News: October 10

But, first we’ll take this W I was frankly ecstatic that this year’s choice was Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose novels come to us by way of the sea, from the Swahili coast of Zanzibar. ......... Abdulrazak Gurnah is the sixth African writer to have won the Nobel Prize in literature. The others are Wole Soyinka (1986), Naguib Mahfouz (1988), Nadine Gordimer (1991), JM Coetzee (2003), and Doris Lessing (2007). ....... he is also only the fourth Black writer to have won the prize; apart from Soyinka, the others are Toni Morrison from the United States and Derek Walcott from Saint Lucia . ......... Unlike the Booker Prize which has historically scored well on the diversity points, the Nobel has always favored the whitest and the most European of all literature. .......... Soyinka, Mahfouz, Gordimer, Walcott, Morrison, and Kenzaburō Ōe won almost in succession from the years 1986 to 1994. For a brief eight years, the LitNobel was diverse, political, progressive, and completely with-it. ........ After a short spell of mostly Europeans, the LitNobel crew took a truly international journey from the years 2000-2012. Gao Xingjian from China, V.S Naipau from Trinidad, Orhan Pamuk from Turkey, and amazingly two African writers, albeit white: South African J.M Coetzee and Zimbabwean Doris Lessing. ........

The LitNobel is essentially enamored by French literature (17 winners) followed by US literature (13 winners) and then British literature (11 winners).

.......... The truth is crystal clear: US publishing is truly hostile to African literature. Here, only one, two, three writers are held up to represent an entire continent of over fifty countries and a gazillion languages, cultures, and landscapes.



The secret offshore world of the Kenyatta family



Newly discovered mineral petrovite could revolutionize batteries A mineral made in a Kamchatka volcano may hold the answer to cheaper batteries, find scientists. ....... Batteries based on salt would be cheaper to produce than lithium-ion batteries. ......... Petrovite, the blue and green mineral Filatov’s team discovered, with the chemical formula of Na10CaCu2(SO4)8, contains oxygen atoms, sodium sulphur, and copper in a porous framework. “The copper atom in the crystal structure of petrovite has an unusual and very rare coordination of seven oxygen atoms” ........... Due to the abundance of salt, sodium-ion batteries could be a very inexpensive alternative to lithium-ion batteries you can commonly find in many devices today. ........