Up to the second half of the 20th century, Tanzanian literature was primarily oral. [1] Major oral literary forms include folktales, poems, riddles, proverbs, and songs. [1] The majority of the oral literature in Tanzania that has been recorded is in Swahili, though each of the country's languages has its own oral tradition. [1] The country's oral literature is currently declining because of social changes that make transmission of oral literature more difficult and because of the devaluation of oral literature that has accompanied Tanzania's development. [1] Tanzania's written literary tradition has produced relatively few writers and works; Tanzania does not have a strong reading culture, and books are often expensive and hard to come by. [1] Most Tanzanian literature is orally performed or written in Swahili, and a smaller number of works have been published in English. [1] Major figures in Tanzanian modern literature include Shaaban Robert, Muhammed Said Abdulla, Aniceti Kitereza, Ebrahim Hussein, Abdulrazak Gurnah and Penina Muhando. [1]
One of the most prominent Swahili writers in Tanzania was Shaaban Robert (1909-1962), a poet, novelist and essayist. His works include Maisha yangu (My Life) and the poem Utenzi wa Vita vya Uhuru (An Epic in the War for Freedom). Muhammed Said Abdulla (1918-1991) was a prominent novelist, who particularly wrote detective stories. Other Swahili-language authors from Tanzania include Aniceti Kitereza (1896–1981), whose novel Myombekere na Bugonoka na Ntulanalwo na Bulihwali was written in his native language Kikerewe and later translated to Swahili, German, English and French, poets Mathias E. Mnyampala (1917–1969) and Euphrase Kezilahabi (1944–2020), novelists Shafi Adam Shafi, [2] Fadhy Mtanga, Hussein Issa Tuwa, Maundu Mwingizi, Changas Mwangalela, Joseph Mbele, as well as playwrights Ebrahim Hussein, [3] Penina Muhando [4] or Amandina Lihamba. [5]
An important genre of Swahili poetry are the lyrics of Taarab songs. These lyrics, that cross the genre boundaries between oral literature and Swahili music, are called wimbo, referring to poetry composed to be sung. [6]
Dinosaurs of Tendaguru (original title: Dinosaria wa Tendaguru) is a story for young readers that combines both fiction and natural history, focussing on the discovery and subsequent excavations of dinosaur fossils at Tendaguru hill in Lindi Region of South Eastern Tanzania. It was written in Swahili by natural scientists Cassian Magori and Charles Saanane, with illustrations by the German graphic artist Thomas Thiemeyer.
Some Tanzanian authors write in English rather than in Swahili. The first Tanzanian novel to appear in English was Peter Palangyo's Dying in the Sun (1968), which is considered to be one of the compelling works of modernism in African writing from this period. [7]
The following year, novelist and academic Gabriel Ruhumbika published Village in Uhuru . [8] Other English-language writers include short-story writer Marti Mollel. [3]
In 2021, British writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, who was born in 1948 in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1960, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. [9] His novels written in English explore "the impact of colonialism on East African identity, and the experiences of refugees as they are forced to seek homes elsewhere." His novels had been shortlisted before for both the Booker Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. His best-known works include Paradise (1994), Desertion (2005) and Afterlives (2020).
In Tanzania, however, his work was largely unknown before he became a Nobel laureate. [10] The first Swahili translation of his novel Paradise, titled Peponi, was done by Ida Hadjivayanis, an academic at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London in 2022 and published by Mkuki na Nyota in Tanzania. [11]
Authors like Elieshi Lema (born 1949) have published works both in Swahili and English. Lema began writing poetry and then children's books in Swahili, before writing her first novel Parched Earth in English in 2001. This novel has been translated into Swedish and French and received an honourable mention for the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. [12]
Moyez G. Vassanji is a Canadian novelist and editor, who writes under the name M. G. Vassanji. Vassanji's work has been translated into several languages. As of 2020, he has published nine novels, as well as two short-fiction collections and two nonfiction books. Vassanji's writings, which have received considerable critical acclaim, often focus on issues of colonial history, migration, diaspora, citizenship, gender and ethnicity.
Shaaban bin Robert, also known as Shaaban Robert, was a Tanzanian poet, author, and essayist who supported the preservation of Tanzanian verse traditions. Robert is celebrated as one of the greatest Tanzanian Swahili thinkers, intellectuals and writers in East Africa and has been called "poet laureate of Swahili" and is also known as the "Father of Swahili." He is also honoured as the national poet.
Following Tanganyika's independence (1961) and unification with Zanzibar (1964), leading to the formation of the state of Tanzania, President Julius Nyerere emphasised a need to construct a national identity for the citizens of the new country. To achieve this, Nyerere provided what has been regarded by some commentators as one of the most successful cases of ethnic repression and identity transformation in Africa.
African literature is literature from Africa, either oral ("orature") or written in African and Afro-Asiatic languages. Examples of pre-colonial African literature can be traced back to at least the fourth century AD. The best-known is the Kebra Negast, or "Book of Kings."
Swahili literature is literature written in the Swahili language, particularly by Swahili people of the East African coast and the neighboring islands. It may also refer to literature written by people who write in the Swahili language. It is an offshoot of the Bantu culture.
Abdulrazak Gurnah is a Tanzanian-born British novelist and academic. He was born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s as a refugee during the Zanzibar Revolution. His novels include Paradise (1994), which was shortlisted for both the Booker and the Whitbread Prize; By the Sea (2001), which was longlisted for the Booker and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Desertion (2005), shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
Penina Muhando, also known as Penina Mlama, is a Tanzanian Kiswahili playwright, a theorist and practitioner of Theatre for Development in Tanzania.
Ebrahim Hussein is a Tanzanian playwright and poet. His first play, Kinjeketile (1969), written in Swahili, and based on the life of Kinjikitile Ngwale, a leader of the Maji Maji Rebellion, is considered "a landmark of Tanzanian theater." The play soon became one of the standard subjects for exams in Swahili language in Tanzania and Kenya. By 1981, it had been reprinted six times.
Gabriel Ruhumbika is a Tanzanian novelist, short story writer, translator and academic. His first novel, Village in Uhuru, was published in 1969. He has written several subsequent novels in Swahili. He has also taught literature at a number of universities, and is currently a professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Georgia in the USA.
Mr. Myombekere and His Wife Bugonoka, Their Son Ntulanalwo and Daughter Bulihwali is a novel by Tanzanian author Aniceti Kitereza. The novel is an extended story depicting historical life of the Kerewe through three generations.
Amandina Lihamba is a Tanzanian academic, actress, playwright and theatre director. She is a professor at the University of Dar es Salaam in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts and has served as its dean, head of department, and university council member. In 1989, she co-founded the national Children Theatre Project and festival. She also founded the girls drama group Tuseme festival with Penina Muhando in 1998.
Paradise is a historical novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Zanzibar-born British writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, first published in 1994 by Hamish Hamilton in London. The novel was nominated for both the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Prize for Fiction.
Elieshi Lema is a Tanzanian writer and publisher, also active in Tanzania's civil society.
Dinosaurs of Tendaguru is a Tanzanian booklet for young readers on natural history, focussing on the discovery and subsequent excavations of dinosaur fossils at Tendaguru hill in Lindi Region of South Eastern Tanzania. It was written in the country’s official language Swahili by Tanzanian authors Cassian Magori and Charles Saanane, with illustrations by the German graphic artist Thomas Thiemeyer. This book was published in 1998 with the support of the Goethe-Institut in Dar es Salaam, the local branch of the German cultural institute, by E&D Vision Publishing, Tanzania.
The 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world." The prize was announced by the Swedish Academy on 5 October 2017.
Afterlives is a 2020 historical fiction novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Zanzibar-born British author Abdulrazak Gurnah. It was first published by Bloomsbury Publishing on 17 September 2020. Set mainly in the context of the first half of the 20th century, the plot follows four protagonists living in an unnamed town on the Swahili coast of what is now Tanzania from the time of the German colonial rule until a few years after independence. In April 2021, the novel was longlisted for the Orwell Prize of Political Fiction.
Pilgrims Way is a novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah, first published in 1988 by Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom. It is Gurnah's second novel.
The 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Tanzanian-born British novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah who the Swedish Academy members praised "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents." The winner was announced on October 7, 2021, by Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy.
Nahida Esmail is a Tanzanian author and poet. She is a lifetime sponsor of 'The Teen Writers Awards'.
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