- (re)searching for information about aboriginal African cultures
- reading La Ŝtona Urbo
The first one comes from my desire to project current Africa abhominable situation in all economical, medical and cultural fronts, I'm absolutely horrified and I wish to make my bit from my poor, dried ingenuity to help raise awareness in the "First World". Thus, I'd like to write a HF novel set in an ancient, African culture (not Egyptian and not Phoenician), preferrably before Christianism and Islam, but I am open --at least at the moment-- for later times (pre-colonial times, though). I'll thank help from my readers!
The second one is a HF novel written by English-born, Belgian writer Anna Löwenstein, The City of Stone. Why the funny title, then? Simple: it's written in Esperanto. She wrote the original manuscript in English, and translated the novel to E-o herself. Last Friday, December 15th was the Zamenhofa Tago, the Day of Zamenhof, creator of Esperanto, and good excuse to get together, have a great meal with friends and new friends and have a wonderful time, which we did this Saturday... After the meal in Madrid, we moved to a bookstore with is a kind of de facto Esperanto broadcast center (it's where a friend of mine regularly gives Esperanto courses) and over there, besides watching Gerda malaperis, a Brazilian movie adapting Claude Piron's book of the same title, we could peruse and buy book about and in Esperanto from the friends at the different E-o organizations that attended (we were over 30 people, which is about twice last year's meal, and who knows next year? :-)
Thus, I got the book, in Esperanto. Great novel (so I'm told) and a great way to practice the language. The book tells the story of a Celtic woman (from Britannia) who gets enslaved and goes to Rome in Nero's time, dealing with Celtic, Roman and early Christianism... I'm moving ahead pretty slowly at the moment, but I expect to get a good pace soon; I'll let you know.
And that's the state of things in this last weeks of this year... Let's see how things end and may 2007 bring us all closer to our dreams!
KALLISTI!
PS- Esperanto resources: Lernu! and World Esperanto Association
2 comments:
Well I can suggest that You might want to write about West Africa in the Pre Christian / Pre Islamic era. For example there is the pre Christian trading settlement of Jhenne in Niger or Mali I believe. It is I believe one of the first great trading cities of West Africa. The Archaeology of the place is fasinating and there have been digs on the site going back 30+ years. ANother possibility is the Ancient pre Islamic empire of Ghana, which was very wealthy from trading gold.
Of course the pre Islamic / Pre Christian state of Yeta in Ethiopia, which predates Axum by a few centuries is also of interest. It used to be trhought that it was established by Sabean traders etc., from Yemen but it appears to be a fusion of local developments with Sabean elements from Yemen.
Oh and did you get my thoughts on the Battle of Ephesus?
Just my thoughts.
Pierre
Pierre, thanks for your suggestions... I'm still looking for inspiration, so I'll take your ideas into account (so far I have enjoyed Ethiopian civilization circa II Century, and certainly Mali looks promising as well...)
As for the Battle of Ephesos, I recall reading your comments, but at this very moment I cannot recall what I did write in the frenzy of Nanowrimo... :-)
All I can tell is that, at the moment, it looked pretty spectacular a battle, indeed!
I'll let you all know when I'm done with the first draft and I start the revision (which is where the big things will happen, I guess)...
Thanks for your help, as always!
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