Guests of the Bayreuth Academy in the last five years

Our Guests


Mr. Elnathan John

Inviting institution: Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies
Stay: 15. Januar 2015
Personal information: TP 4 Workshop "Literature and Satire"

 


Elnathan is a writer and lawyer living in spaces between Nigeria and Germany. Mostly. 
 
His writing has appeared in The Guardian, Hazlitt, Per Contra, Le Monde Diplomatique, FT and [too many] Caine Prize for African Writing anthologies. He writes weekly political satire for the Nigerian newspaper Daily Trust on Sunday (and any other publication that PAYS him -- he considers it violence of unimaginable proportions to ask him to write or do anything, for free). He has hardly won anything of real value. This record was almost disrupted by the Caine Prize when they accidentally allowed his story on the shortlist in 2013 and again in 2015. Of course, both times, he did not win. He has been shortlisted and longlisted for a few other prizes, but he is content with his position as a serial finalist. It is kind of like being a best man at a wedding - you get to attend the ceremony but you can get drunk, sneak off and hook up without anyone noticing because after all, you are not the groom. In 2008, after being lied to by friends and admirers about the quality of his work, he hastily self-published an embarrassing collection of short stories which has thankfully gone out of print. He hopes to never repeat that foolish mistake.
 
His novel Born On a Tuesday was published in Nigeria (in 2015), the UK and the US (in 2016) in German (2017) and in French (2018). He hopes they make a movie out of his novel. He has also written a graphic novel which, publishing gods allowing will be out in 2018/2019. Now that he is in between books, nobody seems to want to publish his collection of short stories. This puzzles him. He really loves those stories. Some experts swear by the publishing gods that if he publishes his Nigeria satire collection, it will interfer with his chances of being established globally as a serious novelist. He really doesn't care. 


(Taken from http://www.elnathanjohn.com/the-real-about.html)


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