Open Country Mag : Africa : Books, Film and TV, Culture

Books

The Rovingheights Bestseller List 2024: Presented with Open Country Mag

Releasing the third annual compilation of the only bestseller list in Nigerian literature: comprising the Top 100 books of the year, alongside the Top 50 in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, self-published, and children’s books.

Otosirieze

JK Anowe, a Confessional Poet, Confronts Himself

Working from fragments, the reclusive poet led a wave of young Nigerian voices situating the self and mental states. Now his “schizo poetry” is evolving, drawing from Igbo cosmology.

Iheoma Uzomba

Anticipated Books of 2025

From Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Laila Lalami, and Goretti Kyomuhendo to Tochi Eze, Chisom Okafor, Itiola Jones, and Adedayo Agarau: the anticipated books of 2025.

Orji Victor Ebubechukwu

Translating Under Empire

As Series Editors of Global Black Writers in Translation, Vanessa K. Valdés, Anette Joseph-Gabriel, and Nathan H. Dize know that “Black literature is the least translated.” In a mostly white field, the long histories of Afro-diasporic, Caribbean, Spanish, French, and Portuguese erasures inform their work.

Otosirieze

New Writing & Excerpts

“The Ahistorical Racial Polemic of Conclave”

Politicking and ideological clashes take centre stage in Edward Berger’s papal succession drama Conclave, a frontrunner for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards. But it is in the arc of its African cardinal that the film sets a damaging narrative.

Otosirieze

“This Grasping for Hope Walks with Us”

20.35 Africa Vol. VII, guest-edited by Kwame Opoku-Duku, is introduced by managing editor Precious Okpechi: “A sense of belonging permeates the poems in this anthology, an acceptance of one’s place in a flawed world.”

20.35 Africa

“Thinking Through Tremor”

Morality as an uncanny city in Teju Cole’s second novel: “And if we are to think of music as a sort of shield for him, then we are invited to think of his dead friend as having once played that same role in his life.”

Reyumeh Ejue

“‘Our Literature Has Died Again’: Nigerian Writing in the Era of the Nomadists”

As conversations sethe about the “death” of Nigerian literature and the loss of authenticity in its poetry, a writer counters for the growing japa-MFA subculture: “I call them the Nomadic Generation because of their complication of nationalism.”

Kanyinsola Olorunnisola

Book Reviews

Dream Count

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

★★★★★ 5/5

This Motherless Land

Nikki May

★★★★★ 3.5/5

When We Were Fireflies

Abubakar Adam Ibrahim

★★★★★ 3.7/5

I Am Still with You

Emmanuel Iduma

★★★★★ 3/5

Imagination’s Many Rooms

Amatoritsero Ede

★★★★★ 2.5/5

My Seven Black Fathers

Will Jawando

★★★★★ 3/5

Shop

The Stone Breakers

Emmanuel Dongala

In the fifth novel by Dongala, a major figure in Francophone African literature, Congolese women, working as stone crushers at a gravel pit, demand higher wages.

Ghost Season

Fatin Abbas

This sweeping tale of the breakup of Sudan explores the porous and perilous nature of borders ― national, ethnic, or religious ― and the profound consequences of crossing them.

Gaslight

Femi Kayode

The second novel in a mystery series following investigator Taiwo Philips, who tries to crack a conspiracy around a religious leader accused of murder.

Whites Can Dance Too

Kalaf Epalanga

A reflection on and celebration of Angolan music, the intertwining of cultural roots, freedom, and love.

Film & TV

In His Short Films, the Drama Is in the Mundane

Guided by his “Igbo awakening,” Dika Ofoma sets his brief features — God’s Wife, A Quiet Monday, and A Japa Tale, among them — in southeastern Nigeria, with characters, often women, whose day-to-day lives, he argues, are “interesting enough.”

Orji Victor Ebubechukwu

She Got Her Start by Asking. Now She Runs Her Own Shows.

Not wanting to be boxed in, Fatima Binta Gimsay moves from television to short films. Her work includes Fine Girls, Omozi, and Ijo. “The challenge on the indie side of things will always be money,” she said.

Orji Victor Ebubechukwu

The 10 Best Acting Performances of the Year

From father figures and bad sons to frustrated wives and fierce lovers: our second annual list of the film and TV performances that elevated stories in 2024.

Otosirieze

With the S16 Film Festival, an Arthouse Collective Locks Its Focus

A trio of young filmmakers banded together as the Surreal16 Collective, to resist Nollywood clichés. At their festival, Michael Omonua, C.J. “Fiery” Obasi, and Abba T. Makama curate a haven for unorthodox filmmakers.

Michael Aromolaran

Film & TV Reviews

A Night in 2005

Temidayo Makanjuola

★★★★★ 4.5/5

Roses and Ivy

Biodun Stephen

★★★★★ 3.5/5

A Green Fever

Taiwo Egunjobi

★★★★★ 4/5

With Difficulty Comes Ease

Akorede Azeez

★★★★★ 4.5/5

Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti

Bolanle Austin-Peters

★★★★★ 3.5/5

House of Ga'a

Bolanle Austen-Peters

★★★★★ 4.3/5

Streaming

Sarah Masiyiwa & Line Talla

The Muslim Highlife of Alhaji Waziri Oshomah

Alhaji Waziri Oshomah

BBC: The Reich Lecture 2022: The Freedom of Speech

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Nsukka Is Burning

Deborah Shorinde

Issues & Covers

Culture & Industries

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Is on the Host Committee for the MET Gala 2025

Her selection — with LeBron James, Colman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton, A$AP Rocky, Pharrell Williams, and Anna Wintour as chairs — coincides with the rollout of her forthcoming fourth novel Dream Count.

Orji Victor Ebubechukwu

Our Top Stories of 2024

From a groundbreaking Profile of Cardinal Arinze to a feature on Liberia’s lack of a literary bookstore, to the story of a novelist-cum-soldier: these stories of artists and industry shapers in African literature, Nollywood, and culture defined our year.