| ISBN | 9789785657500 |
| Pages | 220 |
| Dimensions | 229 x 152mm |
| Published | 2019 |
| Publisher | Malthouse Press, Nigeria |
| Format | Paperback |
The Markas
An Anthology of Literary Works on Boko Haram
edited by Tanure Ojaide, Razinat T. Mohammed, Abubakar Othman
This anthology is an outcome of literary writers’ reaction to the Boko Haram insurgency in the north-eastern part of Nigeria. Lives therein have not only been extensively disrupted by the group’s violent tactics and the mind-numbing levels of physical destruction and thousands of deaths, but also in the dislocation of millions of people, with most of them seeking refuge in urban centres, especially Maiduguri, for safety. These refugees, classified as Internally Displaced Persons and in camps guarded by Nigerian soldiers, have received worldwide attention. Writers in the affected areas and elsewhere in Nigeria have responded in their poetry, short stories, and non-fiction some of which are collected here.
Review
"This anthology put together by insiders from Nigeria is definitely a precious testimony on an often forgotten conflict."
About the Editors
A renowned poet, Tanure Ojaide has won major national and international poetry awards, including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Africa Region (1987), the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award (1988), twice the All-Africa Okigbo Prize for Poetry (1988 and 1997), and thrice the Association of Nigerian Authors' Poetry Prize (1988, 1994 and 2004. In 2016 Ojaide was awarded the the prestigious Fonlon-Nichols Award at the 42nd annual African Literature Association (ALA) conference in Atlanta.
For Tanure Ojaide, "the creative writer is never an airplant, but someone who is grounded in some specific place. It is difficult to talk of many writers without their identification with place. Every writer's roots are very important in understanding his or her work." He has read from his poetry in different fora in Africa, Britain, Canada, Israel, Mexico, The Netherlands, and the United States. Some of his poems have been translated into Chinese, Dutch, Spanish and French. He is currently the Frank Porter Graham Professor of Africana Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Visit Tanure Ojaide's website here: http://www.tanureojaide.com/
Razinat T. Mohammed is an award-winning Nigerian author of A Love like a Woman’s and other Stories (2006). She writes about the sociocultural plight and challenges that bedevil impoverished northern Nigerian families, with particular emphasis on the challenges of womanhood, nationhood and the failure of both family and state. Her other published works include The Travails of a First Wife (2015), A New Lie, (2021) as well as a seminal article, “Female Representation in Nigerian Literature” published in the African Writer Magazine (2007). Razinat has been a guest writer for many literary platforms and held prestigious residencies including the El-Gouna Residency in Egypt, Guest Writer at Rutgers University and most recently, Resident Researcher at Augsburg University, Germany. She holds a doctoral degree in African Literature from the University of Maiduguri, Nigeria where she later taught for over a decade before joining the University of Abuja in 2021.
Professor Abubakar Othman holds a PhD in Literary Psychoanalysis and teaches African poetry and Creative Writing at the University of Maiduguri. His published works include The Palm of Time (2000, Malthouse), The Passions of Cupid (2013 Kraftbooks), and Blood Streams in the Desert (2013 Kraftbooks)