Aflame Books teamed up with the School of Modern Languages at the University of Bristol to launch Comrades, the masterful translation by Leona Nickless of the classic Guatemalan novel Los compañeros by Marco Antonio Flores. This title comes more than 30 years after Marco Antonio Flores lit the fuse of an explosive new genre in Central American literature with his polemical, naked and brutal novel. Hailed as a masterpiece when first published in 1976, Comrades relates the stories of young revolutionaries embroiled in Guatemala’s bloody civil war and describes how their zeal was coloured by a cocktail of sex, booze and ambition. It was launched on 18 March at Bristol University’s School of Modern Languages.
ALI BABA and his forty colleagues were not thieves but philosophers; Pythagoras’s theorem of the triangle was inspired by a crucifixion in Jerusalem; and the greatest demon Sinbad had to face was not mythical, but cannibal. These are clues offered by Alberto Mussa in his capitvating journey through the Arabic alphabet in The Riddle of Qaf, recently published by Aflame. The protagonist, a Brazilian of Lebanese descent like Mussa himself, heard the riddle at his grandfather’s feet. He believes it is an unrecognised muallaqat, the pre-Islamic poems suspended from one of Islam’s most sacred places. MORE
THE latest African title to be released by Aflame Books is the finely crafted Equatoria . Set in 1912, Tom Dreyer’s novel recounts the odyssey of two Englishmen commissioned by Antwerp Zoo to bring a live specimen of the okapi back from the Belgian Congo. In early twentieth century Europe, the okapi was known only from descriptions and considered almost as mythical as the unicorn - making the search for this secretive creature a search for truth itself. MORE
The Rich Man of Pietermartizburg, published by Aflame early in 2008, has been recognised by the School Library Journal in the USA as one of the year’s best novels for high-school students. The world’s biggest reviewer of books for young people selects 30 titles from among the hundreds it has reviewed over the past year. The novel, translated from Zulu, immerses readers in a world in which village youths, with the help of a tribal chief, devise a plan to “out-con a con man”. MORE about The Rich Man of Pietermartizburg
THE AUTHOR of the best-selling chronicles of Egyptian life, Taxi, has been invited to participate in the first Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature. Khaled Al Khamissi will be one of about 60 international writers attending this prestigious event. It will take place in Dubai in February 2009 and will be the first festival of its kind on this scale in the Middle East. MORE about Taxi
THE ANGOLAN author Ondjaki has been awarded the inaugural Grinzane prize for Africa. The Whistler, a magical novel by this young, versatile writer, was published by Aflame Books early in 2008. The prize, awarded in Addis Ababa, is sponsored by the Italian Grinzane foundation. Other writers to receive the award in its first year were Ngugi wa Thiongo and Ben Okri. Ondjaki was honoured as the young writer of the year. MORE about The Whistler
Comrades launched