Africana

Rebecca and Thomas have just met each other and travel to Ethiopia together, where Rebecca is to begin work on a radio documentary. Rebecca has African roots. Her father is from Ghana. Thomas on the other hand, feels rootless and longs to embrace all things exotic and boundless diversity. They have a restlessness in common and this inevitably both drives them together but also apart, and time and again back to Africa, where they listen to each other’s stories, and where the raw stories from young voices about the backway; the often lethal journey across the African continent to a Europe of young African dreams comes to haunt them.

Africana is a wild, shimmering, sensuous novel about a love affair, a vast continent and travelling as a way of life. A tale of blackmagic, racism, myth and deep culture - of travelling companions, hustlers, explorers and souls who trek the backway; there are journeys also in art, the mind and in the service of God, and those who are forced onto the long road, though they may come to lose all along the way

About the author 

Thomas Boberg (b. 1960), made his debut as a poet in 1984 and has since written eighteen books of poetry and a number of travel books of remembrance. He has twice been nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize and has won numerous awards in Denmark, including the Danish Academy’s Grand Prize.

Text translated by Paul Larkin