East Africa

Overview

Swahili has been written since the eighteenth century in Arabic script, before moving to the Latin alphabet: it is one of the few African languages with a written tradition predating colonisation, and Shaaban Robert made it in the twentieth century a language of poetry and prose. Ethiopia, never lastingly colonised, has its own script, Geez, and a royal chronicle running since the fourteenth century. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, after publishing in English, chose to write in Kikuyu and paid for that choice with a year in prison.

What circulates

Nairobi and Dar es Salaam print for the whole region, and East African Educational Publishers shaped the school canon of several countries. Swahili crosses borders where Kikuyu, Amharic or Somali stop at their own, and Madagascar, whose language is Austronesian, takes part in none of these circulations.

Limits of this grouping

The zone gathers the Horn, the Great Lakes, the Swahili coast and the islands of the Indian Ocean, which share neither history nor languages. Sudan appears here although its publishing looks towards Cairo, and Madagascar although its settlement came from Indonesia. The Comoros and Seychelles belong to yet a third world, Creole and insular.

Works cited

• NovelMzimu wa Watu wa KaleMuhammed Said Abdulla · 1960not translated into EnglishA murder solved by a detective in the manner of Sherlock Holmes, transposed into the setting and language of Zanzibar.Literature
• NovelComing to BirthMarjorie Oludhe Macgoye · 1986A former English missionary bookseller, who became Kenyan and Luo by marriage, tells twenty years of the country's history through one woman.Literature
• NovelTobbyaልብ ወለድ ታሪክAfäwärq Gäbrä Iyäsus · 1908Two twins who set out to free their father, captive of a pagan king, in an Amharic tale printed in Rome at the beginning of the century.Literature