Ike Anya, doctor of letters

Ike Anya is something to everyone. To some, he is an astute travel writer. To others, he is a poet. He is also a good interviewer and a keen blogger. However people get to know Ike, they eventually get to know he is actually a medical doctor with one foot in the arts and the other in medicine.

Quoting Nnorom Azuonye's words on Ike Anya. "Something to everyone" - Nnorom can say that again.

Ike was recently appointed a Consultant in Public Health Medicine at the Hammersmith and Fulham Primary Care Trust. To the man who has achieved this great feat, it was just another blessing for which he was grateful, and not something to shout about. Ike's childhood friend and fellow public health doctor/co-blogger, Chikwe Ihekweazu felt differently about it, and together with his wife Ijeoma, they set up a fantastic reception in Ike's honour at the Cicada in London's Farringdon area on Friday, the 4th of July 2008. As the event kicked off I looked around. No Molara Wood. Shit! Who is going to write about this night?

No Molara Wood. But Nnorom stepped up, and wrote about it! Where there's a writer, no story goes untold. Read his account of the evening.

One always had this fear that Medicine would take Ike Anya away from us eventually, but judging from his recent showing, we need not fear too much. One of his trademark writer's interviews - a discussion with the author Sefi Atta about her recently published novel, Swallow - was in the Nigerian Guardian of 20 July. Anya also co-edited the just published Weaverbird Collection of short stories by Nigerian writers; his fellow co-editors for the collection being: Akin Adesokan, Sarah Ladipo Manyika (whose first novel, In Dependence, is out soon via Legend Press, UK), and Ike Oguine. Contributors to the Weaverbird include: Ike Okonta, Victor Ehikhamenor, Tade Ipadeola and Unoma Azuah.

• Swallow & The Weaverbird Collection are published by Farafina/Kachifo.
• Photo of Ike Anya (with Uzor Maxim Uzoatu) by MW.

New Reads - Caine Special

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One of the niggly things about the Caine Prize season at times is that shortlisted stories aren't always widely available. So you'll be at a reading by the writers who read excerpts and engage in discussions around stories which half the audience havent read, which must be somewhat frustrating for both writers and readers alike. Especially when the story in question is not available online. Not so this year.

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Thanks to New Internationalist, publishers of the Caine anthologies, you can read of all 5 stories online (downloadable in pdf format).

One of these stories will win the Caine Prize tonight...

• Read Mallam Sile by Mohammed Naseehu-Ali (Ghana).
• Read For Honour by Stanley Onjezani Kenani (Malawi).
• Read Poison by Henrietta Rose-Innes (South Africa).
• Read The Day of the Surgical Colloquium by Gill Schierhout (South Africa).
• Read Cemetery of Life by Uzor Maxim Uzoatu (Nigeria).

God of Poetry, God of the Caine?

Congratulations to Uzor Maxim Uzoatu who's Nigeria's flagbearer for this year's Caine Prize. His story, Cemetery of Life, published in Wasafiri 52 earned him the nod for the author of 'God of Poetry'.

Joining him on the shortlist are Ghanaian Mohammed Naseehu Ali (for Mallam Sule); Malawian Stanley Onjezani Kenani (his story: For Honour); South African Henrietta Rose-Innes is shortlisted for the second time (for Poison); and she's joined by her compatriot, Gill Schierhout (for The Day of the Surgical Colloquium).

Judges are (1) Chair Jude Kelly (who is the artistic director of the South Bank Centre - where the Caine writers will read on July 6); (2) Hannah Pool; (3) Mark McMorris; (4) author of In the Country of Men Hisham Matar; and Jonty Driver.

The 2008 Caine Prize winner will be announced at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, on July 7.

Wasafiri 52

The new edition of Wasafiri dropped in the post a couple of days ago and, though I am yet to read much of it, I can already tell this is going to be my best issue for a long time. The theme is 'The Book in the World' and features readers, writers and publishers.

15 writers talk about the books that changed them. Hence Biyi Bandele and his editor, Ellah Wakatama Allfrey share the same page as they discuss the books that changed things for them. I reasoned very much with Bandele's choice of early 80's Nigeria reading of numerous titles by James Hadley Chase - "an English writer now completely unknown in England (in nearly twenty years of living in London, I'm yet to meet a single British person who admits to having heard of him)." Tell me about it, Mr Burma Boy! Coulda said the same meself! Who'd have thought it, all those years we were chomping down James Hadley Chase? Still we were hooked on the stuff (my own early teenage reading went in stages: some 400 Mills & Boon titles from which I graduated to James Hadley Chase from which I graduated to Harold Robbins - with Sidney Sheldon and Jeffrey Archer stuck in-between; and when I left each stage, I could never bear the novel that marked that stage again. It's a good thing I read my fill of populism before the age of 16, because I couldn't abide populist novels from then on). I digressed. We were talking of Bandele's impression of James Hadley Chase novels, some of which he names: Like a Hole in the Head, You're Lonely When You're Dead, This Way for a Shroud, The Doll's Bad News, The Way the Cookie Crumbles, Well Now My Pretty, An Ear to the Ground, & The Vulture is a Patient Bird. Funny, I read them all too, though I don't recall the 'Vulture' one at all. I was somewhat disappointed Bandele didn't mention, Tell it to the Birds, Miss Shumway Waves a Wand and the one that had me completely gobsmacked all those years ago, 'Believe This and You'll Believe Anything'. Ah, bless!

Blake Morrison's choice would probably be mine, if asked - Midnight's Children. And here's how I discovered Salman Rushdie's 'Booker of Bookers'. The writer was just someone I knew from TV bulletins including words like 'blasphemy' and 'fatwa'; none of which particularly made me want to rush out to buy his books. And so I was on a Bakerloo Line tube train in January 1992 and there on the seat beside me in an empty carriage, was a brand new copy of Midnight's Children. Finders Keepers, ehn? Dear blog reader, I alighted the train with the book, and it's as if I've seen the world through perforated sheets from then on. I still have the copy.

Anyway, back to Wasafiri, which embraces all of those Journals any reader worth his or her salt in Africa ought to read these days: Kwani?, Farafina... there's even an interview with Chimurenga 's editor, Ntone Edjabe.

And there's a short story by Nigerian Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, 'Cemetery of Life'. I've read the story and I'm intrigued by it, seeing as I love all that magical-mystery stuff. I remember E.C Osondu telling me in an interview, that 'Jimmy Carter's Eyes' was his own "attempt at allegory". Perhaps 'allegory' would describe Uzor Maxim Uzoatu's offering in Wasafiri. Loved it, but still scratching my head as to what it really means...

Meanwhile, I'm off to read more of the magazine.