A glimpse of African hopes and dreams

This volume brings together many leading authors of modern day Africa.

It reflects the diversity, the richness and cultural diversity of this fascinating continent.

Writers like Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Sembene Ousmane, Chinua Achebe and Ben Okri are all represented.

Perhaps the main thread that runs through these stories is the concept of hope for a better and more secure future, the hope for wealth, for an education, for a deliverance from hunger, as well as the frustration and destruction of those hopes.

Ben Okri expresses it poetically. "The grim spirits of negation chant their awesome soul-shrinking songs. Their songs steal hope from us and make us yield to the air our energies."

A secondary thread running through most of the stories is religion and the belief in a Christian god, a legacy of colonialism, but also, for many, that last straw of hope.

This is a continent with a recent history of colonial exploitation and brutality and an even more recent history of indigenous tyranny and brutality abetted by the new imperialism.

These stories reflect that history and torment through the everyday lives of ordinary individuals.

Here is scant revolutionary rhetoric or fervour, more a reflection of noble strength and stoicism versus insurmountable hurdles.

Perhaps the biggest contradiction for African writers is that they are writing for an elite and very often a white, western elite at that, because the majority of their countrymen and women are illiterate or, if they can read, can only afford to buy self-help or technical books which are seen as a way out of poverty and ignorance.

So these stories have to be read with that in mind. That's why Ngugi wa Thiong'o decided, many years ago, to write only in Kikuyu, the main language of Kenya, rather than English.

My only minor gripe about this book is that some of the stories are translated into American English even though this is a British edition - it does change the reader's perceptions significantly.

JOHN GREEN