Achebe’s Children: Africa’s Suspended Revolutions

 
      

You Are Cordially Invited To Join

WITS UNIVERSITY PRESS and the  
Mail & Guardian

on Friday 30 August 18:00 for 19:00

At the Opening event of the 4th Annual M&G Literary Festival

Achebe’s Children: Africa’s Suspended Revolutions

Adam Habib, the new vice-chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand, 
 will confront the main topic in the festival’s keynote address: South Africa’s
 suspended revolution.

Habib’s new book, South Africa’s Suspended Revolution: Hopes and Prospects 
 (Wits University Press), argues that “individuals and institutions can, with
 imagination, act against the grain of a given historical moment and transform 
the options available to society”.

Habib will also participate in a discussion on Saturday 31 Aug as part of the 
M&G Literary Festival with Hlumelo Biko and Adriaan Basson
 (see below for details)

When: Friday 30 August 2013 at 18:00 for 19:00

Where: The Market Theatre
Cnr Bree and Miriam Makeba
Newtown, Johannesburg
GPS Coordinates
-26.200845,28.03256


RSVP: by Thursday 29 August to info.witspress@wits.ac.za

Refreshments will be served from 18:00
This event is free.
Cash bar available
Books will be on sale at the event from Love Books pop-up shop

Wits University Press 

Authors, Adam Habib
 and Carline Kihato 
Features in the 2013 M&G   Literary Festival

Adam Habib’s opening address will be followed by the festival’s first panel discussion, on Saturday 31 August (9.30 am to 11 am), chaired by Shaun de Waal, the M&G’s Comment & Analysis editor. Habib, Adriaan Basson (Zuma Exposed, Jonathan Ball) and Hlumelo Biko (The Great African Society, Jonathan Ball) join him in Hopes and Impediments, a look at South Africa today and its prospects.

Bringing the festival on Sunday from 12.30 to 2 pm to an apt close will be a session titled Migration: There Was a Country. It will look at migration and the invisibility – voluntary and involuntary – of migrants. The panel will be Booker Prize long-listed author, NoViolet Bulawayo (We Need New Names, Random House), Achmat Dangor (Strange Pilgrimages), Christa Kuljian (Sanctuary, Jacana), Caroline Wanjiku Kihato (Migrant Women of Johannesburg, Wits University Press), Kwanele Sosibo (M&G) and Wandile Zwane (City of Johannesburg Migrant Desk).

Caroline Wanjiku Kihato is another Wits University Press author participating in the M&G Literary Festival. Her forthcoming book, Migrant Women of Johannesburg: Life in an in-between city, looks at what it means to live in Johannesburg, yet remain dislocated there; what it means to be in the inner city, yet aspire to live elsewhere; and what it means to be both visible and invisible in the city. Kihato, who began her life in South Africa as a street trader, uses narratives and images to explore the lives of women from Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo Brazzaville, Nigeria, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe, now living in Johannesburg.

About the M&G Literary Festival
The fourth annual Mail & Guardian Literary festival aims to curate 
 robust debate about political, social and literary revolution, this year 
paying tribute to the late Chinua Achebe, taking as its theme Achebe’s
 Children: Africa’s Suspended Revolutions. Session names are derived 
from the titles of Achebe’s fiction and non-fiction works, as well as from 
some of his notable thoughts on literature.
Find attached (and below) the full programme, on from 30 August to
 1 September at the Market Theatre, Newtown.

Tickets Cost R50 per session and can be purchased at:  
https://mg.co.za/litfest13 or contact Tamarin Marshman 
011 250 7300 Festivalgoers will be able to buy books by the panelists 
and other choice fiction and non-fiction from the Love Books pop-up
 bookshop in the Market Theatre foyer.

  
















Mail & Guardian Literary Festival 
Programme 2013

Friday August 30, 2013
Session 1: 7pm-7.45pm in The Main Theatre Keynote address: 
Adam Habib - South Africa’s suspended revolution.

Saturday August 31, 2013
Session 2: 9.30am – 11am in The Main Theatre Panel discussion: 
Hopes and Impediments
Chair: Shaun de Waal
Panel: Adriaan Basson – Zuma Exposed (Jonathan Ball)
Hlumelo Biko – The Great African Society (Jonathan Ball)
Adam Habib – Suspended Revolution: Hopes and Prospects for 
South Africa (Wits Press)
Session 3: 1.30am – 1pm in The Main Theatre A Man of the People:
Reflecting on Chinua Achebe’s Legacy with Nadine Gordimer. 
Nadine Gordimer reads from Achebe’s works and recalls the 
writer and man. She is followed by Imraan Coovadia and
Aghogho Akpome in conversation about Achebe

Session 4: 2.30pm – 4pm Parallel sessions The Main Theatre 
Panel discussion: “It is only the story [that] can continue beyond 
the war and the warrior.”
Chair: Imraan Coovadia
Panel: Niq Mhlongo – Way back home (Kwela)
Nthikeng Mohlele – Small Things (UKZN Press)
Mtutuzeli Nyoka – A Hill of Fools (Pan Macmillan
Mongane Wally Serote – Rumours (Jacana)

Session 5: 2.30pm – 4pm in The Barney Simon Theatre Panel 
discussion: No longer at ease – books as agents of insurrection
Chair: Corina van der Spoel
Panel: Archie Dick – The Hidden History of SA’s book and reading 
cultures (UKZN Press) Isabel Hofmeyr – Gandhi's Printing Press: 
Experiments in Slow Reading
Bronwyn Law-Viljoen – Fourthwall Books

Session 6: 4.30pm – 6pm in The Main Theatre Panel 
discussion: Memoir/biography/autobiography The bravery of the
 lion: “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the 
hunt will always glorify the hunter.”
Chair: Craig MacKenzie
Panel: Ronnie Kasrils – Armed and Dangerous (Jacana)
Jacques Pauw – Rat Roads (Zebra Press)
Toni Strasburg – Fractured Lives (Modjadji Books)

Session 7: 4.30pm – 6pm in The Barney Simon Theatre Panel 
discussion: Cavafy, Seferis and South African poets Celebrating the 
150th anniversary of poet Constantin Kavafy’s birth and the 50th
 anniversary of poet George Seferis’s Nobel prize
Chair: Stephen Gray

Sunday September 1, 2013
Session 8: 10am – 11.30am in The Main Theatre Panel discussion:
 Fact & fiction: “The story is our escort, without it we are blind.”
Chair: Craig Higginson
Panel: Maren Bodenstein – Shooting Snakes (Modjadji)
Dominique Botha – False River (Random House)
CA Davids – The Blacks of Cape Town (Modjadji)
Claire Robertson – The Spiral House (Random House)

Session 9: 12.30pm – 2pm in The Main Theatre Panel discussion: 
Migration: There Was a Country
Chair: Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon
Panel: NoViolet Bulawayo – We Need New Names
Christa Kuljian – Sanctuary (Jacana)
Caroline Wanjiku Kihato - Migrant Women of Johannesburg (Wits Press)
Kwanele Sosibo – Writing Invisibility Achmat Dangor – Strange Pilgrimages
Wandile Zwane (City of Johannesburg Migrant Desk)