New Farafina

I have to admit that I hadn’t heard of Farafina until seeing it referenced on Laila Lalami’s blog. Focused on African culture, each issue combines “everything from photo essays to cartoons, art interviews to political exposes, narrative essays to short stories.”

The latest issue, guest edited by Laila Lalami, is called “Remapping Africanness” and contains a number of interesting pieces.

From Laila’s editor’s note:

So it seems that North Africa is excluded—and occasionally also excludes itself—from considerations of Africa, in all its wondrous ethnic, religious, linguistic, and cultural diversity. In this issue of Farafina magazine, I want to reclaim North Africa for Africa. In his article “Remapping Africanness”, the novelist and academic Anouar Majid shows how North African and sub-Saharan novels in fact share many common themes and concerns. The Rabat-based lawyer and activist Karim Kettani writes about a forgotten chapter of African history—a time when people across the continent shared the same political goals. I am also delighted to include Nouri Gana’s review of Nouri Bouzid’s Akher Film. Professor Waïl Hassan has kindly allowed this magazine to reproduce his introduction to the new African Writers Series edition of Tayib Salih’s masterpiece, Season of Migration to the North. The featured fiction in this issue is an excerpt from Hisham Matar’s novel, In The Country of Men, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2006. Mathew Shenoda has contributed a lovely poem, and Hoda Mana, Simona Schneider and Alex Yera have supplied the many photographs.