And crocodiles are hungry at night : a memoir /

Mapanje, Jack.

And crocodiles are hungry at night : a memoir / by Jack Mapanje. - Banbury, Oxfordshire : [London] : Ayebia Clarke ; Arts Council England, c2011. - xi, 435 p. : ill. ; 20 cm.

"A chronicle of a poet's imprisonment under life president Banda of Malawi." -- T.p. Foreword by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza.

Jack Mapanjeʹs memoir is the moving account of his imprisonment by the Malawian state and his struggle to probe the hidden motives behind his arrest. In 1981, Mapanje was a budding poet and scholar; his first collection of poems, Of Chameleons and Gods, had just been published in the prestigious African Writers Series, and his work on linguistics was having an impact on language and literary studies in central Africa and beyond. Just two years later, however, the government ordered the withdrawal of his poetry from all bookshops, libraries, and institutions of learning. And in September 1987, he was arrested and held without charge for nearly four years. This new book recalls those prison years as Mapanje records in his unique voice the terror of arrest, the reality of incarceration, and his daily struggle to retain a solid measure of sanity and spiritual freedom. -- Description from http://www.amazon.com (Jan. 25, 2012).

9780956240170 (pbk.) 0956240178 (pbk.)

2013439230

GBB153121 bnb

015799365 Uk


Political prisoners--Malawi--Biography.
Detention of persons--Malawi.

PR9385.9.M36 / MAP 2011

365.45092