Gods and Soldiers (53 page)

 

The South African novelist and short story writer
Ivan Vladislavic'
's most recent book is
Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked,
a series of 138 nonfiction portraits of his hometown, a widely praised portrait that won the
Sunday Times
Alan Paton Award for Nonfiction. Vladislavic' works as an editor and writer in Johannesburg.

 

Abdourahman A. Waberi
has written nine works of fiction, two of which—
The Land Without Shadows
and
The United States of Africa
—have been translated into English. From Djibouti, which gained its independence from France in 1977, Waberi came to France when he was twenty-one, and now teaches English in the French city of Caen.

 

Binyavanga Wainaina
is the firebrand editor of
Kwani,
a young Nairobi-based literary magazine at the heart of the burgeoning Kenyan literary scene. He won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2002, and his memoir,
Discovering Home,
is due out from Graywolf Press in late 2009. Wainaina's stingingly smart satire “How to Write About Africa,” originally published in
Granta,
has become a touchstone for young African writers.