[Review of] Angus Calder, Jack Mapanje, and Cosmo Pieterse, eds. Summer Fires, New Poetry of Africa

When Angus Calder, Jack Mapanje, and Cosmo Pieterse sat as judges for the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award of 1981, they were faced with some 3,000 entries from more than 700 contestants from which they were to award three cash prizes and a number of book prizes. In the introduction to the book which they subsequently edited, consisting of eighty-two poems from forty-five writers from thirteen countries in Africa, they explain that they had told all entrants they were looking for originality and imagination as well as evidence of technical skill. They state, also, that they strove to deliberate dispassionately ... without regard to geographical origin or to the author\u27s previous reputations. They conclude that the book represents the remarkable vitality of verse in English all over the continent, and leave their choices of poems to speak for themselves, as they do so well

[Review of] Mongane Serote. To Every Birth Its Blood

Mongane Serote is a poet of considerable merit; this I should have discovered from reading his novel, To Every Birth Its Blood, even had I not heard and seen him read his poetry to an African Literature Association Conference in 1975. The novel, however, is not obtrusively poetic; rather, its physical and psychological insights are apt and genuine parts of an integral whole, not ends in and of themselves. Yet a careful reader will respond most positively to such expression

[Review of] Sterling Plumpp, ed. Somehow We Survive: An Anthology of South African Writing

Somehow We Survive takes its title from an included poem by Dennis Brutus and is a collection of poems written in English by non-white South Africans. It is not a new book, having been published in 1982, but it still is worth the attention of Western readers, particularly of those who have not already become students of South Africa\u27s shameful history of apartheid and the growing resistance of black and colored persons, both in direct action and literary activity. As the book is now available in paperback, at a modest price, it is worth having, in spite of its limitations

[Review of] T. Obinkaram Echewa. The Crippled Dancer

At the end of The Crippled Dancer, Ajuzia asks, Was everyone coincidentally and inadvertently carrying a bag packed by other people? Like Browning\u27s Andrea del Sarto who says, So free we seem, so fettered fast we are, Ajuzia appears to accept the limitations fate and/or custom place upon the individual. Both men accept with reluctance, however, for both are free, creative spirits aware of the waste of their own talents

[Review of] Ngugiwa Thiong\u27o. Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature

This book, Decolonising the Mind, is my farewell to English as a vehicle for any of my writings. From now on it is Gikuyu and Kiswahili all the way. This declaration by Ngugi wa Thiong\u27o is one he has every right to make. Many of us, however, will hear it as a casting-off of the large and appreciative readership he enjoyed from the days when, as James Gugi, he instructed and enriched us with The River Between and other fine works of art. To be sure, one can sympathize with any African\u27s hatred of colonization, can feel with him a rage against the West, the whites -- Europeans and Americans -- even when he overgeneralizes and reifies his feelings. One may not agree with him, but one can understand his wish to hit back. One can also understand his desire to devote himself wholly to writing to and for his own people, to entertain and instruct them in their own language. One can understand these feelings even though one may not share them

A Counterexample for Lightning Flash Modules over E(e1,e2)

We give a counterexample to Theorem 5 in Section 18.2 of Margolis' book, "Spectra and the Steenrod Algebra", and make remarks about the proofs of some later theorems in the book that depend on it. The counterexample is a module which does not split as a sum of lightning flash modules and free modules.Comment: 2 pages. Revision corrects a typo in the definition of M(n

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors: Endogenous Property Rights in a Game of Conflict

This paper derives the conditions under which property rights can arise in an anarchy equilibrium. The creation of property rights requires that players devote part of their endowment to the public good of property rights protection. In the Nash equilibrium, players contribute zero to the protection of property rights. In contrast, a king who provides property rights protection paid for by a tax on endowments can completely eliminate conflict, but such a king has an incentive to take the surplus for himself. Thus players have an incentive to find a solution that keeps power in their own hands. In a social contract, players first credibly commit part of their endowments to providing property rights and then allocate the balance of their endowments between production and conflict. While property rights can arise under a social contract if the productivity of resources relative to the size of the population is sufficiently high, these property rights may be less than perfectly secure. Nevertheless, for sufficiently high productivity of resources relative to the size of the population, the social contract welfare dominates autocracy. Key Words:

Hand in the Cookie Jar: An Experimental Investigation of Equity-based Compensation and Managerial Fraud

The use of equity-based compensation is an increasingly popular means by which to align the incentives of top management with that of the shareholders. However, recent theoretical and empirical research suggests that the use of equity-based compensation has the unintended consequence of creating the incentive to commit managerial fraud of the type being reported in the press. This paper reports experimental evidence showing that the amount of fraud committed by subjects is positively correlated with the level of equity, as is the level of effort. As well, the amount of fraud that is committed is negatively correlated with the probability of detection and subjects’ risk aversion. The experimental design permits the identification of causal relations in the directions just noted. Key Words:

Can Foreign Aid Buy Investment? Appropriation Through Conflict

The failure of foreign aid to promote growth in the developing world has received significant attention as evidence suggests that foreign aid does not translate into investment. This research has demonstrated that poor institutions in these developing economies (particularly with respect to property rights) results in an inability to fully appropriate the return to one’s investment, thereby serving as a prominent disincentive to investment. This paper presents an experimental test of a a 2-player, one-shot game of conflict in which we vary the strength of property rights. Our results suggest that stronger property rights reduce conflict and increase investment. In addition, we test the conventional wisdom that technological progress can increase the effectiveness of aid in stimulating investment. Contrary to intuition, we find technological progress has practically no effect on investment and that this failure to stimulate investment is largely due to deficiencies in property right institutions. Key Words: Property Rights; Conflict; Investment; Foreign Aid; Experiments

[Review of] Chinua Achebe and C.L. Innes, eds. African Short Stories

From time to time, collections of modern African short stories like the collection here noted should be published in order to keep an increasingly aware readership abreast of articulate literary production. When such collections are prepared, their editors would do well to be led by the general principles expressed by Chinua Achebe in a short, but very cogent, introduction: The indebtedness of modern African writing to its wealth of oral traditions is taken for granted by the editors and they see no necessity to demonstrate the link further by including traditional tales in this collection