Episódios

  • The year is 1949, and the state of Israel is in its infancy. In the Negev desert, bordering Egypt, Israeli armed forces have set up camp with the mission to “cleanse it of any remaining Arabs” after the war the preceding year. They happen upon a Beduin family, a teenage girl among them, whom the soldiers rape, kill and bury in the desert.

    In present-day Ramallah, a young woman discovers these events through a small newspaper story. It catches her attention because the events took place exactly 25 years before the day she was born. The woman becomes compelled to find out what actually happened in that desert, and embarks upon a highly dangerous journey to come to the bottom of the story.

    Adania Shibli is a critically acclaimed Palestinian writer, and holds a PhD in media and cultural studies. She has published three novels in Arabic, and Minor Detail is the first to be translated into Norwegian. While slim in size, the novel contains far more than the modest number of pages would suggest. Shibli explores themes such as belonging and loss, depicting the everyday absurdities under a normalized occupation. Shibli’s language is precise and sparse, the story concise. The many gaps in the story creates a tension, quivering beneath the surface and increasing by each page.

    The novel was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021, and in 2023, it won the prestigious German LiBeraturpreis. However, they chose to postpone the award ceremony indefinitely after Hamas’s terror attack on October 7th and Israel’s following war on Gaza, a decision met with extensive criticism internationally.

    At the House of Literature, Shibli will meet writer colleague Maaza Mengiste for a conversation about language, the past, borders and all the minor details that make up our reality.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • Freedom of expression is never absolute, but subject to laws and social conventions. Threats to freedom of thought and speech can come directly from authoritarian states or religious institutions. But they can also be self-inflicted, in the form of self-censorship. Both forms of censorship exist in democracies as well as dictatorship, and often overlap.

    Throughout history, authors in particular have been made the object of the limitations set by powerful institutions, be it by explicit decree or through the trepidations felt at writing challenging or shocking literature.

    Few know this landscape better than historian, author and critic Ian Buruma. He has written a host of books on East Asian (especially Chinese and Japanese) culture and history, the West and Islam, and European history, including this year’s The Collaborators. Buruma is also highly respected columnist and critic for The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, the latter of which he also served as editor-in-chief.

    This evening, Buruma will give an introductory lecture on how censorship has shaped culture and the arts in both Eastern and Western countries, before being interviewed by author and professor of cultural history at the University of Oslo, Helge Jordheim. He will join Buruma on stage for a conversation on how threats to expression have changed over time, and the challenges that writers face today.

    This event marks the beginning of The House of Literature’s series on “Forbidden books”, which sheds light on the ways in which literature is made forbidden, censored, or otherwise suppressed, historically and today.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • Estão a faltar episódios?

    Clique aqui para atualizar o feed.

  • The year is 1995, and 16 year old Shy is sneaking out of the rural boarding school for “difficult” boys, named “Last Chance”. A long history of petty crime, expulsions and frustrated family members has brought him here, but now it is all soon over. With a spliff in his pocket and his Walkman loaded with his drum ‘n’ bass favourites, he’s ready. His rucksack is filled with rocks, and his head is swimming with memories of all his failures and times he fucked it up.

    Shy is a compositionally ambitious and lyrical character study with troubled youth as its subject. Through frequent flashbacks and interjections, Shy provides us with glimpses of a difficult childhood leading to a young man at the verge of self-annihilation. Shy is a tender story of depression and not being able to fit in, told with great compassion and nuance. At the same time, the novel is a fervent ode to the outsiders of the 90s and to the culture and music that embraced them, those who no one else wanted.

    Max Porter is a British author and editor at the publishing house Granta. With his experimental and innovative novels, in particular Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, he has established himself as one of his generation’s most exciting voices and acquired a large readership among critics and with the general public. Even other writers like Douglas Stuart, PJ Harvey and George Saunders have expressed their admiration for Porter and his trilogy of novels on boyhood, which Shy now completes.

    Another writer who has followed Porter’s career with curiosity and excitement is Norwegian author and editor at Tiden, Mattis Øybø. He will meet Porter for a conversation on Shy, masculinity and how best to bring the outsiders back in.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • Do you understand why I’ve decided to tell you about our family? If our stories survive, we will not die, even when our bodies are no longer here on this earth.

    The Vietnam war was a watershed event in the Cold War as well as in the West’s understanding of itself. But what does the story look like from a Vietnamese perspective?

    In Vietnam, the war is still a traumatic experience. This is what writer Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai explores in her novel The Mountains Sing, in which we alternately follow the girl Huong and her grandmother Diệu Lan.

    While the rest of the family has been scattered across the country, Huong and Diệu Lan tries to make it through the days with the help of stories. Huong disappears into books like Pinocchio and Treasure Island, or listens to her grandmother sharing her life story, where Nguyễn takes us through the history of Vietnam in the last hundred years, from a colony under Japan and the brutal reforms of the communist regime in the 1950s and through the horrific years of the Vietnam war. Is reconciliation at all possible after decades of abuse and with families torn apart?

    Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai has published a number of poetry collections in Vietnamese, and in The Mountains Sing, her first novel in English, this background from poetry is clearly visible. She balances the dark story with a vivid and lyrical language, and through the novel’s chorus of voices, she challenges the black and white picture we know from history books and Hollywood movies. The novel has been met with critical acclaim, and won her the International Book Award and the PEN Oakland/ Josephine Miles Literary Award.

    When Nguyễn visited the House of Literature, she was joined by translator and artistic advisor for the Norwegian Festival of Literature, Yukiko Duke, for a conversation about memories, reconciliation and Vietnam’s bloody history.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • In some other world, in some other life, Pinto might’ve prayed in the morning, prayed his šaharit, prayed to be relieved of his abhorrent passion. But the only prayer that came to his mind now was to the Lord to let him keep Osman for the rest of time, for his voice to be the last thing he would hear before slipping into la gran eskuridad.

    Rafael Pinto is a young Jewish apothecary in Sarajevo, Bosnia, with big dreams and a penchant for opium. One summer day in 1914 he witnesses the assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand, and suddenly Pinto is thrust into life as a soldier in the Great War. There he meets Osman, a handsome Muslim soldier who charms Pinto with his bravery and talent for storytelling, and between them blossoms a boundless love which shall follow them through the war and to the ends of the Earth.

    Aleksandar Hemon’s The World and All That It Holds is a grandiose historical novel that combines historical fact with a rich and fabulous prose. With events set in a multicultural Europe in great social upheaval, Hemon deploys a distinctly lyrical prose, mixing in languages and expressions from all corners and cultures, showing a broad history and a multiform world. The result is a highly original, yet archetypal story of undying love and one man’s fight to save something worth living for as the world as he knows it is collapsing around him.

    Bosnian American Aleksander Hemon is one of the most central authors of his generation. With novels such as The Lazarus Project and Nowhere Man, alongside his many short stories, Hemon has written himself into the contemporary American canon and garnered readers all over the world. This year, he returns with The World and All That It Holds, perhaps his most ambitious project yet.

    In conversation with Hemon is renowned author, critic, and editor John Freeman. He has long followed Hemon’s career as a writer and metHemon on stage for a conversation on love in wartime and the explosive power of literature.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • A masseuse who rises in the ranks to become Himmler’s confidant. A cross-dressing princess who spies for Japanese secret police in China. A Dutch Jew who personally hands over his friends to the Nazis and the gas chambers.

    The Collaborators is the story of three most unusual lives, all of whom served the other side during World War II. But it is also the story of their legacies and the ways in which the writing of history can become the falsification of history: The Dutchman and the spy were both remembered as martyrs, while the masseuse was awarded the Red Cross Medal barely three years after the end of the war.

    Why were these people exempted from post-war reckoning and social stigma? How are they remembered today, and what do they tell us about how history is written and remembered?

    Ian Buruma is a Dutch historian, author and professor of human rights and journalism. In over four decades he has written popular and respected books on culture and history, with special emphasis on Europe, Japan and China. With books such as Year Zero. A History of 1945 and The Wages of Guilt. Memories of War in Germany and in Japan, Buruma has explored Western and Eastern history writing and mythologisation of traitors and interlopers. The Collaborators adds to this with its empathic and well-written portrait of three complex characters from the Second World War.

    Journalist and author Marte Michelet put the question of guilt among Norway’s resistance movement on the agenda with her book What Did the Home Front Know?, which became the centre of much debate. She has read and enjoyed the Collaborators and met Buruma on stage for a conversation on injustice, guilt, and the writing of history.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • In the novel Glory, we find ourselves in the fictional country Jidada, which is peopled with all kinds of animals; bleating sheep, a confident pig preacher, vicious dogs making up the country’s security forces, and at the very top: the Old Horse, who has ruled the country with an iron hoof ever since independence. He is «the longest-serving leader in a continent of long-serving leaders, and indeed in the whole wide world».

    Author NoViolet Bulawayo has drawn inspiration both from George Orwell’s classic Animal Farm and the African tradition of animal fables in her allegorical story of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe’s fall.

    In a bubbling and playful language, where satirical quips, twitter updates and razor sharp observations all follow each other, Bulawayo tells the story of the coup against Mugabe as it plays out among the animals on the Seat of Power as well as among the public. Through the goat Destiny, returned after years in exile, we get an outsider’s view on the events, and in a vivid mother-daughter portrait, we follow Destiny and her mother in a journey back to a part of the country’s bloody history that has long been silenced.

    The result is a masterly satirical story in which Bulawayo explores universal themes such as freedom and repression, hope and justice, showing us how the story is relevant far beyond the borders of Zimbabwe, in a world where authoritarianism is on the rise.

    Writer NoViolet Bulawayo is the first African woman to appear on the prestigious Booker list twice, first for her 2013 debut We Need New Names and then for her second novel Glory in 2022. She has taught creative writing at Stanford for many years, and her own writing has earned her a number of prizes and accolades.

    At the House of Literature, Bulawayo was joined by poet and writer Priya Bains for a conversation about fables and animals, literary playfulness, and Zimbabwe’s recent history.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • Joyce Carol Oates is one of the world’s greatest living writers, and is frequently cited as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature. It is truly a momentous occasion that Oates will visit the House of Literature, and in doing so will be visiting Norway for the very first time.

    Through more than one hundred books spanning most genres, the American legend writes tenderly and with precision about our societies’ great questions.

    «The opposite of language is silence and silence for human beings is death», Oates said after receiving the prestigious National Book Award for her 1969 novel Them. The novel is considered one of her major works, and will now be available in Norwegian translation for the first time. In Them, we follow a forking class family living under harsh conditions in Detroit, from the 1930s and until the bloody race riots in 1967.

    Oates has also written fiction based on real events or people, such as her best-selling novel Blonde, based on Marilyn Monroe’s life and death, which was adapted into a film in 2022. Her latest novel, Babysitter, is set in the aftermath of a number of unsolved child-killings in Detroit in the 1970s. Here, Oates explores racism, sexual harassment and institutional abuse in ways that make the story feel deeply relevant, even to today’s society marked by MeToo and Black Lives Matter.

    The core of her writing, according to Oates herself, is to “be a witness” – to tell the stories of those who have no one speaking for them. She writes about racism, misogyny, violence and social injustices with a keen eye for politics and history, combined with deep psychological insight and literary precision.

    Oates has won a number of literary prizes for her extensive body of work. She has been a professor of creative writing at Princeton University and UC Berkeley for many years and a central literary mentor for writers such as Jonathan Safran Foer and Mohsin Hamid.

    When the author visits Norway and the House of Literature for the very first time, the event will take place in the University of Oslo’s ceremonial hall, so that as many people as possible can take part in the event. Here, she will meet writer and journalist Karin Haugen for a conversation about a long writing life and the power of literature.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • In 2021, Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, the first African-born writer to receive the award in close to 20 years. The Swedish Academy awarded Gurnah the prize «for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents».

    Across the world, more and more readers are discovering Gurnah’s body of work. His novels Paradise, Afterlives and Desertion explore the history of East Africa and Zanzibar, while other works, such as Admiring Silence and By the Sea, portray a migrant’s encounter with British society. What they all have in common are the memorable characters created by Gurnah, characters that are not heroes, but rather unique in their quiet everydayness, and who often feel alienated from the world around them.

    Through these characters, Gurnah gives us masterful depictions of a region and its history, of the colonial era, of exile and migration. In a quiet revolution, he shifts the perspective from the familiar, Western narrative to an East African point of view, leading us into great history as seen through the eyes of ordinary people.

    “Gurnah’s novels are stunningly beautiful, immersive and enticing. He exceeds all others in depicting the lives of those made small by injustice and oppression”, writer Leila Aboulela has said about Gurnah’s writing, with which she has a strong connection. Aboulela grew up in Sudan, and currently lives in Scotland. She has published a number of plays, short story collections and novels, most recently River Spirit.

    Aboulela will join Abdulrazak Gurnah for a conversation about his body of work, about writing the history of East Africa, migration, colonial history, and the unique portraits of characters and relationships he gives us in his books.


    The event was supported by Norad.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • Do artists have a social responsibility? Should art be «pure» and not related to ethical or political issues? What, exactly, is the role of art? These are questions that the American author Joyce Carol Oates has dealt with through a long writing life, both as an author and as a professor in creative writing at University of Princeton and UC Berkeley.

    Oates is a legend, and the author of more than 100 books. Known for memorable titles such as Blond, Them, Black Water, The Gravedigger’s Daughter, We Were the Mulvaneys and Babysitter. She has been a consistent favorite for the Nobel Prize of literature the last 25 years, and has been a mentor to writers such as Jonathan Safran Foer and Mohsin Hamid. In this lecture, Oates talks about the role of art and that of inspiration and the wellspring of creativity, examined through the work of contemporary writers and poets.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • 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 novel, Triangulum, was nominated for the Nommo Prize for Best Speculative Fiction Novel written by an African. His latest book is the 2020 chapbook Native Life in the Third Millennium.


    This is Masande's reading list:


    Imraan Coovadia, Tales of the Metric System

                              A Spy in Time

    K. Sello Duiker, The Quiet Violence of Dreams

    Njabulo Ndebele, Fools and Other Stories


    In this podcastseries the House of Literature in Oslo, Norway invites writers and thinkers to talk about their work, what they read and present their readinglist from the African continent and diaspora. 


    Host in this episode Åshild Lappegård Lahn


    Editing and production by the House of Literature

    Music by Ibou Cissokho


    The House of Literature’s project to promote African literature is supported by NORAD.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • 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 was named one of the 10 Best Contemporary African Books by the Guardian. Her second novel The Shadow King, portraying the Italo-Ethiopian war of the 1930s, was shortlisted for the prestigious Booker prize in 2020.


    This is Maaza Mengiste’s reading list:

    Ama Ata Aidoo, Our Sister KilljoyMaya Binyam, HangmanMihret Sibhat, The History of a Difficult ChildTsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions

    In this podcastseries the House of Literature in Oslo, Norway invites writers and thinkers to talk about their work, what they read and present their readinglist from the African continent and diaspora.

     

    Host in this episode Åshild Lappegård Lahn


    Editing and production by the House of Literature


    Music by Ibou Cissokho


    The House of Literature’s project to promote African literature is supported by NORAD.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • 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 entries and audio tapes by a girl, relaying first her adolescence in the 1990s, when she explores her sexuality and tries to find her mother, who disappeared without a trace when she was little, and then moving to her daily life as an adult.


    Through the history of the girl, we see how South-Africa’s dark past is still shaping its present, and mirrored in a dystopian future, where environmental issues are rampant, and social issues is solved by creating work camps across the country.


    In his novel Triangulum, Masande Ntshanga combines different genres in a story which illustrates, convincingly, that South-Africa’s dystopian past is far from a closed chapter.


    Ntshanga is the author of two novels and a chapbook. His debut The Reactive won him the debut prize the Betty Trask Award, while Triangulum was nominated for the Nommo Award for Best Speculative Fiction Novel by and African.


    At the House of Literature, Ntshanga is joined by editor and translator Julia Wiedlocha for a conversation about adolescence and technology, future dystopias, and the dark shadow of colonialism.


    The event is supported by NORAD.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • «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 science fiction, and his latest novel, Triangulum, makes use of several elements from the genre.


    Science fiction, speculative fiction and afrofuturism are literary genres on the rise on many countries, including Norway and Ntshanga’s home country, South Africa. What makes science fiction the preferred genre in which to explore possible future scenarios, or in which to pick apart contemporary power structures?


    In this personal lecture, Ntshanga will talk about what science fiction literature has meant to him as a reader and writer, and about the significance of the genre for writers who want to imagine another world.


    Masande Ntshanga is a South African writer, poet and editor of New Contrast Magazine. For his debut novel The Reactive, he was awarded the Betty Trask Award, while his second novel, Triangulum, was nominated for the Nommo Prize for Best Speculative Fiction Novel written by an African.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • 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 what tradition might we locate transgender literature?


    In this talk, American author Torrey Peters will argue for finding the roots of current transfeminine literature in older works that explore the performance of masculinity, works that in fact have been popularly accepted as containing little ambivalence about the meanings of gender. The primary focus will be on Ernest Hemingway, but with slight detours into Per Petterson, Thomas Mann, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Evelyn Waugh, and the pharmacology of steroid regimens taken by extreme bodybuilders.


    Torrey Peters rocketed into the international literary scene with her debut novel Detransition, Baby, a warm and intelligent exploration of gender, parenthood and trans life. The novel was among other prizes nominated for The Women’s Prize for Fiction, and is celebrated for its complex trans characters and for painting a truthful picture of the New York trans scene.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • 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 the complexeties of trans life, and compares transitioning to cis women starting over after a divorce: Everything you thought you knew about the future has to be scrapped, and you have to create a new identity that society doesn’t have any rules for.


    The novel portrays Reese, a trans woman who always wanted children, her transgendered ex-partner Ames and his pregnant girlfriend. Can the three of them be parents together, and if so, what would that look like? Who are their role models? How can trans women creates good lives, when so many aspects of ordinary life are still unavailable to them?


    Detransition, Baby, now available in Kirsti Vogt’s Norwegian transalation, gives a unique insight into the everyday dilemmas trans people meet. The novel was among other prizes nominated for The Women’s Prize for Fiction, and is celebrated for its complex trans characters and for painting a truthful picture of the New York trans scene.


    Author and literary critic Carline Tromp will meet Peters for a conversation about gender, sexuality, family, and starting over.


    The conversation will start with an introduction by Christine Marie Jentoft, adviser for gender diversity at FRI, who has been an important voice in the Norwegian trans debate for over 10 years. She received an honorary prize from PKI in 2022 for her work for equality for the lgbt+ community, and was elected Queer Role Model of the year during the 2023 Rainbow Galla.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • «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 activists and politicians from the opposition. Last year, Dangarembga was herself convicted after partaking in a peaceful protest with one other activist in 2020. While large parts of the middle class and cultural elite has left Zimbabwe, Dangarembga has staid put and fought for change. Now she debates moving countries.


    Across the world, it is becoming increasingly difficult to protest governments and large corporations. Environmental activists are especially vulnerable: According to the human rights organization Global Witness, 200 environmental activists were murdered across the world in 2021 alone.


    In 2016, South African activist Nonhle Mbuthuma lost a close friend and colleague. Ever since, she has lived with constant death threats in her work to protect the nature and community where she lives, on the east coast of South Africa.


    Mbuthuma and Dangarembga will join for a conversation about the conditions for human rights and civil society in Zimbabwe and South Africa. How do you keep fighting for grass roots engagement and change under such perilous conditions?


    Moderating the conversation is Bergdís Jóelsdóttir. She has worked with civil society and human rights initiatives in Southern Africa for a number of years, and is currently the policy director for Amnesty International Norway.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • 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 Sami activists, she barricaded the Department of Oil and Energy, to protest that the authorities have done nothing in the 500 days since Norway’s Supreme Court ruled that the wind park in Fosen violates the human rights of Sami reindeer herders in the area.


    South African Nonhle Mbuthuma has also fought for her people’s land and rights. Together with her community, the indigenous group in Pondoland, she took the Australian mining company Transworld Energy and Minerals to court – and won.


    Hætta Isaksen and Mbuthuma both fight a double fight, for nature and for indigenous people’s right to their culture and traditions. For many indigenous activists, the environmental struggle is seen as an integrated part of the fight against extractivism – extracting natural resources for export and sale – and that against colonialism.


    For Mbuthuma, her fight is a continuation of earlier generations’ fight for the same land, against colonial powers and the apartheid state. Mbuthuma is the founder of the organization Amadiba Crisis Committee, which is fighting for the land and community in Pondoland on the east coast of South Africa.

    Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen is an activist, a musician with her band Isák, and an actress.


    When the two of them meet for a conversation about environmental struggle and indigenous rights, they are joined by Silje Ask Lundberg, former president of Friends of the Earth Norway and a senior campaigner for the organization Oil Change International.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • 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 country, from life under the colonial regime of Rhodesia to the struggle for freedom and the disillusioned everyday life after independence.


    Her debut novel Nervous Conditions was not only the first novel in English published by a Black woman in Zimbabwe, it has become a modern classic, and in 2018, it figured on BBC’s “100 books that changed the world”. That same year, the third book in the trilogy, This Mournable Body, was shortlisted for the prestigious Booker prize.


    But it was not a given that Dangarembga would end up in this position, and at one point, it seemed she would not be able to publish her first book at all. In her recent essay collection Black and Female, Dangarembga connects the personal and the political in her recount of how she has been forced into a constant uphill battle to be heard, as a Black person and as a woman.


    At the House of Literature, Dangarembga will meet Ethiopian Maaza Mengiste in conversation. Mengiste is the author of several critically acclaimed novels portraying the history of Ethiopia, and she has named Dangarembga as one of her literary inspirations.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • 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 of a region told through the childhood of a young girl.


    This could be the description of Elena Ferrante’s Naples Quartet, but in fact it describes the trilogy of Tsitsi Dangarembga, began several decades earlier.

    In this trilogy, we follow the young girl Tambudzai from her childhood in colonised Rhodesia, through adolescence during the liberation war to the young woman attempting to carve out a life for herself in an independent, but disillusioned, Zimbabwe.


    How are these novels read today? And why is it that many of the most central authors from the African continent are still unfamiliar to many European readers?


    Dangarembga has made her mark as a writer for more than 30 years. In 2021, she was the eighth writer to be included in the art project The Future Library in Oslo, and this Spring, she was awarded the Freedom of Expression Prize from the Norwegian Writers Union. Her novels have become modern classics, and a number of writers have been inspired by her nuanced portraits of a young girl, by how she renders girls’ and women’s fight for equal rights and how she tells the recent story of Zimbabwe through her fiction.


    One of the writers inspired by Dangarembga’s fiction, is Ethiopian Maaza Mengiste. She has also employed the novel to tell the story of a country in her books Beneath the Lion’s Gaze and The Shadow King.


    Marjam Idriss is the author of the novel Jannikeevangeliet («The Gospel of Jannike»), a literary critic and a translator of names such as Audre Lorde and Amanda Gorman. This Spring, she has delved into Dangarembga’s body of work.


    Tonje Vold is a professor at the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Oslo. She wrote her thesis about Tsitsi Dangarembga, and her research has focused especially on postcolonial literature and literature from Southern Africa.


    Moderating the conversation is writer and former artistic director at the House of Literature, Andreas Liebe Delsett.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.