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Adebiyi Olusolape
Saraba publishes the finest emerging writers, with a bias for Nigeria, and Africa. In recent editions of the magazine, attention has also been given to the work of emerging visual artists, including photographers, illustrators, and visual artists in general.
THE WAY to begin is on a tiny road with no traffic, no nothing, perhaps only a flicker of light at the end of the road. This is the summary of Saraba for this second issue, and one is tempted to end it there. We received fewer entries than the first, and we could not get a Guest Editor. Our box was almost as empty as we left it. That is why there is a very high tendency for us to get despondent end this all, easily, pocket our losses, and who can say anything? But Saraba deserves more than ...
It was in the hope of mystic possibilities and unimagined realities that this issue of Saraba was published, and again, it is a major triumph. This issue is a victory on many fronts—and fonts: there are more distinguished writers published, and the consequences are brilliantly wrought write-ups. And of course, as always, the Emerging outweigh the Established. Here at Saraba, we stay true to our creed.
By giving each of our issue themes, we set out to exhaust these themes, and perhaps proffer new perspectives to our readers, of course after having resonated the obvious. With this Economy issue, Saraba is ...
2009
Indeed it is a human endeavour to raise ambitions and enlarge conquests. In this regard, Saraba is human, and again, with this issue, seeks to take another step towards perfection. Saraba, with the unceasing enthusiasm of subscribers, is fast becoming an essential internet reading. It warms our hearts to throw yet another issue into your bags.
This Issue, although lacks a focal theme, is a collagist exhibition of ideas, impressions and expressions. It would perhaps buttress the ―journalistic reputation‖ that is being bestowed on Saraba. But rather than be concerned with genre description, our mind is set on details, voices, experiences. Saraba ...
Now I can‘t precisely remember when I conceded to Agatha‘s impression of the Colloquium of New Writing. Perhaps it was after she made the statement, or earlier, when I walked into the programme venue to find the organizers to be fellow students, or later when a facilitator began his monologue on the death of Nigerian literature, on how our gathering that fateful day in September, 2008 was, in fact, a requiem of some sort, or much later when the grand finale event was a grim shadow lacking both the enthusiasm and impact of the opening day…
First a caveat: the story of the delta is tricky. One fraught with a rigmarole of details and bilious emotions, but must still be told nonetheless. We owe it to ourselves, to literature and, most of all, to humanity.
And what is the best way to dispel this ambiguity: to begin by saying that the tale is rather a simple one. The details are numerous, disorganised, recurring. The Delta is the nexus of the Nigerian economy and the fulcrum of our existence. The Niger Delta is a gift as well as a curse, our plague as much as our pride.
The game ...
Let’s imagine that God is to be traced with a golden crayon held in the shaky hands of an experienced infant. The infant asserts the moral cum spiritual right to tracing, and as Margaret Atwood once affirmed, God is a good listener. He doesn’t interrupt. In our case, he didn’t.
There was tenacity in our vision for this Issue; if you wish, a tenaciousness. In attempting to define God, we came to the same conclusion as Gary Snyder, who wrote in relation to a poem, “The poem is seen from all sides, everywhere at once.” In this respect, God is seen ...
We think of technology as a basket of broken eggs, which must hatch into chicks. Our contemplation is that we must accept disadvantage as advantage, that we must lead ourselves into a den of a lion, and sleep close to its mane.
The starting point was an identification of eternity. It‘s difficult to agree with James Blunt: ―Forever is just a minute to me.‖ For, in the initial analysis, technology is to us what a mustard seed is to a sea. There is, we beg, no specificity to an outlook on technology.
But what does an unwholesome consideration entail? How can we ...
There is a certain way of perpetuating the discourse of food: relishing a meal while predetermining the next. This might be the subliminal rationale behind the Prequel Issue to the Food Issue, the culinary delight of hors d’oeuvre. This philosophy might as well promote gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins, but Temitayo Olo nlua’s piece pointedly asserts this behaviour as popular during the ghastly military era that beleaguered Nigeria a republic ago. And that our Food Issue is timely in re-ushering Muslim faithfuls from their stint with abstinence, the mi- lieu is primed to receive Saraba’s muse on food as ...
Because music is grey and sits on air, intangibility, neither here nor there. Because music is everything and yet ungraspable…
Sometimes Sex is a word, Sometimes its not.
It is arguable that justice is as sweet as revenge, or even sweeter. Justice, after all, is civilized revenge meted with a communal consent. Humanity has a raving appetite for Justice.
Nigeria, like many countries, is however starved of justice. Jus- tice cannot be found in the rusted lead-pipes of judicial bureau- cracy, in the cavernous courtrooms with termite-eaten wooden docks. Justice has retired from these places. Justice has relocat- ed to the jungle, to the hearts of hapless civilians, to the aggre- gation of market stalls, to rundown beer parlours and still, Justice is neither satis ed nor safe. Justice ...
There is a statement, “Africa is a country,” used to satirize Western‘ preconceptions about Africa. With billions of people, thousands of ethnicities, several colonial histories and varied post-independence struggles, the continent is spoken of as a single plane that is beset by bad leadership, unending poverty, and the odd scenery. Yes, the continent has these, and yes, there really are some similarities across the different countries and cultures. But, the question remains: Is that all that can be said? And there is another question: How can you represent what truly is Africa?
For us at Saraba, we set out to have ...
WE THINK that to deal with art we ought to present it, not talk about it. For four months we opened our window to artists producing the finest work in Nigeria, Africa and elsewhere, and the result is what you will see. Seeing is ultimately a trafficking in subtlety, especially if that process of seeing is influenced by art.
What, exactly, is art? Since at Saraba we‘re open to this kind of questioning that is essentially a voyage, the kind that assembles literary content, art is a process as well as an outcome. Art is the reverberation of colour; art is ...
It may seem appropriate, or perhaps by coincidence, that in 2014, the year that marks the amalgamation of Nigeria, Saraba begins with a look at History.
This prompts me to pause and consider the static nature of the past, its influence of the present, and repercussions for the future. The more I consider History, the more I consider History as made; the more I consider History’s multiplicity.
In this issue, our contributors unravel the making and remaking of experiences, of History. From the personal, from the collective, there is a sense that history is not a one-off event. It is in constant ...
How do we contemplate solitude?
With silence, hands cradling chin, eyes staring into space in an empty room without articles of interest, an atmosphere of quotidian existence of devotion to matters of the heart?
The matters of the mind, perhaps, might be a more fitting description. The heart is often misconstrued as software; it is rather a fist-size muscle lodged in a rib-cage compelled to whip the body into inevitable exhaustion. The mind is the place of memories, the parlour of thoughts, the hacienda of imaginations, the bedroom of introspection, the bar room of puzzlement. The go-to place when confusion dares one’s ...
A story burns its presence on your skin, like the gazing eye in a photograph. You feel your own bareness and insecurity. You know what your love is worth: a great sacrifice: whatever it takes, to remain committed. The thought of dying often crosses your mind. And yet. Hope returns. Hope and survival are not discussed as a binary. If your life is full of holes, it is better than no life at all. Hope does not function as a feel-good supplement. It is like a thrust, a living-on, an anchorage.
Will you be able to tell love apart from crime or crime apart from love? Not a cheeky paradox, clearly an essential question in ‘Pemi Aguda’s “Smother.”
We are smothering each other. How might we respond?
In the diaspora, Arthur Anyaduba argues in “Alimony,” the foreign African, finding a mismatch between cultural stereotypes and Western justice, takes to self-help. But he’s in a dream. Except that it’s not exactly a dream: Moses Kilolo’s “immortal precariat,” wanders into the belly of the night after a fight with his lover. He is shot. He is swallowed by infinity, ill-fated.
Can we escape the “faceless puppeteers ...
Saraba combined issue of 19 & 20, on Power and Money.
In collaboration with Etisalat and the Etisalat Prize for Literature, Saraba Magazine presents a special issue on the 2015 edition of the prize. This issue includes in-depth conversations with the shortlisted and long listed authors—Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Penny Busetto, Rehana Rossouw, Masande Mtshanga, Z. P Dala, Ifeoluwapo Adeniyi, Paula Marais, and Kurt Ellis—conducted by Kenechi Uzor, Emily Achieng, and Tope Salaudeen-Adégòké. Ata Quayson, ‘Yinka Elujoba, Arthur Anyaduba, and Richard Oduor Oduku contributed critical essays on the shortlisted books.
Commentaries on the shortlisted books by: Paul Evans (publisher of Tram 83), Jacana Media (on What Will People Say, and The Story of ...
A Saraba special issue on global migration and refugees featuring the work of Tobias Zielony & Victor Ehikhamenor, as part of the German Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale, 2015
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