East African Literature: Essays on Written and Oral Traditions. Ed. by J.K.S. Makokha, Egara Kabaji and Dominica Dipio. Berlin: Logos Verlag, 2011, 513 pp. ISBN 978-3-8325-2816-4: Review

Book review of the collection titled ´East African literature: Essays on Written and Oral Tradition´ edited by J.K.S. Makokha, Egara Kabaji and Dominica Dipi

Facing the language border: multi-lingualism in two novels of M. G. Vassanji review: Facing the language border: multi-lingualism in two novels of M. G. Vassanjireview

The study focuses on the use of various languages including Swahili by the author Moyez G. Vassanji against the English background of his works, by concentrating on two of his ´African´ novels, namely The Gunny Sack and The In-Between World of Vikram Lall. In his novels, Vassanji uses multiple literary devices involving the use of different languages, such as code switching and code shifting among others. The paper analyses the use of these various ´language-mixing´ devices in his novels from a literary point of view. A set of literary instruments allow the author to attain various tasks, such as creating ´local colour´, restoring social relationships, and also expressing the characters´ search for new identity, as well as reflecting the author´s own background as a multi-cultural person and writer

Three novels of John Habwe: Social criticism through “new enlightenment”

 John Habwe is one of the most established and prolific writers in modern Kenyan literature in Swahili language, whose writing career now spans for more than two decades 1. Despite his productivity and fame in the literary and reading circles, Habwe so far seems to have gained a rather timid attention from the critics. His first three novels were reviewed, among others, by Kyallo Wadi Wamitila in his survey of Kenyan novel in the new edition of Outline of Swahili Literature (Bertoncini et al., 2009). In that survey Wamitila noticed, along with other traits, Habwe’s tangible inclination towards “Enlightenment-type” didacticism. Thus, before we start the analysis of the texts chosen for this study, it would be advisable to provide a brief outline of the main traits of Enlightenment and its literature.Key words: Habwe, enlightenment, Swahili, literature, Keny

THE PRESENT STATE OF SWAHILI LITERATURE AS AN ARTISTIC AND SOCIAL PHENOMENON

This study is aimed at giving an overall picture of present state of creative writing in the language of Swahili in the Eastern part of the African continent, i.e. its condition after the year 2000.Key words: Kiswahili, literature, East Africa, novel

BILINGUAL LITERATURE OF TANZANIA AS A SPECIFIC INTER-LITERARY COMMUNITY

Modern literary theory has created a variety of approaches to describe dynamic processes emerging in a literary field. This may be especially significant in the case of relatively young literary traditions, characterized by rather high level of dynamics.Among various theories of significance is a theory launched in the last quarter of the last century by a Slovakian scholar of comparative literature, Dionýz Ďurišin (1929-1997), who came up with the theory of the so-called specific inter-literary communities. The works of Ďurišin and other scholars, mainly from East European countries (such as Joseph Grmela, Libuša Vajdova, Irina Nikiforova, Yuri Azarov, and others) were published in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s in a variety of collection.KEY WORDS: literary, inter-literary, community, Tanzania

JOHN HABWE’S SAFARI YA LAMU (2011) AS A TRAVELOGUE

The genre of travelogue may be regarded almost as old as the human civilization. Iain Manley in his survey of the genre (Manley 2011) traces the history of travelogue in the world literature from The Epic of Gilgamesh (13th-7th centuries BC), Homer’s Odyssey (8th century BC), accounts of ancient travelers, like the Greeks Arrianus and Pausanius (1-2 centuries), the Chinese Faxian and Xuanzang (5th and 7th centuries), to the medieval texts of the venetian Marco Polo (13th century) and Arabian traveler Ibn Batutta (14th century), Christopher Columbus of Spain (15th century), and Fernão Mendes Pinto of Portugal (16th century AD). Key words: John Habwe, travelogue, Lamu, Safar

Mahojano na Ben R. Mtobwa

Mahojiano haya yamefanyika tarehe 11 Januari 2008, mjini Mainz, Ujerumani, wakati wa Kongamano la Tisa la Janheinz Jahn “Beyond ‘murder by magic’: investigating African crime fiction” lililofanyika Chuo Kikuu cha Mainz

In memoriam: Ben Rashid Mtobwa

Obituary in memory of Ben Rashid Mtobwa, a Tanzanian writer

Borexino : geo-neutrino measurement at Gran Sasso, Italy

Geo-neutrinos, electron anti-neutrinos produced in beta-decays of naturally occurring radioactive isotopes in the Earth, are a unique direct probe of our planet's interior. After a brief introduction of the geo-neutrinos' properties and of the main aims of their study, we discuss the features of a detector which has recently provided breakthrough achievements in the field, Borexino, a massive, calorimetric liquid scintillator detector installed at the underground Gran Sasso Laboratory. With its unprecedented radiopurity levels achieved in the core of the detection medium, it is the only experiment in operation able to study in real time solar neutrino interactions in the challenging sub-MeV energy region. Its superior technical properties allowed Borexino also to provide a clean detection of terrestrial neutrinos. Therefore, the description of the characteristics of the detected geo-neutrino signal and of the corresponding geological implications are the main core of the discussion contained in this work