“While my former friends were having profound literary conversations at Conference Two in Yaoundé today, I instead went there and stole the original, handwritten manuscript of Things Fall Apart. But see eh, that didn’t just happen the way I said it o, because the story is far more complex than you think, and it is only when I tell you the whole story, very honestly, that you will understand that I am not really a manuscript thief; Achebe is the one who demeaned and punished me. Yes, when for the longest time, I considered him my henchman, way back when he used to go by Albert.”
Nkiacha Atemnkeng, “Killing Achebe”
Bakwa 12: The Lost Manuscript and Other Meditations takes critical fabulation as a starting point; a deliberate act of speculative storytelling that reimagines the possibilities of literary history. Spanning Martinique to Mauritius, Yaoundé to Popenguine, this issue features a fictional reconstruction of the disappearance of the original handwritten manuscript of Things Fall Apart; Ernest Jésùyẹmí’s follow-up to his widely discussed essay, “Is Contemporary ‘Nigerian Poetry’ Nigerian?”; a portrait of Suzanne Césaire that restores her central place within Tropiques and the Surrealist movement; and three double-page maps by Moses März deconstructing the literary feud between Chinua Achebe and Ayi Kwei Armah. Alongside poetry, essays, short stories and visual interventions, Bakwa 12 asks what survives the archive and what slips beyond its reach.
Contributors include Nkiacha Atemnkeng, Monique Kwachou, Savanna Morgan, Ernest Jésùyẹmí, Moses März, Dzekashu MacViban, Sabah Carrim, Lubi Barre, Adama Keïta, Autricia Timti, and Lorena Nolwen Lekeufack Kamaha.
