The Heinemann Book of African Women's Writing by Charlotte H. Bruner

Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith, University of Nebraska at Omaha

This article was reused with kind permission.

Abstract

African Rhapsody, an anthology containing the work of twenty-five contemporary writers, prides itself on its diversity of topics from sixteen countries of North, South, East, and West Africa. In this fine harvest authentic stories are told by African writers about African characters and the overwhelming realities of their lives in Africa. Where similar anthologies have focused primarily on sto­ries written in English with a few token translations from the French, African Rhapsody gives breadth not only to sto­ries written originally in English but also to translated sto­ries-five from French, three from Arabic, and one from Portuguese. The foreword by Chinua Achebe, itself a con­cise critical essay on the short story as a genre, situates the short story not only as the forerunner of the African novel, the "convenient bridge from oral to written literature," but also as a genre whose appeal resonates with African writers.