A Decolonial View

By students in the Colonial and Postcolonial Master

A visit to the Gothenburg Book Fair – celebrity cultural capital and the power to speak back

2026-01-15

By: Serena Fedeli

Disclaimer: this post is intended as a recollection of personal experiences following a university seminar and two interviews which I attended. I will relate them along with some excerpts which I have noted down by hand, and which therefore should be taken for what they are: loose quotations. In what follows, you will see authors, discussions and even scholarship through my eyes. 

A few weeks ago, I attended the annual Gothenburg book fair, an event which gathered almost 100 000 visitors this year. I was interested in particular in listening to two interviews with two Nigerian authors, which I wished to observe and compare. The idea came from a discussion from a seminar that I attended recently, in which the guest lecturer, dr. Doseline Kiguru, discussed African celebrity writers and canon formation, as well as the idea of ‘poverty/trauma-porn’. According to my understanding of Kiguru’s arguments, there is in fact a connection between contemporary African fields of literary production, canon formation and capital circulation which should not be overlooked. In short, Kiguru’s analysis, building on Bourdieusian notions of cultural capital, places the literary text within a framework of production, to bring forth the interlocking mechanisms that exist between cultural/literary capital value and circulation, and canon formation (see Kiguru 2016 for more on this topic). A common denominator between the two texts read to prepare for the seminar was the figure of the celebrity African writer, often a winner of prestigious literary prizes, who embodies in their public persona the accruement of social and cultural value, and therefore power, in Bourdieusian terms (see Kiguru, 2022 for the figure of the celebrity writer). Moreover, during the seminar, we had the chance to observe the features of the short stories which, throughout the years, won the Caine Prize for African Writing, finding a blatant similarity amongst them all: the common topic of poverty, trauma and sufferance. With these in mind, I headed to the Gothenburg book fair, to listen to two award-winner Nigerian writers —Chigozie Obioma and Chimamanda Adichie— and observe if and how their ‘celebrity power’, so to speak, played out in the interviews. The experience did not disappoint.  

Figure 1: The large crowd at the Gothenburg Book Fair 2025 

The first interview I attended was with Chigozie Obioma, about— supposedly— his latest novel The Road to the Country, which, admittedly, I am yet to read (I will!). I hope Obioma will not get offended if I state that he is not quite the same celebrity as Chimamanda Adichie, though her popularity is truly hard to beat, but more on that later. Even though his words might not have been associated with fashion shows and Hollywood stars like Adichie’s, Obioma is still a well-established writer, with a bunch of prestigious achievements under his belt. In 2015 alone he was named one of the ‘100 global thinkers’ by Foreign Policy magazine and called ‘the heir to Chinua Achebe’ by The New York Times, which is, arguably, quite impressive. Moreover, he served as a judge for the Booker Prize, and he is a distinguished professor of English at the university of Georgia, which, to me, means that he knows a thing or two. Nonetheless, the Gothenburg book fair did not consider that he would gather such a crowd, and in fact the interview took place in a rather small room.  

Figure 2: Chigozie Obioma 

Interestingly, the interviewer (a journalist) set the tone for the whole conversation right from the first moment, contextualising the novel in the period of the Biafra war. A large chunk of the time was subsequently dedicated to asking the author about the formation of the Nigerian nation state, colonialism, and the arrival of the British. Despite this speedy lesson on colonial history, the interviewer at this point said again: “Though, really, the war is the centrepiece of the novel”. Obioma explained then that he believed some of the best stories to be those that deal with “a rebel without a cause, fighting against his own convictions”, and proceeded to illustrate what he saw as the most interesting features of his novel: the inner development of the main character, the deep bond he formed with the other soldiers, “the genuine attention and love for others”, “war as a refining tool for human identity”… in other words, showing that war is not to be monumentalised, and that such a tendency is part of a larger “Enlightenment project”. Yet, monumentalising is precisely what I understood the interviewer to be aiming at. At this point in fact, an interesting back-and-forth dynamic surfaced between interviewer and interviewed. On the one hand, the journalist who time and time again went back to real-life issues of war and trauma, such as the author’s research on the Biafra war, his meetings with veterans: “how much of it is based on real events?”. On the other, Obioma talking about African literature, the importance of the mystical in today’s life, and his attempt to “offer the metaphysical to open up questions in the reader’s mind”, insisting that veterans do not really talk much about the war. This exchange, which in the end was centred around real-life war, resulted in the author exclaiming: “I know you are all very pragmatic and rational, this is Sweden after all!”. Ok, I said to myself, should I take this as frustration? Nevertheless, this talk was all about the ‘trauma-porn’ we discussed with Kiguru, and I wondered if that could be due to the fact that the author did not embody enough power in his celebrity personhood to simply speak about whatever he wanted: cosmology, mysticism, identity, solidarity…cool stuff! Instead, he ended up feeding his Swedish audience a generous portion of trauma and sufferance so dear to the sympathetic Western reader. Admittedly, I was a bit frustrated by the predictable outcome, somewhat ashamed to embody the stereotypical Western reader myself and still rather curious to hear what the author could have said about his writing, if only he had been given the opportunity. Let’s move on. 

Next on my program was nothing less than celebrity-superstar writer Chimamanda Adichie. The Gothenburg book fair had organised her seminar in the biggest room they had, which holds 500 people. To give you an idea, after queuing for 45 minutes I got nervous that I would not manage to get in! If you are not familiar with Adichie (aren’t you though?!), she is exceptionally famous, she won more prizes than I can list here, she spoke with Michelle Obama, Kamala Harris, Robert De Niro among many others, she collaborated with Beyoncé, Dua Lipa and the Met Gala designers, her Ted Talk words were printed on Dior’s clothes …in short, celebrity capital through the roof. I must admit, I was not immune to her charm, this became clear to me right away. I even forgave her for arriving almost 40 minutes late, in true celebrity style. I liked her right away, when she said that the first thing she thinks about when she finds out that she has won an award, is what she is going to wear; this small detail, I thought, served the purpose of instantly connecting her to her audience: she is one of us in some ways, but with an added wow-factor that makes her different from us…she has a stylist, after all!  

This talk was surprising. Adichie received the 2025 Mermaid Award, and was interviewed during the ceremony by author Agri Ismaïl. The dynamic between the two was very different than in Obioma’s interview, not because of the interviewer, I would say, but because Adichie stirred the conversation from the beginning. In fact, Ismaïl started by talking of Adichie’s supposed postcolonial identity, but she replied that she is “not nostalgic of pre-colonial West Africa”, and when asked about her intention to move from a postcolonial to a post-postcolonial narrative she asserted that the African writer always gets asked about postcolonialism, but she wants to talk about those same “universal feelings that drive Western classics”, insisting that formerly colonized people do not think of themselves as postcolonial subjects all the time and —drum roll— that people read novels from the global south as anthropology, while literature is universally human; therefore, she does not want “to see her characters framed as representatives of Nigeria’s postcolonial identity”. At this point, Ismaïl was literally forced to change the trajectory of his interview (which he did, with a few bumps, rather well).  

Figure 3: Chimamanda Adichie receiving the Mermaid Award 

It was really clear to me as a spectator that Adichie from this point on stirred the conversation towards what she wanted to talk about: the evolution of her characters, her relationship to them and how this relationship registers in the narrative’s form in terms of first- or third-person narration, for example. Nonetheless, the speaker tried again to discuss some more ‘postcolonialism’ and brought up literary historian and critic Franco Moretti and the idea of the novel as the prime cultural artifact of the European Bourgeoisie. He asked: “doesn’t the form itself force you to conform to something that doesn’t really represent non-Western realities?”. To which Adichie replied that “the novel has become African because Africans have written it” and reiterated, once again, that belonging to a formerly colonized country should not define everything that the African writer does, including when it comes to the use of the English language: “Igbo is mine and English is also mine. Can we just move on?!”. Towards the end of the interview, the conversation acquired a somewhat political tone, as Ismaïl asked Adichie for some advice to those in the U.S, “living their first dictatorship”. According to Adichie, who has herself been living in the U.S for decades, people in America should remember that their country has a long history of imposing dictatorships to others, so they should “suck it up”. The end, long applause. Wow, I was truly mesmerized not only by her words, but also by her wittiness and audacity, her presence and power.  

Figure 4: Chimamanda Adichie signing my copy of her latest book 

To sum up my considerations of this experience then, I think that not only do we, Western readers, still seem to have a very soft spot for ‘poverty-porn’, a need to feel sympathetic towards the so-called Global South, even when it comes to fictional representations of it; that this, in simple words, is still what sells. But also, I got to observe the very evident connection between celebrity status and ‘power’, and how the writer who has been canonized through recognitions and international literary awards, accrues enough symbolic and economic power that can be used to support and/oroppose other matters and causes which depart from the literary industry and expand to larger cultural, social and political issues. Essentially, the subaltern can speak, in Spivak’s words, but only when she is a superstar.  

Further readings 

Kiguru, Doseline. 2016. “Literary Prizes, Writers’ Organisations and Canon Formation in Africa”, African Studies 75:2, pp. 202–214. 

Kiguru, Doseline. 2022. “Contemporary African literature and celebrity capital”, in African Literatures as World Literature, edited by: Alexander Fyfe & Krishnan Madhu, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 189–211. 

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 2001. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Imperialism, edited by Mark Harrison and Peter J. Cain, 171–219. 1st ed. London: Routledge. 

A Refugee – Displacement through the Lense of Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

By: Serena Fedeli

“Weights of Whispers” is a short story by Kenyan author Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor which won the prestigious Caine Prize for African writing in 2003. It is a short story that feels, well… long: it is slow, complex and intense. The first time I read it, these features confused me: shouldn’t a short story be immediate and, I guess, short? Moreover, I thought, can one really describe the experience of genocide in a short, limited space? It is, however, the story’s intricate complexity that captivates the reader and makes it impossible to let go of it. In what follows, I wish to highlight some of the ways in which Owuor’s skilful writing delivers the convoluted and multifarious experience of genocide in a brief novella, guiding the reader into, somehow, making sense of it. This story is set in Kenya and follows the experience of displacement and decline of Rwandan prince Boniface Louis R. Kuseremane and his aristocratic family, following the Rwandan genocide and their consequent exile to Nairobi: “The sum total of what resides in a very tall man who used to be a prince in a land eviscerated” (2). While it fictionalises a real event, the story is able to make it believable, I would argue, by approaching genocide from the perspective of the individual, and by narrating it in first person; that is, this story brings the reader close to the experiential level: it guides the reader into feeling a genocide, rather than just simply learning about it. 

It all begins as Kuseramane and his family are forced to escape Rwanda following the assassination of two presidents, for which Kuseremane ends, somehow, on a “ a list of génocidaires” (14). Along with his fiancé, mother and sister, he flees to Kenya with their belongings stuffed in exclusive Chanel suitcases, on four of “the last eight seats on the last flight out of [their] city. [They] assumed then, it was only right that it be so” (5), as if they deserved those seats somehow, given their status. In Nairobi, they check into a suite at the Hilton. Money is running low, both Kuseremane and the reader are well aware of it. It becomes clear to him that they will not be able to sustain their exclusive lifestyle for much longer. They are ultimately forced to flee the hotel in secret, aristocrats turned common thieves, without paying their bills; they leave the Chanel bags behind at least, since “they are good for at least US $1500. Agnethe-mama is sure the hotel will understand” (13). From that point on, life takes a very unfamiliar turn; it takes a while, for Kuseremane —the prince— to understand his new status, for, he states, “The Kuseremanes are not refugees. They are visitors, tourists, people in transit, universal citizens with an affinity…well…to Europe” (9). However, he will soon find out, to seek asylum is not to be a citizen of the world, it is, actually, to go from being a someone, to becoming dehumanised, all the same, a mass of people with no country and no name: “all eyes, hands and mouths, grasping and feeding off graciousness” (14). In one of the very many queues for visas and permits which he is forced to join, Kuseremane observes “Like the eminent-looking man in a pin-striped suit, I am now a beggar” (12), the fact that he is a diplomat and a prince is totally irrelevant. The visa application process proves to be literally impossible, for it must be done in one’s own country, and Kuseremane’s country is…well, even Kuseremane himself does not know what is left of his country at this point (11). He spirals more and more into anguish and fear, unsure of whether to give up or resist; he becomes too afraid to voice his terror to his family: “it is simpler to be silent” (9), to believe that the tears that wet his pillow in the morning are not his (13). Who is he, anyways? “Kuseremane, Kuseremane, Kuseremane” (13) he repeats, more for the sake of reminding himself than anything else, for nobody around him seems to remember him, even though they knew him well when he was a someone. He could be an “expatriate’ and therefore desirable” (27) back then, while now he is an “illegal alien” (24), a “pariah” (27) in exile, a nobody, whose humanity is rapidly fading before his very eyes. In his new condition, his identity needs to be suppressed: “Camouflage… place dictates form. […] The first lesson of exile – camouflage. When is a log…not a log? When a name is not a name” (30-31). 

Owuor is skilfully able to draw parallels between the character of Kuseremane and the figure of the Jew, without, however, universalising this experience in a way that would risk further degrading of the human behind it. In other words, the author uses the idea of the Jew as a trope, to challenge the reader’s ethical standpoint. Through Kuseremane we are uncomfortably reminded, once again, that “the zenith of existence cannot be human” (Owuor, 3), for “nobody wants to know that contemporary history has created a new kind of human beings” (Arendt, 111) with no rights left but human rights, as Hanna Arendt once wrote in her well-known text “We Refugees”. Arendt writes that to be a refugee is to be stripped of all humanity, but what are human rights good for, when humanity fails to see you as a human? Refugees do not want to be called ‘refugees’, they do all they can to prove themselves and others that they are “just ordinary immigrants” (110). Refugees, according to Arendt, have not only lost their home; they lost their language, their jobs, and their identity is now dismembered (110).

Kuseremane, the refugee prince—the genocidal prince perhaps— is not a Jew, yet he is not spared from this condition. However, the reader’s ethics are challenged here: we are unsure whether to see him as ‘the Jew’ or ‘the Nazi’, as some scattered textual elements reveal. His lack of tact and human empathy in meeting an academic whom he asks, bluntly, “are you a Jew?”, causing the man to cry, then simply walking away “unable to tolerate the tears of another man” (3).  Moreover, Kuseremane is often depicted wearing a Hugo Boss coat (15), a designer notably known for having made his fortune by creating uniforms for the Nazi government in the 1930s. In this way, “Weight of Whispers” arguably succeeds in making an ethical intervention; that is, Owuor uses tropes such as these historical references to place the reader in relation to the subject it engages with; not only in making us understand genocide from an experiential level, but also urging us to take an ethical stand, questioning ourselves, and in so doing making sense of things from an ethical perspective as well. The whole idea of Nazi Germany is, thus, encapsulated and crystallized in a Hugo Boss suit. Even those who might struggle with historical references (those for whom ‘the past is another country’, as someone once said), are given the opportunity to question their ethical point of view through, for instance, the questionable role of the UNHCR in Kuseremane’s process of asylum seeking. Indeed, what are human rights good for, when even the UN office for the protection of refugees requires a 200$ bribe to decide who gets to enter their offices? (22) And even then, when leaving depends on whether or not you are willing to ‘cooperate’, “by agreeing to be examined […] by the officials at their homes for a night.” (34)? Kuseramane is powerless, he can do nothing but watch (35). 

The story’s ambiguous end left me wondering if its protagonist will end up committing suicide —the ultimate identity erasure—again, echoing Arendt (112-113). But, much more importantly, the story ends leaving me uneasy, having to grapple with the experience of exile. Thus, this is not just a matter of first-person narrative. It is about the much larger question of first-person engagement in the real-life displacement of millions of people. This story demands that we —you and I— remember that according to the UNHCR’s latest report there are over 122 million forcibly displaced people in the world, real people, that is. Perhaps Owuor would argue that very many more might never reach the UNHCR at all. Albeit fictional, this story shakes our moral grounds, and urges us to keep seeing the human behind the figure of the Refugee. “Photographer, do you see us at all?” (Owuor, 32).

Further reading: 

Arendt, Hanna. “We Refugees”. Altogether Elsewhere: Writers in Exile. edited by Marc Robinson. Faber and Faber, 1994, pp. 110-19. Originally published in 1943.

Owuor , Yvonne Adhiambo. “Weight of Whispers”. Nairobi. Kwani Trust, 2003

UNHCR. “Press Releases, 12 June 2025. https://www.unhcr.org/news/press-releases/number-people-uprooted-war-shocking-decade-high-levels-unhcr  

Wikipedia. “Hugo Boss”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Boss