Olumide Popoola

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"Best mates Karl and Abu are both 17 and live near King's Cross. It's 2011 and racial tensions are set to explode across London. Abu is infatuated with gorgeous classmate Nalini but dares not speak to her. Meanwhile, Karl is the target of the local "wannabe" thugs just for being different. When Karl finds out his father lives in Nigeria, he decides that Port Harcourt is the best place to escape the sound and fury of London, and connect with a Dad he's never known. Rejected on arrival, Karl befriends Nakale, an activist who wants to expose the ecocide in the Niger Delta to the world, and falls headlong for his feisty cousin Janoma. Meanwhile, the murder of Mark Duggan triggers a full-scale riot in London. Abu finds himself in its midst, leading to a near-tragedy that forces Karl to race back home."--Amazon.com.

When we speak of nothing

Breach

Djamila Ribeiro

Sheree Renée Thomas

Jeferson Tenório

Logan February

Precious Colette Kemigisha

For the second time in history, masks have become the symbol of a global pandemic. The facial front lines differ in shape and size and are fashioned to the users’ desires, reaching from African prints to floral patterns. But are masks solely ‘germ-shields’ or ‘dirt-traps’ as referred to a century ago? What does the choice of fabric actually reveal about its wearer? And in which way are differences ‘un_masked’? Authors, academics and activists from different backgrounds share their ideas on the historical, political, religious, racial and cultural, as well as on the intersectional dimension of masks. Similar to W.E.B. Du Bois metaphor of ‘the veil’, which solely exists in people’s minds, masks can be seen as the physical manifestation of the inner and outer world, the speakable and the unspoken. With texts by Logan February, Precious Colette Kemigisha, Olumide Popoola, Djamila Ribeiro, Jeferson Tenório und Sheree Renée Thomas. A publication of the Literary Colloquium Berlin with the kind support of the Federal Foreign Office. Natasha A. Kelly has a PhD in Communication Studies and Sociology with a research focus on Black German Studies. Her award-winning and internationally acclaimed documentary "Millis Awakening" was commissioned by the 10th Berlin Biennale in 2018. Based on her book "Sisters & Souls" (2015) she has been directing the sequential theater performance "M(a)y Sister" since 2016. Her dissertation "Afroculture. The Space between Yesterday and Tomorrow" (2016) was staged in three countries and three languages in 2019/20. Her latest publication "The Comet – Afrofuturism 2.0" (2020) is a documentary of the Black speculative arts symposium which she curated at the HAU Hebbel am Ufer Theater in Berlin. http://www.natashaakelly.com

Literary Voices from Behind the Mask

Un_Masking Difference

Annie Holmes

breach - noun: An act of breaking or failing to observe a law, agreement, or code of conduct. A gap in a wall, barrier, or defence, especially one made by an attacking army. breach - verb: Make a gap in and break through (a wall, barrier, or defence). (Of a whale) rise and break through the surface of the water. ‘The Jungle is like a laboratory.’ In the refugee camp known as 'The Jungle' an illusion is being disrupted: that of a neatly ordered world, with those deserving safety and comfort separated from those who need to be kept out. Calais is a border town. Between France and Britain. Between us and them. The eight short stories in this collection explore the refugee crisis through fiction. They give voice to the hopes and fears of both sides. Dlo and Jan break into refrigerated trucks bound for the UK. Marjorie, a volunteer, is happy to mingle in the camps until her niece goes a step too far. Mariam lies to her mother back home. With humour, insight and empathy breach tackles an issue that we can no longer ignore. breach is the first title in the Peirene Now! series. This exciting new series will be made up of commissioned works of new fiction, which engage with the political issues of the day. In breach, the authors beautifully capture a multiplicity of voices - refugees, volunteers, angry citizens – whilst deftly charting a clear narrative path through it all. Each story is different in tone, and yet they complement one another perfectly. Taken as a whole, this stands as an empathetic and probing collage, where the words ‘home’, ‘displacement’ and ‘integration’ come to mean many things as the collection progresses to a moving finale. Why Peirene chose to commission this book: ‘I have commissioned Olumide Popoola and Annie Holmes to go to the Calais refugee camps to distil stories into a work of fiction about escape, hope and aspiration. On another level, however, this work will also take seriously the fears of people in this country who want to close their borders. It’s that dialogue that isn’t happening in real life. A work of art can help to bridge the gap.’ Meike Ziervogel, publisher ‘This is what fiction is for. These stories refresh difficult territory in ways that other writing cannot reach. Tender, tragic, funny (sometimes), persuasive.’ Sara Maitland, writer

This is Not about Sadness

Best mates Karl and Abu are both 17 and live near King's Cross. It's 2011 and racial tensions are set to explode across London. Abu is infatuated with gorgeous classmate Nalini but dares not speak to her. Meanwhile, Karl is the target of the local "wannabe" thugs just for being different. When Karl finds out his father lives in Nigeria, he decides that Port Harcourt is the best place to escape the sound and fury of London, and connect with a Dad he's never known. Rejected on arrival, Karl befriends Nakale, an activist who wants to expose the ecocide in the Niger Delta to the world, and falls headlong for his feisty cousin Janoma. Meanwhile, the murder of Mark Duggan triggers a full-scale riot in London. Abu finds himself in its midst, leading to a near-tragedy that forces Karl to race back home. The narratorial spirit of this multi-layered novel is Esu, the Yoruba trickster figure, who haunts the crossroads of communication and misunderstanding. When We Speak of Nothing launches a powerful new voice onto the literary stage. The fluid prose, peppered with contemporary slang, captures what it means to be young, black and queer in London. If grime music were a novel, it would be this.

Olumide Popoola

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