The theme of exile appears to hold great fascination for literary critics, artistic consumers, anthologists and festival directors of all artistic genres; and a week or two had hardly passed after my vanishing trick from my homeland before I began to be bombarded with enquiries about how exile was affecting my writing: "Are you still able to write?" "What does exile mean to your writing?" Ad infinitum. Invitations from literary journals were not slow to follow, then desperate summonses to conferences, seminars, etc, all in search of the elusive quarry - both process and product - that bears the invisible stigmata of literature in exile.

The 41-year-old Kenyan food and travel writer Binyavanga Wainaina has won the £9,600 Caine prize for African writing for his short story, Discovering Home, that tells of a young man working in Cape Town who returns to his parents' Kenyan village for a year.

Martin Meredith takes as the epigraph to this book a 1976 quote from Robert Mugabe: “Our votes must go together with our guns. After all, any vote we shall have shall have been the product of the gun. The gun that produces the vote should remain its security officer — its guarantor." That was before Mugabe came to power in 1980 and it was clear that, like Chairman Mao, he saw power as proceeding from the barrel of a gun. Meredith makes it clear in his book that Mugabe still believes in this power and has not hesitated to use it.

European Union (EU) officials have issued their first official confirmation of an investigation into the Microsoft Passport identification and authentication service. The Article 29 Working Party has issued a statement outlining legal issues raised by the Passport system.

Former African National Congress Chief Whip Tony Yengeni and businessman Michael Woerfel are to stand trial on charges of corruption and fraud after the Specialised Commercial Crimes Court in Pretoria on Monday dismissed their objections to the charge sheet.

Patrice Lumumba, first prime minister of the Republic of Congo and a pioneer of African unity, was murdered on 17 January 1961. Lumumba was at the centre of the country’s popular defiance towards the relentless exploitation of its Belgian coloniser. When independence was finally won in June 1960, his unscheduled speech at the official ceremonies in Kinshasa, which described Belgian rule as "a humiliating slavery imposed by brute force," received a standing ovation and made him a hero to millions. Within months he was arrested, tortured and executed. This book unravels the appalling mass of lies and betrayals that have surrounded accounts of the murder.

The uproar at the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle focused attention on the conflict between the mainly western-owned global corporations and the poorer nations whose natural resources and cheap manpower sustain corporate profits, and who are also the unwilling purchasers of overpriced and inappropriate goods. In this book David Ransom vividly reveals the realities of trade as experienced by coffee-growers in Central America or the workers making jeans in Bangladesh sweatshops. He examines the roles played by the WTO, UNCTAD, ILO, IMF, G7, and other powerful organisations hiding behind bland initials. Even when their motives are benevolent, he argues, their activities are often inadequate and misguided.

In June 2002, a small, but well selected festival of African cinema, showed that the new wave of African filmmaking is yielding excellent quality that can attract world audiences. In the days preceding the G8 meeting of the political leaders of the world's wealthiest countries, in Kananaskis, Canada, a festival of African films & music helped to raise consciousness about issues concerning Africa.

Foreign aid, mostly from industrialized countries to developing countries, has been going on for 50 years, and some Third World countries depend on it to a remarkable extent. Though its purpose is ostensibly benign, as this introduction to the difficult issues surrounding aid shows, it is the focus of considerable controversy. Aid is an issue of great concern, both financially and morally. This book suggests ways in which aid can be made less of a problem, and more of a solution.

In May 1994 after the death of four moderate Ogoni elders, Nigerian political activist and writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, together with eight others was arrested for their murder. Following the show trial in Nigeria, he and his co-defendants were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. Despite massive international publicity the executions were carried out by the Nigerian government on 10 November. This is the extraordinary and moving account of Ken Saro-Wiwa's period of detention in 1993.

Preparations for the Africa's 100 Best Books of the 20th Century celebrations and awards presentation ceremony are on course. At least 50 of the 100 authors have confirmed their participation in the event due to be held at the Civic Centre in Cape Town. Also expected to attend are the patron of the project, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and the founding father of the project, Prof. Ali Mazrui. This event is also expected to be attended by former President Nelson Mandela and senior officials and dignitaries from UNESCO and the OAU. In his letter of acceptance, Mazrui said; "I am delighted that plans are going in full-stream ahead for the Literary Centennial Gala in Cape Town in the last week of July."

You are invited to visit a new online exhibition entitled: Women Emerging: A Tribute to Uganda. East African fine artists present works having significance to the topic of Women's Empowerment, specifically, the Uganda Women's Movement. Accompanying each image, participating artists explain and interpret visual elements within their work relating to impacts, changes, and developments for women, both personal and societal, in East Africa and beyond. Over a dozen new original artworks were created specifically for this event by such artists as Lilian Nabulime (Uganda), Yvonne Muinde (Kenya), David Kibuuka (Uganda), and Stella Atai (Uganda). Visiting this page will place you among the first to view them.

Losing control in the media arena as a result of activist pressure has become a public relations nightmare for the modern multinational enterprise. Shell's Brent Spar fiasco is one well-known example, when the Greenpeace campaign against sinking that former drill platform achieved its goals. Monsanto's gross underestimation of the European resistance against the introduction of genetically engineered products is another. Today, as more companies shift to being all about brand meaning and image, the more vulnerable they are to attacks on that image. At the same time, corporations are becoming as powerful as governments. Battling Big Business reveals how corporate giants attempt to control their 'enemies' and how groups and individuals can fight back.

For several years now, a fractious debate about the role of the big financial institutions in the globalized economy has encircled the world's policy makers, moving from the initial grumblings of the often-unheeded developing world through the street protests of Seattle and elsewhere and on to a much broader agenda. With "Globalization and Its Discontents" (W. W. Norton, $24.95), Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economic science in 2001, has taken the discussion a step further. He shows just how much the protesters' misgivings about and outright hostility toward some of those institutions have moved from the fringes into influential, mainstream thinking.

Tayo Olafioye is a prize-winning poet, and currently distinguished professor of literature in the US. A poet of the younger generation, his overriding concern is for the future of nationhood and national identity in Nigeria; and his own relationship to the nation as a committed poet writing in exile. The poet assumes that to love one's country is to be critical about its hateful history, disintegration and idiocies. He also asks: 'How do we carve a new nation?' The rulers - the looters - are neither satisfactory nor convincing. Instead, according to Olafioye's poetic manfesto, 'poetry must whittle new alternatives'."It is this kind of poetry which Pablo Neruda describes as imperfect... It is political. It is cultural, and beyond all this, it is an inner quest to conquer the turbulence of his world...Olafioye's book of poems...restates in concrete terms the blinding realities of Nigeria's post-independence social and political madness." - Onookome Okome

Artists in Africa today need cooperation across organizations, institutions, and agencies that exhibit art, the government, the media and the community at large. The outcome of a recent conference insists that art commands a peripheral attention inside the continent for many reasons. Though some of the reasons may be linked to the socio-political conditions, others derive from sheer ignorance on the part of policy makers and the prevalent inverted value system which has confounded the meaning and philosophy of development in Africa.

The deadline for stand bookings at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair – where the unveiling of Africa’s 100 best books of the twentieth century takes place – is June 17. Scheduled for Cape Town between July 26-28, the fair also has a second leg in Harare between July 29 and August 3.

The Vice President and secretary of State for women's affairs Isatou Njie Saidy will launch a book entitled 'Olimatou' by Matty Chama, a primary school drop herself.

Review by George Monbiot.
In his recent book The Song of the Earth, the Shakespearean scholar Jonathan Bate made the extraordinary claim that poetry could save the world. I think Alastair McIntosh has just proved him right.

This is a world-changing book, one of the most important I have ever read, which will transform our perception of ourselves, our history and our surroundings, much as the work of Alice Miller and Sven Lindqvist has done. It is a first step towards the decolonisation of the soul: the essential imaginative process we have to undergo if we are to save the world from the political and environmental catastrophes that threaten it.

Soil and Soul is an extraordinary adventure in theology, economics, ecology, history and politics. It takes us from the Hebrides to the Solomon Islands, gently guiding us towards a new and remarkable philosophy by means of compelling, beautifully written stories. It overflows with ecstasy, quiet wisdom and love – love for humanity, for the world, for our failings and our possibilities.

McIntosh tells the story of his exceptional childhood, the historical destabilisation of the community in which he was brought up and, as he travels and reads, his growing understanding of why and how this happened. He explores the colonisation of resources, of human labour and, most importantly, of our own perceptions. Then he uses this emerging wisdom and experience to develop daring and innovative means of tackling the powers that have deprived us of ourselves. With the people of the Isle of Eigg, he helped devise a strategy for overthrowing the once-intractable power of the landlord. Their remarkable victory – the first known case in which Scottish tenants cleared a laird from his own estate – galvanised public demands for widespread land reform in Scotland. When a multinational quarrying company announced its intention to turn a Hebridean mountain into a giant superquarry, McIntosh persuaded the Native American Warrior Chief Sulian Stone Eagle Herney to come to Scotland and help assemble the first-ever theological submission to a public inquiry. The publicity converted a local issue into an international one, developing one of the most striking challenges to corporate power in British history.

McIntosh draws on these experiences to develop a radical politics of place. He transforms our engagement with soil and soul – once the preserve of the right – into a new and compelling vision of freedom and social justice. His radical liberation theology, rediscovering both the presence of God in nature and the neglected femininity of divine wisdom, is persuasive enough to encourage even such an indurated old sceptic as myself to take another look at God.

By these means, Alastair McIntosh shows us, we can break the spell of consent, unchain our imaginations and challenge both power itself and the anomie and disaggregation on which power’s abuse thrives. The work of a great thinker and a great poet, Soil and Soul shows us how we can, in McIntosh’s words, make ‘beauty blossom anew out of desecration’.

Make no claim to know the world if you have not read this book.