Now in its 12th edition, the London Literature Festival aims to mirror the English
capital’s image as a multicultural hotspot and hodge-podge. So it is appropriate
that the festival’s theme this year is “odyssey”, and also convenient as it
celebrates a new translation of Homer’s “Odyssey” into English by Emily Wilson,
an English professor of classics.
Held annually at the Southbank Centre, this year’s lead artist is Salman Rushdie,
the Indian born novelist and author of “Midnight’s Children” and “Satanic Verses”
who discussed his latest and 13th book titled “The Golden House” which is billed
as a “satirical and incisive anatomy of contemporary American politics”.
Other highlights are “Feminism In Trump’s America” by Soraya Chemaly (author of
“Rage Against Her”) and Laura Bates (founder of “Everyday Sexism Project”);
“Migration and Magic” by novelist Mohsin Hamid (author of “The Reluctant
Fundamentalist” and “Exit West”) and actor-musician Riz Ahmed (whose film
roles include the adaptation of “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”, HBO’s “The
Night Of”, “Four Lions” and “Nightcrawler”).
The wide assortment of speakers and topics explored says Debo Amon, a
literature programmer at the Southbank Centre is “a good breath and alchemical
mix that people can’t really get elsewhere”.
Nigerian novelist Chibundu Onuzo (“The Spider King’s Daughter” and “Welcome To
Lagos”) premiered her new literary foray titled “1991”, a collection of personalessays she has adapted for the stage using a live band, a choir and a panel of
readers that boasted of Ego Boyo (“Checkmate”) who is one of Nigeria’s most
naturalist actors, a three woman choir, two dancers and a live band that included
a drummer, guitarist and two keyboardist.
Titled after her year of birth, “1991” recounts and reimagines Onuzo’s younger
years growing up in Nigeria until she was 16 when she moved to the UK to attend
boarding school affording her a sharp contrast of cultures that serves up
evergreen themes around identity and race, her Christian faith and religiosity,
virginity vs celibacy and self-mastery all of which made for a rapturous crowd
pleaser that could not be easily pegged as play or musical.
Herself a devout Christian, Onuzo’s was born into a pastoring family with three
high-achieving siblings one of whom Dinachi, was a maths prodigy and is today an
engineer and a gospel-soul artist who performed one of her own singles “Ohio
Boy” with the band.
Ms Onuzo is a novelist without a history of stage adaptations. Was it not a big risk
to cede directorial control to her on a reputable platform like the London
Literature Festival? “Every new artist, every new piece of work is a risk at some
point“ says Amon “and if we only play it safe, we wouldn’t be able to bring new
exciting work to the forefront”.
Chaired by broadcaster June Sarpong, “Striking The Empire” brought together
two prominent public intellectuals in Akala (author of “Natives: Race and Class in
the Ruins Of Empire” and winner of the Best Hip Hop Act at MOBO awards 2016)
and David Olusoga (author of “Civilisations: First Contact / The Cult if Progress”and corresponding BBC documentary of the same title) for a discourse on empire,
contemporary British life and its underpinnings.
The provocative title foregrounded a rigorous examination of the long disregard
for the immeasurable contributions to the United Kingdom by former colonial
subjects from Asian and African countries in a list that includes racist immigration
laws, barely credited but crucial contributions to the first and second world wars,
the National Health Service (NHS), the telling fact that the British never built a
single university in the Caribbean and the fallacy that the freedoms from colonial
rule was given by British rulers rather than a result of violent resistance in many
cases which Olusoga, in his typically restrained fashion, described thus: “there
are points when an omission starts to look like a lie”.
On the subject of reparations for the Atlantic Slave Trade, Olusoga is firm in his
believe that, if assented to, the unprecedented result would be “weaponized
against black people all over the world”.
Asked if both Olusoga and Onuzo signify a prominence of a Nigerian writers in
contemporary British Literature, Amon says that it is “coincidental” that both
writers are Nigerians but on the subject of the wider appreciation, today, of the
cultural output of writers in the African diaspora, Amon is emphatic: “if you make
work that appeals to the African diaspora and continent, they will consume it. If
they don’t consume it is because they didn’t like what you were making”.