Turning the Page by Peter Leyland
Turning the Page – "African Novels" * It was by chance rather than design that my course on “African Novels” just happened to coincide with two momentous events in the world of African writing. The first was the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Abdulrazak Gurnah who was born in Zanzibar and who has written 10 novels dealing with displacement and dislocation; the second was the award of The Booker Prize to Damon Galgut for his novel, The Promise, set in South Africa. This book I bought when it was first published because I am a great fan of the writer; the books by Gurnah I will explore further when I have time. And indeed there will be time, to paraphrase the poet, T.S.Eliot, as this will be my last course for the WEA. I know now as I write that at the end of “African Novels” I will not be doing any more teaching, that there will be no more lengthy drives to Ivinghoe where I am holding my final course, no more opening...