A literary festival on African histories and futures, bringing together, for the first time on the continent, authors and artists from the Global Africa who work in Arabic, English, French and Portuguese/Spanish in conversations across perceived limitations and barriers.

The Macondo Book Society, a non-profit organization registered in Kenya under the Societies’ Act and founded by journalist Anja Bengelstorff and award-winning Kenyan author Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, seeks to organize regular literary festivals and other events that promote literature and authors of and from (the Global) Africa beyond linguistic borders, to amplify and showcase the rich diversity of literature from and of Africa, and to provide a public platform to initiate and encourage, through literature, the engagement of a wider public with Africa’s histories and its significance for the present and future of the continent as a means of societal growth.

 

We explore the role of literature in envisioning past, present and future societies with our emphasis on questions that stimulate and motivate Africa future crafting and world-making. We interrogate how historical narratives are constructed, contested, and reimagined through literature, challenging stereotypical perspectives and profiling energising ideas, visions and senses of the world.

We are inspired by the energies of Nairobi, a city that is a pluralistic Pan- and Trans-African realm from which we can re-encounter and navigate the continent and its diverse worlds through creative exchanges, conversations and collaborations.

Macondo is a fictional place in the novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Colombian Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Márquez, a place where magical things happen.