The project “Narrating Africa” began with an international symposium at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach in September 2019 discussing the project and how to narrate Africa from academic perspectives. Scholars from Germany, Switzerland, and Namibia engaged in intense discussions on a wide range of texts, genres, and research methodologies for two days. This book contains some of the papers presented at the 2019 symposium as well as further presentations on narrating Africa.

Like the open-space project, this publication does not presume to give an answer to the difficult question of how to narrate Africa, but rather it seeks to offer further insights into the field with a special focus on Namibian narrations. This book is divided into four different sections. The first part aims to provide an introductory overview to and reflections of the project’s main theme, “narrating Africa”. In part two, identity is explored and re(considered) along various literary texts and with a particular focus on questions of gender. The third part focuses on oral literature and questions of time and memory.

Finally, the last chapters are dedicated to the archive and colonialism, exploring a variety of archive materials in Marbach and in Windhoek and how they take up and shape facts and fantasies of Namibia and Africa.

The present volume is a pioneering collection of poetry by the outstanding Kenyan poet, intellectual and imam Ustadh Mahmmoud Mau (born 1952) from Lamu island, once an Indian Ocean hub, now on the edge of the nation state. By means of poetry in Arabic script, the poet raises his voice against social ills and injustices troubling his community on Lamu. The book situates Mahmoud Mau's oeuvre within transoceanic exchanges of thoughts so characteristic of the Swahili coast.

Whispers from the depths is more than just the story of the building of the Kariba Dam in the mid-1950s. Built in just five years against overwhelming odds, the dam is a monument to engineering excellence. Shrouded in political undertones, the construction of the dam was vital for the hydro-electric power it would provide for Zambia’s burgeoning copper industry. Little thought, however, appears to have been given to the future of the human and animal populations who lived in the valley that would be inundated when the dam was completed. The question has to be asked: Was this awe-inspiring man-made creation achieved at too high a cost in terms of the human suffering and environmental devastation it caused? Central to the story of Kariba was the fate of the Tonga people who had for centuries lived in the Gwembe valley, due to be flooded when the sluice gates were finally closed to halt the flow of the mighty Zambezi River. Approximately 57 000 people were forced to move from their ancestral homes, abandoning family graves and spiritual sites to the depths of Kariba's water. They became a dispersed people who have never been able to reunite as a cohesive society, never again been able to live peacefully on the banks of the river which gave them life. Animals, too, perished in their thousands despite the gallant efforts of wildlife personnel who mounted a hastily planned rescue mission known as Operation Noah. Whispers from the depths gives a voice to the all but forgotten BaTonga. It celebrates their unique culture but deplores the price they paid for progress – a price from which they themselves derived no benefit whatsoever.