Listening to other voices: new fiction from the continent

Reading translated fiction opens a window on another world, allowing us to travel across countries and through history.

Fiammetta Rocco, literary director of the International Booker Prize, said: “What we as native English readers get, most of all, from reading in translation is illumination, richness and a strong sense of surprise. Of the discovery of something quite new.”

Here are six picks from the latest African fiction to be translated into English.

All Your Children, Scattered, by Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse (translated by Alison Anderson)

With SA mobs on the prowl searching for undocumented migrants this is a timely read. An acclaimed novelist and poet, Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse was born in Butare, Rwanda in 1979. Surviving the genocide against the Tutsis, she moved to France in 1994 to study political science and work for humanitarian causes.

In her slim, award-winning novel, three generations of a family torn apart by the Tutsi genocide try to reconnect with their homeland and one another and find their place in today’s world.

Blanche returns to Rwanda after building a life in Bordeaux with her husband and young son, Stokely. On reuniting with her mother, Immaculata, old wounds are reopened for mother and daughter while Stokely, caught between two countries, tries to understand where he comes from and where he belongs.

Captain Ni’mat’s Last Battle, by Mohamed Leftah (translated by Lara Vergnaud)

In this provocative novel by Moroccan writer Mohamed Leftah, a retired Egyptian air force pilot, now spending his time at a luxurious Cairo club, experiences a late-in-life sexual awakening and falls in love with a male servant while religious fundamentalism grows around him.

One night, Capt Ni’mat has an exquisite, chilling dream: he sees pure beauty in the form of his Nubian valet. Awakened by these searing images, he slips into the hut where the young man sleeps. The vision of his naked body so deeply disturbs Ni’mat that his monotonous existence is suddenly turned upside down.

This forbidden passion will lead him to the height of happiness, at least for a time. This is a sensuous novel that explores masculinity, gender, societal taboos and the nature of love.

Casablanca Story, In Koli Jean Bofane (translated by Bill Johnstone)

One morning the beautiful Ichrak, a much desired and feared woman, is found murdered on a street in Casablanca. In a city buffeted by the Chergui, the violent wind emanating from the Sahara, the investigation becomes a lens through which a portrait of a working-class district emerges.

The award-winning Congolese writer In Koli Jean Bofane was born in 1954 in the northern region of what is today the Democratic Republic of Congo and now lives in Belgium.

In Casablanca Story, which deals with themes of hardship, exploitation and male sexual desire, he observes the bitter reality of corruption among the powerful, and the vulnerable situation of migrants. With mordant humour he transforms a desperate contemporary reality into engrossing and entertaining fiction.

The Men Who Swallowed the Sun, Hamdi Abu Golayyel (translated by Humphrey Davies)

Egyptian writer Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s The Men Who Swallowed the Sun is a raw, unapologetic tale of illegal immigration, discrimination and erasure. It’s a story of poverty and aspiration, underpinned by the deeply flawed politics of North Africa.

The novel follows two Egyptian Bedouins who make their way to Libya, determined to seek better lives as illegal immigrants in Italy. The Libyan coast guards’ record of abuse and violations of basic human rights is widely known.

Hamdi, intellectual and self-doubting, is unable to make it past the oasis city of Sabha. He works at a factory, wasting away between swigs of moonshine and drags of hashish. His cousin — the dashing, irrepressible Phantom Raider — makes it to the fleshpots of Milan. In Italy, he battles authority, makes enemies and dupes every system possible.

The backdrop of this darkly comic and unsentimental story of illegal immigration is a brutal Europe and Muammar Gaddafi’s rickety, rhetoric-propped Great State of the Masses, where “the Leader” fantasises about uniting Libyan and Egyptian Bedouin into a new self-serving political force, the Saad-Shin.

The Night Will Have Its Say, Ibrahim al-Koni (translated by Nancy Roberts)

Libyan writer and prolific Arab novelist Ibrahim al-Koni is an International Booker Prize finalist. In his latest work, he delivers a brilliant retelling of the Muslim wars of conquest in North Africa during the seventh century CE.

The year is 693 and a tense exchange, mediated by an interpreter, takes place between Berber warrior queen al-Kahina and an emissary from the Umayyad general Hassan ibn Nu’man. Her predecessor had been captured and killed by the Umayyad forces some years earlier, but she will go on to defeat them.

The Night Will Have Its Say is narrated from the perspective of the conquered peoples. Written in al-Koni’s unique and enchanting voice, his lyrical prose speaks to themes that remain timely.

Through the wars and conflicts of this distant, turbulent era, he addresses the futility of war, the privilege of an elite few at the expense of the many, the destruction of natural habitats and indigenous cultures, and questions about literal and fundamentalist interpretations of religious texts.

The Finest Thief in the Kingdom: Libyan Tales from Sadeq Naihoum (translated by Sara Elnaili)

Originally published in 2002, this short story collection’s Arabic title, Min Qisas Alatfal, literally means Children’s Tales, but these are not your average bedtime read. Born in Benghazi, Libya, in 1937, Naihoum writes daring satire and sociopolitical articles that raised much debate throughout his life. He lived in Egypt, Germany and Finland and died in Geneva in 1994.

In his collection of satirical sociopolitical short stories, Naihoum brings to life a wonderful tableau of characters in his native Libya — from sultans and faqihs to dervishes, thieves and beggars. His writing sheds light on the dark corners of power and religion, social injustice and racism.