Half of a Yellow Sun is a novel about the Biafran war, told from the perspective of three people on the Biafran side. It switches back and forth between their lives pre-war and the war years. Adichie is too young to have been part of the war herself, but I gather from the Author’s Note that her parents [...]
Posts tagged with ‘Africa’
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31 July 2008 – 11:00 pm
Ron Eglash on African fractals | Video on TED.com
"When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganized and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn't even discovered yet."
(del.icio.us tags: fractals mathematics Africa architecture )
Links
27 July 2008 – 11:01 pm
Parasitic worms may boost African HIV rates - health - 27 July 2008 - New Scientist
Interesting: ‘One of the biggest mysteries of HIV is why the virus spreads so readily via heterosexual sex in Africa, but not elsewhere. A study in monkeys suggests parasitic worms may be to blame.’
(del.icio.us tags: HIV parasites Africa )
Other Simulated [...]
Races and races
27 August 2007 – 3:09 pm
It’s probably easier and wiser to avoid the awkward subject of the relationship between race and sporting ability. Whatever the truth one way or the other, discussing the possibility of inherent racial advantages in anything is only going to be divisive.
But when you turn on the World Athletics Championships 10000m race, and see that after [...]
The Last King of Scotland
14 January 2007 – 12:45 am
I went to see The Last King of Scotland tonight. It’s very good (fine performances all round, a convincing portrayal of the weirdness at the centre of a dictatorship) but it doesn’t exactly send you out with a spring in your step and a cheerful optimism about the human condition. I guess the world isn’t [...]
Tulear Never Sleeps
15 December 2006 – 11:36 am
Everyone’s favourite fair trade DRM-free world music store, Calabash, has introduced embedded audio players for your blog. So here’s one of the favourite albums I’ve bought from them, Tulear Never Sleeps, an album of the tsapiky music of Madagascar:
Cultural blinkers
4 August 2006 – 8:39 pm
I’ve got quite a lot of African music these days.* I bought the first CD (The Rough Guide To The Music of Kenya and Tanzania) some years ago because I had fond memories of the music I remembered them playing on buses in East Africa, a style of music I now know is called soukous.
It [...]
Africa in the news
28 July 2006 – 12:35 pm
Or rather, Africa not in the news. I have to admit, I haven’t been in news-junkie mode recently, but how did I miss this?
This week we bring you music from the Democratic Republic of Congo to recognize the incredible moment in history we are witnessing. In the largest UN overseen election in history, 58 million [...]
Rough Crossings by Simon Schama
22 July 2006 – 11:55 am
During the American War of Independence, the British promised freedom and land to any slaves who left their masters and served with the British. Many thousands did so, and after the war they were taken first to Nova Scotia and then settled in a colony in Sierra Leone. This book tells that story.
Among the slaves [...]
Argentina, Angola, and Africa
17 June 2006 – 11:56 am
Argentina played the most beautiful football yesterday in thrashing Serbia and Montenegro. That’s the kind of play that you watch the World Cup to see – great individual flair combining in a great team performance. Great goals, great skills. It was like a highlight reel. The only thing it lacked to be a true all-time [...]