Once upon a life: Helen Oyeyemi

"As the daughter of Nigerian immigrants, novelist Helen Oyeyemi knows how hard it can be to feel at home. But when she was assaulted in broad daylight in a London park, she had no option but to pack her bags."
There are many traits I've inherited from my parents. Among them are a love of, and geeky interest in, perfume (that's from my mum), an innate conviction that the plausibility of a piece of information is in no way connected to its truth (that's from my dad), and (from both of them) the idea that you don't have to stay in a place just because you were born there, or because you're used to it.
An insightful essay. Philosophical. Deep.
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Award Winning Author Hisham Matar on the 2011 Caine Prize

"Hisham Matar was born in New York City to Libyan parents and spent his childhood first in Tripoli and then in Cairo. His first novel, In the Country of Men, was published in 2006 and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Guardian First Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US. It won six international literary awards including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best First Book award for Europe and South Asia, the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifize, and the inaugural Arab American Book Award."

Can you comment on this year’s prize – the range, number, and quality of entries? What impressed you?

I can only compare this year’s entries to my 2008 experience, which is the only other time I have been a Caine Prize judge. The previous time, the entries were generally not as good as what we’ve received this year. Yes, there were a few powerful stories that clearly stood out. But this time, while we still do have a number of powerful stories, the general standard is better overall.

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Loving and hating Julius

This seems to be the appropriate title for Ikhide's review of Teju Cole's "Open City."

"I loved Julius, I hated Julius. He is a Walter Mitty character, a creep even. Julius is eclectic, some would say too eager to appear so, precise, almost anally-retentive. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifHe knows his Chopin, Bach partitas, Beethoven sonatas and Shostakovich symphonies by heart. The peasant reader asks: Who are these people that Julius knows on a last-name basis? Who is Veláquez? Gilles Deleuze? Gaston Bachelard? Paul Claude? Julius comes across as a caricature of the African intellectual schooled in Western ways and loudly wearing his intellect like a pimp overwhelmed by his loud clothes."

I think I recognize some of these European guys. Will I be able to recognize a character who showcases his knowledge of them?
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