Francis Nyamnjoh

‘It is difficult to advise a leader who is always right’

An excerpt from Francis B. Nyamnjoh’s Married But Available

It is late into the night. Bobinga Iroko is unable to sleep. He is working on the editorial for the next issue of The Talking Drum. He has deliberately refused to carry the story on homosexuality. His priority remains the strike at the University of Mimbo, which, curiously, hasn’t attracted much coverage from the rest of the national press concentrated in Nyamandem and Sawang. He and The Talking Drum, the formidable odds against them notwithstanding, are determined to crusade along like a lone ranger, until victory day. They believe the sun must not be allowed to set on a good idea.

É difícil aconselhar um líder que está sempre certo

Um excerto do romance Married but available

Francis B. Nyamnjoh (2008-10-26) 

É tarde da noite. Bobinga Iroko é incapaz de dormir. Ele está trabalhando no editorial para o próxima edição de O tambor falante. Ele, deliberadamente, recusou a lançar a história sobre homossexualidade. Sua prioridade ainda é a greve na Universidade de Mimbo, a qual, curiosamente, não atraiu muita cobertura do resto da imprensa nacional concentrada em Nyamandem e Sawang. Ele e O tambor falante, apesar dos obstáculos formidáveis que se punham diante si, estão determinados a empreender uma cruzada tal como um vaqueiro solitário, até o dia da vitória. Eles acreditam que o pôr do sol não deve ofuscar uma boa idéia.

A Review of Francis Nyamnjoh's "The Travail of Dieudonne"

Originally published in The Standard (Kenya)

Title: The Travail of Dieudonne
Author: Francis B. Nyamnjoh
Publisher: East African Educational Publishers (Peak Library)
Year of Publication: 2008
Reviewer: Tom Odhiambo

The Travail of Dieudonne is a modern version of Meja Mwangi’s Going Down River Road.

The main narrative in the novel is a biography of Dieudonne, a houseboy (that colonial term that refuses to go away) to an expatriate white couple teaching at a university in Mimboland.

Book Launch in London - The 1961 Cameroon Plebiscite - Choice or Betrayal

Thursday 18th September 2008 from 6-8 pm at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

A Concoction of Paradoxes – A Review of "The Disillusioned African" by Francis B. Nyamnjoh

By Kangsen Feka Wakai (Originally published in Palapala Magazine)

Francis B. Nyamnjoh. The Disillusioned African. Langaa Publishers, 2007. 264 pages

Meet Charles, able-bodied African male of decent character with Herculean aspirations. Born sometime before independence swept through the continent; sometime before its echoing chants became the refrain of daily discourse; he is witness to the political and economic sameness of his world as it assumes different names but holds on to an ancient personality—tyranny.

An aspiring philosopher with the eye of an amateur anthropologist; Charles is a man of his time with a worldview molded by a ceaseless current of historical, socio-economic and political forces. It is the collision of these forces that compel him early on in his correspondence to make this confession:

Book Review: Souls Forgotten by Francis B. Nyamnjoh.

By Alice Macdonald (Originally published in Pambazuka News)

Langaa Publishers. Bamenda, Cameroon. 2008. [ISBN: 9789956558124, 360 pages, Price: £14.95]

The prolific Cameroonian writer and academic Francis Nyamnjoh continues to delight his readers with the publication of his latest novel Souls Forgotten. Souls Forgotten is a bitter indictment of the political and social situation of many African countries. The novel is set in the fictional land of ‘Mimboland’, a linguistically divided nation presided over by none other than President Longstay and suffering from endemic corruption, failing public services and wild nepotism whose similarities with the author’s native Cameroon are hard to miss.

The Disillusioned African, by Francis B. Nyamnjoh

Reviewed by Rosemary E. Ekosso

Francis B. Nyamnjoh. The Disillusioned African. Bamenda, Cameroon: Langaa Publishers, 2007. 264 pages. Available on Amazon.com & Michigan State University Press

The relatively few people who read books published and/or written by Africans (when they can find them) might find that some of these works are famous for little other than their typesetting errors. I once got into trouble for telling a rather self-regarding young reporter that while I thought it was a good thing for a country to have a vibrant private press, its effect was somewhat marred by the fact that half the words in his newspaper were spelled backwards.

Needless to say, we did not part on friendly terms. However, the reason I mentioned this is that Langaa, which last year published the book I am attempting to review (it was first published in 1995 by Nooremac press) seems to have escaped this. It is true that a meal is much more that the plate on which it is served, but one does rather like clean plates in these matters.

Stories from Abakwa - A Masterpiece in Linguistic Engineering (Book Review)

By Peter Vakunta

Francis B. Nyamnjoh's Stories from Abakwa is a remarkable depiction of the socio-economico-political realities of Mimboland aka Cameroon. The writer does more than re-write the events that characterize the day-to-day lives of the inhabitants of this terrestrial limbo. What strikes the reader the most in this anthology of short stories is the linguistic engineering that the author adeptly avails himself of. Camfranglais-- the mumbo-jumbo that not only baffles Fineboy Ayuk but leads to his unanticipated demise, is the hallmark of the code-switching that Nyamnjoh employs as a narartive technique in the collection.

Books by Francis Nyamnjoh

Book Review: The Disillusioned African (A Novel)

Reviewed by Louise Cuming - Catholic University of Central Africa, Yaounde, Cameroon

Francis Nyamnjoh. The Disillusioned African. Bamenda, Cameroon: Langaa Publishers, 2007. 264 pages. Available on Amazon.com & Michigan State University Press

Some time ago, in 1993, a forum of anglophone Cameroon writers held under the auspices of the Goethe Institute of Yaounde produced, among many excellent articles, a reflection by Tatah H. Mbuy on “The Moral Responsibility of the Writer in a Pluralist Society”.  Every such writer, says Mbuy, is to see himself as a spokesman for his society.  He must seek the truth, propagate it and defend it.  He is to be the prophet and soothsayer of his society, pricking the consciences of all and trying to correct faults where these are to be found. Elsewhere in this forum other participants described present-day anglophone writing as concerned with “deconstructing victimhood”, through a discourse revolving around shared values or reference points.