Nii Parkes wins award in France
Notre Quelque Part, the French translation of Tail of the Blue Bird, a novel by Ghanaian author and performance poet, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, was last week awarded the Prix Baudelaire, France's highest honour for the translation of a work from English into the French language.
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Speaking of the award, Nii Ayikwei commended his translator, Sika Fakambi, and spoke of the benefits of an African approach to the translation.
“My translator was born and raised in Mali and I think that played a huge part in her being able to convey, in French, the language and culture that I try to depict in my novel as translation is not simply about language – it is much bigger than that.
“In being true to Ghanaian patterns of speech and borrowing from the Twi language, there is a unique music and wisdom that emerges that carries the English language. That is, for me, one of the real innovations of the book and what Sika has so beautifully rendered in French.”
Having recently won France's Prix Mahogany, for works originating from writers of Africa and the Caribbean, Notre Quelque Part is one of the bestselling début novels in France and is published by the innovative, female-run Éditions Zulma.
Nii Ayikwei Parkes is an established author of poetry and fiction for both children and adults, having performed poetry on major stages across the globe and had two poems: Tin Roof in 2007 and Barter in 2013, featured by the ‘Poems on the Underground’ initiative in London.
A socio-cultural commentator who has sat on broadcast panels with literary heavyweights such as Margaret Atwood and A.S. Byatt, he serves on the board of the Caine Prize and is the co-founder and Senior Editor of Flipped Eye Publishing.
This August, he will be teaching Creative Writing at the African University College of Communications in Adabraka, Accra.
