Monday, May 26, 2014

Ondjaki featured on Paul Kennedy's Ideas!


This is great: CBC's Ideas with Paul Kennedy features an entertaining, colourful, hilarious, nigh hour-long conversation with Angolan trickster/charmer Ondjaki. Literary equations are goofy, but I kinda like this one: imagine if the benevolent ghosts of Clarice Lispector & Mark Twain crosspolinated to try their hand at utopic YA set during the Angolan Civil War. That might give you a sense of the eccentricity and magic behind his picaresque Granma Nineteen and the Soviet's Secret, a coming-of-age story that is literally explosive.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I caught this interview the night it aired. I am always on the look out for interesting works in translation so I was very intrigued by the conversation. I bought and read the book within the following week and have since listened to the podcast again.

I am so grateful to have found this promising young writer and your publishing house. Thank you!