Cover Story

December 13, 2023

How Leila Aboulela Reclaimed the Heroines of Sudan

The widest-read contemporary Sudanese writer is retrieving from history the stolen spaces of her country’s women, and bringing nuance to an image of Islam. In a time of war, her fiction expands a national consciousness.

Paula Willie-Okafor

December 13, 2022

The Gentle Defiance of Chinelo Okparanta

With Happiness, Like Water and Under the Udala Trees, she helped herald LGBTQ visibility in Nigerian literature. With Harry Sylvester Bird, she still isn’t looking to satisfy society. “I think, sometimes, it takes time for people to digest what literature is really doing,” the literary icon says.

Paula Willie-Okafor

April 8, 2022

The Next Generation of African Literature

Originally planned for December 2021, to mark our first anniversary, our in-depth special issue profiles 16 African writers and curators who have impacted, disrupted, reshaped, and even created literary culture in the last five years.

Otosirieze

February 12, 2022

The Methods of Damon Galgut

How the South African naturalist, a prodigy, innovated major work on masculinity, race, memory, and time—and then, at the tip of his 40-year career, came the Booker Prize.

Otosirieze

September 20, 2021

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Is in a Different Place Now

Her second novel, the monumental Half of a Yellow Sun, was a major step in her singular cultural exceptionality. Fifteen years on, in Open Country Mag’s first sit-down interview, the great writer and careful thinker looks back, reckoning with her private losses and public evolution.

Otosirieze

July 4, 2021

The Worldly Ways of Teju Cole

The great writer, street photographer, and art historian’s enquiries lured him onto a solo path in contemporary literature—a completely new terrain for an African writer. Ten years after his debut novel, Open City, he still seeks artistic freedom.

Otosirieze

January 16, 2021

Maaza Mengiste’s Chronicles of Ethiopia

In her novels, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze and the Booker Prize-shortlisted The Shadow King, she explored the Ethiopian Revolution and the Italo-Abyssinian War. Now, with Project 3541, she is building a photography archive.

Otosirieze

December 30, 2020

How Tsitsi Dangarembga, with Her Trilogy of Zimbabwe, Overcame

Her debut novel, Nervous Conditions, is a modern classic, and after The Book of Not, she concludes Tambu’s story with the Booker Prize-shortlisted This Mournable Body. But the literary and film icon never planned for these to take almost four decades.

Otosirieze

December 13, 2023

How Leila Aboulela Reclaimed the Heroines of Sudan

The widest-read contemporary Sudanese writer is retrieving from history the stolen spaces of her country’s women, and bringing nuance to an image of Islam. In a time of war, her fiction expands a national consciousness.

Paula Willie-Okafor

December 13, 2022

The Gentle Defiance of Chinelo Okparanta

With Happiness, Like Water and Under the Udala Trees, she helped herald LGBTQ visibility in Nigerian literature. With Harry Sylvester Bird, she still isn’t looking to satisfy society. “I think, sometimes, it takes time for people to digest what literature is really doing,” the literary icon says.

Paula Willie-Okafor

April 8, 2022

The Next Generation of African Literature

Originally planned for December 2021, to mark our first anniversary, our in-depth special issue profiles 16 African writers and curators who have impacted, disrupted, reshaped, and even created literary culture in the last five years.

Otosirieze

February 12, 2022

The Methods of Damon Galgut

How the South African naturalist, a prodigy, innovated major work on masculinity, race, memory, and time—and then, at the tip of his 40-year career, came the Booker Prize.

Otosirieze

September 20, 2021

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Is in a Different Place Now

Her second novel, the monumental Half of a Yellow Sun, was a major step in her singular cultural exceptionality. Fifteen years on, in Open Country Mag’s first sit-down interview, the great writer and careful thinker looks back, reckoning with her private losses and public evolution.

Otosirieze

July 4, 2021

The Worldly Ways of Teju Cole

The great writer, street photographer, and art historian’s enquiries lured him onto a solo path in contemporary literature—a completely new terrain for an African writer. Ten years after his debut novel, Open City, he still seeks artistic freedom.

Otosirieze

January 16, 2021

Maaza Mengiste’s Chronicles of Ethiopia

In her novels, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze and the Booker Prize-shortlisted The Shadow King, she explored the Ethiopian Revolution and the Italo-Abyssinian War. Now, with Project 3541, she is building a photography archive.

Otosirieze

December 30, 2020

How Tsitsi Dangarembga, with Her Trilogy of Zimbabwe, Overcame

Her debut novel, Nervous Conditions, is a modern classic, and after The Book of Not, she concludes Tambu’s story with the Booker Prize-shortlisted This Mournable Body. But the literary and film icon never planned for these to take almost four decades.

Otosirieze