A young girl from a poor family fighting to get the education she wants, but which is primarily reserved for her brother. A beautiful and worldly friend who brings her out of her shell. The history o…

Jamaica Kincaid is one of the greatest authors of feminist and postcolonial literature of our time. In her handful of novels and a collection of short stories, she has portrayed themes such as struct…

“How will you show the destroyed city?”

The Trofymchuks live in a small city in Donbas’ “Red Zone”, Ukraine, which since Russia’s invasion in 2014 has seen frequent shellings and the breakdown of infr…

As a little girl, Lea Ypi regarded Stalin and Albania’s leader Enver Hoxha as dependable father figures, she liked how her teacher Nora har simple answers to everything, and what she wanted most of a…

The world in which we live is by and large designed and built for “the ideal man”: The size of cell phones, seat belts in cars, the development of medication – there are countless examples. And most …

It is a rare occation when the author of cult books such as American Psycho and The Rules of Attraction releases his first novel in 13 years. For readers of Bret Easton Ellis’s earlier books, The Sha…

The young girl Hirut starts working for a wealthy couple, but is soon brought into their many quarrels, their jealousy and grief over the loss of a child. This is Ethiopia in the 1930s. Things go fro…

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor is an author, screenwriter, and former head of the Zanzibar International Film Festival. In 2003, the Kenyan won the Caine Prize for African Writing, and her 2013 debut novel, D…

Nadifa Mohamed is the writer of three novels, with the two first, Black Mamba and The Orchard of Lost Souls available in Norwegian translation so far. In 2017, Mohamed participated in The House of Li…

Damon Galgut’s Booker Prize-winning novel The Promise follows the white South-African Swart family, living on a farm outside Pretoria. The story follows the nuclear family through the waning years of…

Warsan Shire is a critically acclaimed and award winning British poet. In 2016, the artist Beyoncé named her one of her favorite poets, and she appears both on the album «Lemonade» and in the film «B…