Some of the ʿAjamī literature produced by African scholars has been digitized, with copies available at the African Ajami Library, the Endangered Archives Programme, the Hill and Manuscript Library, and the SOAS library, among other institutions.https://t.co/UgUUwx8OgK
— isaac Samuel (@rhaplord) October 26, 2025
Just published and going straight on the module reading list for next year - a major new statement on the role of slavery in Britain's economy by two distinguished historians pic.twitter.com/FPGtI8C6ug
— James Fisher (@JamDanFish) June 6, 2023
My love for Toni Morrison began with reading Song of Solomon as a teenager. Few novelists wrote about the unique cultural inheritance of the African-American experience with the multilayered nuance like Toni Morrison.— Chris O. Ògúnmọ́dẹdé (@Illustrious_Cee) August 6, 2019
Thank you for everything, and may the Almighty receive you. pic.twitter.com/3NcggqXygp
What's your score out of 9? pic.twitter.com/Ra4c8zy7od
— Dr Foluke Adebisi (@folukeifejola) August 5, 2019
It’s 1986, the heart of the Cold War, and Marie Mitchell is an intelligence officer with the FBI. She’s brilliant but she’s also a young black woman working in an old boys’ club, and her career has stalled out; she’s overlooked for every high profile squad, and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork. So when she’s given the opportunity to join a shadowy task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic, revolutionary president of Burkina Faso, whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention, she says yes. Yes, even though she secretly admires the work Thomas is doing for his country. Yes, even though she is still grieving the mysterious death of her sister, whose example led Marie to this career path in the first place. Yes, even though a furious part of her suspects she’s being offered the job because of her appearance and not her talent.In the year that follows, Marie will observe Thomas, seduce him, and ultimately, have a hand in the coup that will bring him down. But doing so will change everything she believes about what it means to be a spy, a lover, a sister, and a good American.Inspired by true events—Thomas Sankara is known as “Africa’s Che Guevara”—this debut novel knits together a gripping spy thriller, a heartbreaking family drama, and a passionate romance. This is a face of the Cold War you’ve never seen before, and it introduces a powerful new literary voice. Join Lauren Wilkinson and the National Book Award winning novelist and poet, Paul Beatty, for a conversation about her fiery debut! Purchase a copy here: https://www.strandbooks.com/indexLauren Wilkinson grew up in New York City and lives in the Lower East Side. She earned her MFA in Fiction and Literary Translation from Columbia University and has taught writing at Columbia and the Fashion Institute of Technology. She has received writing fellowships from the Center for Fiction and the MacDowell Colony, and her fiction has appeared in Granta.Recorded February 21, 2019
The Epic of Gilgamesh is a Babylonian poem composed in ancient Iraq, millennia before Homer. It tells the story of Gilgamesh, king of the city of Uruk. To curb his restless and destructive energy, the gods create a friend for him, Enkidu, who grows up among the animals of the steppe. When Gilgamesh hears about this wild man, he orders that a woman named Shamhat be brought out to find him. Shamhat seduces Enkidu, and the two make love for six days and seven nights, transforming Enkidu from beast to man. His strength is diminished, but his intellect is expanded, and he becomes able to think and speak like a human being.
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What does this tell us? We learn two main things. First, that humanity for the Babylonians was defined through society. To be human was a distinctly social affair. And not just any kind of society: it was the social life of cities that made you a ‘true man’. Babylonian culture was, at heart, an urban culture. Cities such as Uruk, Babylon or Ur were the building blocks of civilisation, and the world outside the city walls was seen as a dangerous and uncultured wasteland.
Second, we learn that humanity is a sliding scale. After a week of sex, Enkidu has not become fully human. There is an intermediary stage, where he speaks like a human but thinks like an animal. Even after the second week, he still has to learn how to eat bread, drink beer and put on clothes. In short, becoming human is a step-by-step process, not an either/or binary.
In her second invitation to Uruk, Shamhat says: ‘I look at you, Enkidu, you are like a god, why with the animals do you range through the wild?’ Gods are here depicted as the opposite of animals, they are omnipotent and immortal, whereas animals are oblivious and destined to die. To be human is to be placed somewhere in the middle: not omnipotent, but capable of skilled labour; not immortal, but aware of one’s mortality.
In short, the new fragment reveals a vision of humanity as a process of maturation that unfolds between the animal and the divine. One is not simply born human: to be human, for the ancient Babylonians, involved finding a place for oneself within a wider field defined by society, gods and the animal world.
He regards L’Étranger as “one of those rare books that manage to be both brief and huge at the same time. The cut of its narrative is very unusual. Usually with big novels, the thread involves the bringing together of complicated parts, but this cuts in a diagonal way right to the heart of the big questions: what does it mean to be alive? Who are we? What is the meaning of individual autonomy in the face of society? Who are we in the face of so many false constructs? Are we ourselves or what’s been projected on us? These are big, big Hamlet questions.”...
