The Jive Talker, by Samson Kambalu

Portrait of the artist as a young African Samson Kambalu's memoir of growing up in Malawi ends with the death of his beloved mother. She is the sixth in his family to die from Aids, including his father. But this is no misery memoir. On the contrary, it is often very funny, as well as original and earnest. That it took an hour to walk to primary school could be an opportunity for self-pity. But for Kambalu, his first walk to school, toddling along beside his mother, is "one of the happiest memories" of his life. Born in Malawi in 1975, just over a decade after its independence from Britain, Kambalu is a conceptual artist living in London. This is his own portrait of the artist as a young man, with a crisis of faith, the discovery of sex, and a commitment to art. But the portrait is framed by a thoughtful intelligence that... [read full story]