LitHouse podcast

«The security guard adores babies. Perhaps because babies do not shoplift.Babies adore the security guard. Perhaps because he does not drag babies to the sales.»In a Sephora-store on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, a security guard is watching the shoppers. In the early 70’s, Ferdinand arrives in Paris to start his new life and needs to learn the ropes. In the 90’s, friends Ossiri and Kassoum work nights in the Parisian underground.Three generations of immigrants tell their stories in Standing Heavy, the sensational debut novel from author Armand Patrick Gbaka-Bredé, better known as GauZ’. With playful language, an eventful plot, and tons of observational humour, Standing Heavy is a devilish comedy about France’s colonial heritage seen through the eyes of the service class.GauZ’ is a French-Ivorian author, editor and publisher based in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. The novel Debout-Payé was lauded by critics when it was released in 2014, and in 2023 the English translation was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize.At the House of Literature, GauZ’ meets author and journalist Yohan Shanmugaratnam for a conversation on class, capitalism and the security guard.

«Water remembers. It is humans who forget.»A droplet of water finds its way from ancient Mesopotamia to a street urchin in 1840’s London and on to a Yazidi family in present day Iraq. Three people’s lives and destinies are connected by two rivers – the Thames and the Tigris – and the water which flows through them.In the novel There Are Rivers in the Sky, Elif Shafak weaves together lost empires, colonial plunder, modern conflicts, and the study of water in a plot stretching from ancient time to the present. With thrill, humour and evocative language, There Are Rivers in the Sky is both enthralling and fascinating, and has been lauded by authors such as Ian McEwan, Arundhati Roy and Mary Beard.Turkish-British Elif Shafak is one of the world’s foremost writers of historical fiction. Through her fourteen novels, she has explored cultural tensions and socioeconomic inequalities between East and West in historical and contemporary settings. She has also been an active champion of the freedom of speech and of human rights, particularly women’s rights, an activism evident in both her fiction and non-fiction. She lives in London in self-imposed exile, after past and continuing threats in Turkey against her work as an author.At the House of Literature, Shafak meets author and journalist Marte Spurkland for a conversation on time, cultural conflicts, and the memory of water.

From intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois to activist Malcolm X, from heads of state Kwame Nkrumah and Muammar Gaddafi to poet Aimé Césaire and artist Bob Marley – they have all played a role in the history of panafricanism.Panafricanism is a political, intellectual and cultural movement that was first formed around the turn of the last century among Africans in the diaspora, in the UK, the US and the West Indies. They fought for a shared, Black identity, for decolonization of the African continent, and for the Black diaspora to return to Africa to strengthen the continent – with some even calling for a United States of Africa.What role has panafricanism played in the fight for independence in different African countries, and in the creation of Black art, culture and identity? And what is the significance of the new wave of panafricanism today?Hakim Adi is an award-winning professor of history and writer, and the first historian with African roots to become a professor of history in the UK. In this lecture, he will provide a broad introduction to the history of panafricanism.The event was part of Black History Month Norway.

In the wake of #metoo, the French literary scene has been marked by multiple stories of sexual abuse. Books like Vanessa Springora's Consent and Camille Kouchner's The Familia Grande have sparked debates about abuse culture, consent, and the misuse of authority.Neige Sinno's Sad Tiger can be read as part of this line of publications, while also giving the conversation a literary context. While it is necessary to denounce abuse, doing so is also a burden, and Sinno’s approach to dealing with her own story is to turn to fiction. Through analysis of literary works by authors like Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison and Virginie Despentes, she explores power and powerlessness, cultural bias, and finding a language to talk about these experiences.Neige Sinno is a French author and doctor of American literature. Sad tiger is her literary breakthrough, both in France and internationally. A bestseller and the winner of a long list of literary prizes, including Prix Femina, Prix Littéraire Le Monde, and Prix Goncourt des lycéens, the book has been endorsed by authors like Annie Ernaux and Kathrine Nedrejord.Hadia Tajik is a Norwegian politician for Arbeiderpartiet, with a background in journalism, human rights, and law. She will meet Sinno for a conversation on abuse culture and misuse of authority, and how to use fiction as a gateway to shared experiences.

For decades, African speculative fiction has weaved together past and future, combining myths and legends with space exploration and social criticism and broadening the scope of both African and speculative literatures.In this original lecture, invited by The House of Literature and recorded digitally, Nigerian author Wole Talabi presents a timeline of African speculative fiction from its early beginnings and until the present day. Here, he reflects on the influence and importance of the genre, citing its central works and defining its distinguishing features.Wole Talabi is a Nigerian engineer and author of speculative fiction currently living in Perth, Australia. His published works include the short story collections Incomplete Solutions (2019) and Convergence Problems (2024), as well as the novel Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon (2023), which won the Nommo award for best novel in 2024. His short stories have been nominated for and won several awards, including the Sidewise, Nommo and Locus awards, as well as being awarded the Caine Prize for African Writing.Talabi also compiled a database of published works of African speculative fiction, which he edited from 2015 to 2021. He is also the editor of several anthologies of African speculative fiction, including the landmark publication Africanfuturism. An Anthology (2020) and remains one of the field’s chief advocates and central thinkers.Works mentioned:Early Works (1930s – 1960s):Jean-Louis Njemba Medou – Nnanga Kon (1932)Muhammadu Bello Kagara – Gandoki (1934)D.O. Fagunwa – Forest of a Thousand Daemons (1938)Amos Tutuola – The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952)Post-Independence Flourish (1960s – early 2000s):Sony Labou Tansi – Life and A Half (1979)Buchi Emecheta – The Rape of Shavi (1983)Kojo Laing – Woman of the Aeroplanes (1988)Ben Okri – The Famished Road (1991)Kojo Laing – Major Gentl and Achimota Wars (1992)Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o – The Wizard of the Crow (2004/2006)The Internet Age and Genre Recognition (early 2000s – early 2010’s)Nnedi Okorafor – Zahrah the Windseeker (2005)Ahmed Khaled Towfik – Utopia (2008) Lauren Beukes – Moxyland (2008)Lauren Beukes – Zoo City (2010)Nnedi Okorafor – Who Fears Death (2010)Ivor Hartmann (ed.) – Afro SF (2012)Increasing Global Recognition (2010s – present):Deji Bryce Olukotun – Nigerians in Space (2014)Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi – Kintu (2014) Tade Thompson – Rosewater (2016)Tochi Onyebuchi – Beasts Made of Night (2017)Akwaeke Emezi – Freshwater (2018)Namwali Serpell – The Old Drift (2019)Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki – Ife-Iyoku, the Tale of Imadeyunuagbon (2020)Other works mentioned:Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart (1958)Helen Oyeyemi – The Icarus Girl (2005)Wole Talabi – Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon (2023)Weird Tales, fantasy and horror magazineJungle Jim, bi-monthly African pulp fiction magazineOmenana Speculative fiction magazineBlack Panther (dir. Ryan Coogler, 2018)“Afro-mythology and African futurism”, essay by Pamela Phatsimo SunstrumNnedi Okorafor – “Spider the Artist”Phoenix, publishing imprint at Ouida BooksMother, publishing imprint by Jacana MediaChikodili Emelumadu – Dazzling (2023)Yvette Lisa Ndlovu – Drinking from Graveyard Wells (2023)Pemi Aguda – Ghostroots (2024)Tlotlo Tsamaase – Womb City (2024)Suyi Davies Okungbowa – Warrior of The Wind (2023)T. L. Huchu – The Library of The Dead (2021)The Sauúti collective

The word «dictator» might make you think of a select few evil men of the past, who sat alone on their thrones and ruled far-flung kingdoms with an iron fist. Today’s reality is something very different: The autocrats of the world are playing on the same team, doing deals in secrecy to maintain power and keep their riches. They share troll farms and other resources across political lines, either they’re communists, nationalists, or Shia radicalists, and hide their wealth in tax havens all over the globe. And Western states play along.This is the current situation, as described by Anne Applebaum in Autocracy, Inc., her new book on the hidden network of autocrats and autocratic regimes that has blossomed since the turn of the century. In the book, Applebaum describes the golden age of dictatorship as she charts the political and economic ties that unite the dictators of the world – often with democratic states as useful idiots or direct facilitators.Anne Applebaum is one of the world’s foremost authors of history books, among others The Iron Curtain and the groundbreaking Red Famine. Stalin’s War with Ukraine. As a journalist and writer, she is a central voice in the U.S. and Eastern European political scenes and a fierce critic of Western states’ moves away from democratic values and principles.Nils August Andresen is a historian and editor of the newspaper Minerva. Since his days as a student in Russia, he has been particularly interested in Putin’s rise to power and the threats towards international order.Applebaum met Andresen on stage for a conversation on the new world order – and how they’re getting away with it.

When British-Ugandan Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi wanted her debut novel Kintu published in Europe, publisher after publisher told her no – the novel was “too African”: It was neither about the colonial period nor about Idi Amin, the two things about Uganda that Western readers have heard of. And also, the characters had such complicated names. They couldn’t imagine any European readers would like to learn something new about Uganda and its history.Makumbi’s novel is an epic family saga, taking us through the history of Uganda – from the kingdom of Buganda before the arrival of the Europeans, and up to today’s society, in which she combines myths and Biblical history with fairytales and oral storytelling tradition. In a distilled, lyrical language, we meet the patriarch Kintu in the mid-eighteenth century, when he is subject to a dark curse, before we follow his many descendants into our own time, where they all, in different ways, struggle with curses of their own. We particularly see how the men of the family struggle to live up to society’s masculine ideals. Maybe this is the real curse, affecting each of their lives and slowly poisoning the entire society?Kintu is Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s first novel, published in 2014 after she won a manuscript competition by Kenyan Kwani Trust. Makumbi has since published the short story collection Manchester Happened and the novel The First Woman, and she has won a number of awards for her writing.At the House of Literature, she is joined by author and creative director for the organization Radical Books Collective, Bhakti Shringarpure, for a conversation about a family and a nation, about curses and consolation.The event was supported by NORAD.

Sonia Nasir is a somewhat successful actor in London. After a distressing end to a love affair, she travels to see her sister in Haifa, Israel, where their father’s family is from, and where she’s hardly been since she was a teenager. Soon, she is pulled into a local theatre production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet on the West Bank. And as the past catches up with Sonia, ghosts appear off stage as well.Enter Ghost is a complex and skillfully composed novel, an exploration of identity and belonging, the role of art, community, and the painful story of a family and a people.Isabella Hammad is a British-Palestinian author. Her debut novel The Parisian won a number of awards, including the Betty Trask Award and the Palestine Book Award, and I 2023, she was included on Granta’s prestigious list of Best young British Novelists. Enter Ghost is her second novel.Priya Bains is a poet, an activist and editor of the literary magazine Vinduet. She will join Hammad for a conversation about ghosts and sisters, Hamlet and the occupation.