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.

A rich collection of captivating and remarkable chapters, Writing Namibia: Coming of Age presents research of senior academics as well as emerging scholars from Namibia. The book includes wide ranging topics in literature written in English and other Namibian languages, such as German, Afrikaans and Oshiwambo.

Almost thirty years after independence, Namibia literature has come of age with new writers experimenting with different genres and varied aspects of literature. As an aesthetic object and social phenomenon, Namibian literature still fulfils the function of social conscience and as new writers emerge, there is ample demonstration that, pluri-vocal as they are, Namibian literary texts relate in a complex manner to the socio-historical trends shaping the country.

The Namibian literary-critical tradition continues to paint some versions of Namibia and what we find in this new and highly welcome volume is a canvas of rich voices and perspectives that demonstrate an intricate diversity in terms of culture, language, and themes.