The Book in Africa Critical Debates [Paperback]

This volume presents new research and critical debates in African book history, and brings together a range of disciplinary perspectives by leading scholars in the subject. It includes case studies from across Africa, ranging from third-century manuscript traditions to twenty-first century internet communications.Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors Introduction PART I: FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT 1. Copying and Circulation in South Africa's Reading Cultures, 1780-1840; Archie L. Dick 2. Printing as an Agent of Change in Morocco, 1864-1912; Fawzi Abdulrazak 3. Between Manuscripts and Books: Islamic Printing in Ethiopia; Alessandro Gori 4. Making Book History in Timbuktu; Shamil Jeppie PART II: POLITICS AND PROFIT IN AFRICAN PRINT CULTURES 5. Print Culture and Imagining the Union of South Africa; David Johnson 6. Creating a Book Empire: Longmans in Africa; Caroline Davis 7. From Royalism to E-secessionism: Lozi Histories and Ethnic Politics in Zambia; Jack Hogan and Giacomo Macola 8. Between the Cathedral and the Market: A Study of Wits University Press; Elizabeth Le Roux PART III: THE MAKING OF AFRICAN LITERATURE 9. Francophone African Literary Prizes and the 'Empire of the French Language'; Ruth Bush and Claire Ducournau 10. Heinemann's African Writers Series and the Rise of James Ng?gi; Nourdin Bejjit 11. The Publishing and Digital Dissemination of Creative Writing in Cameroon; Joyce B. Ashuntantang Index

The essays in this collection offer an illuminating glimpse of the critical debates on the Book in Africa, and will certainly create a lot of interest in this area of expertise, especially on the importance of archival sources as pivotal in literary scholarship. (Jabulani Mkhize, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 42 (2), 2016)

This is an important volume because it directs our attention to difficult questions, including that of the relationship between socio-historical contexts and literary production. The book will be valuablelŠ