Till Death do Us French!: On Bate Besong, Cameroon, and Matters of the Marrow
Afam Akeh

• For me, he was more the playwright than the poet. But in another time, in another place, it was his poetry and my poetry that had brought us together as fledgling writers – a coming together much in mind two decades later as I traveled cyberspace seeking the man for our interview. And we thought we already had him in our pages – alive, provocative, as he can be, angry even, we dared to hope. But death was also plotting. It took the man. It took our interview …
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(Re)Writing Identities in Contemporary Beninese Literature
Philip A. Ojo

• Benin’s rich oral literary tradition contributed, as in other parts of the African continent, to the emergence and development of modern Bennoise literature. Its thematic concerns embrace amongst others subjects, postcoloniality, nationalism, tradition and modernity, feminism, all within an overarchingly rich stylistic innovation. Although poetry (with the largest number of titles ) and drama (a genre dominated more by theatrical companies than playwrights, and the most innovative in recent years) appear to be common, prose remains the genre par excellence in contemporary Beninese literature ...
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