Swedish literary magazine, 10TAL, visited Kenya in late 2009, attracted by what they described as a “literary rebellion” . The result is an edition of Kenyan writing translated into Swedish. A great opportunity, a crossing of boarders and seas, the edition is the kind of vision Kwani? has for the country’s writing, which is why we collaborated with 10TAL in the project. But Kenya has changed, and people enjoy more freedom than was the case ten years ago though the impression comes across that it is still the 1990s for Kenya. With that said, readers in Swedish now have a direct line to Kenyan writers and will make up their own minds.

10TAL presents the first com­pre­hen­sive intro­duc­tion to con­tem­po­rary Kenyan prose and poetry in Swedish. Last win­ter, our edi­to­r­ial staff went to Kenya and found a lit­er­ary rebel­lion. Writ­ers, schol­ars and edi­tors of peri­od­i­cals debat­ing, writ­ing arti­cles, short sto­ries, essays and satires, orga­niz­ing events and start­ing pub­lish­ing firms, thus con­tribut­ing to the democ­ra­ti­za­tion process in Kenya. Next week we release our Kenya issue, in time for the Göte­borg Book Fair, where the main theme this year is Africa. 136 pages of fic­tion, inter­views and pic­to­r­ial arti­cles by and about the country’s most inter­est­ing writ­ers, journal­ists and photographers.

Read the edi­to­r­ial by Madeleine Grive here