Brian James of Sierra Leone appointed NAI Guest Writer 2010

The writer Brian James of Sierra Leone (born 1983) has been appointed Nordic Africa Institute Guest Writer in 2010, with the citation that he is “a skilful, up-and-coming story-teller with an acute sense of observation and a capacity for creating memorable images of terrifying as well as humorous events”.

The selection of Brian James was made by a committee of five members chaired by the literature scientist Stefan Helgesson of Uppsala University. The committee reviewed 42 applications from all regions of Africa, with both Anglophone and Francophone countries represented.

“There were a high number of strong applications, which made the decision difficult. We could easily have admitted at least ten of the writers”, says Stefan Helgesson.

Brian James will be with the Nordic Africa Institute during three months in the autumn of 2010. He will also appear at the Göteborg Book Fair on 23-26 September, which has Africa as its focus theme this year.

Brian James has mainly written short stories which were published by journals and anthologies, but he has also produced drama for TV and film. The journal “Third Alternative” in the UK writes about the short story "On the Road to Godiva" by Brian James that:

"with its string of macabre events, a magic realist sense of the outré and everyday overlapping, and some genuinely nasty bad things, this could easily pass for a superior horror story , but James gives it a political dimension which, at one and the same time, endows the story with a worth that belies its roots in folklore and sends it spiralling dangerously close to preaching, a condition James just about stops short of."

The Nordic Africa Institute is unique among research institutes and universities in the Nordic region to admit a yearly “Writer in Residence”. Earlier Guest Writers with the NAI include Shailja Patel of Kenya, Tolu Ogunlesi of Nigeria and Gabeba Baderoon of South Africa.