This article deals with the translation into Italian of the Swahili novel Utengano by Said Ahmad Mohamed, which was published in March 2005 under the title `Seperazione`by an Italian Publishing House, Rubbettino Editiore. Translation is a very important form of intercultural communication, which can provide contact with new readers, expected and unexpected ones. In the following pages I will decribe the main features of my translation of the novel Utengano, highlighting the main differences between the first version, that I produced as an appendix to the M.A. thesis, and the manuscript that I submitted to the publishing house.

In the last decades many literary critics have appraised the works of Zanzibarian writers; referring to the prose of Mohamed Suleiman Mohamed, Said Ahmed Mohamed and Shafi Adam Shafi, M M. Mulokozi wrote in 1985: \"The most significant, and certainly most spectacular, development in the Swahili fiction of the Seventies and Eighties has been the emergence of Zanzibar as the producer of the best Swahili fiction to date, and the apparent torch bearer for the Kiswahili novel of the near future\" (Arnold 1985: 174). The same enthusiasm was shared by R. Ohly who, confronting the novels written by Zanzibarian writers and those by Tanzanian and Kenyan writers in a time span going from 1975 to 1981, has defined the Zanzibarian prose a challenge to the artistic competence of other Swahili writers (cf. Ohly 1990). Although I found the comparative pattern used by Ohly debatable, having concentrated for the up-country literary production only on popular short novels - to be better evaluated not following negative, contrastive cliches but within the context of that particular trend -, obscuring moreover other talented writers like Euphrase Kezilahabi or Claude Mung`ong`o, his criticism has nevertheless the merit of having highlighted the main qualities of Zanzibarian novels, namely a deep interest for historical and social matters, along with an extremely rich and colourful language and a serious concern for stylistic features. These attributes of Zanzibarian literary style fit very well to the last novel by Shafi Adam Shafi, Vuta n`kuvute, published in 1999; in the following pages my aim is to explore the way the author of this work artistically manipulates themes, literary suggestions and stylistic devices, re-elaborating thus the experience of Kiswahili and Zanzibarian prose in a creative way.

Chachage Seithy L. Chachage aliyezaliwa mwaka 1955 wilayani Njombe ni mmojawapo wa waandishi wakongwe wa riwaya ya Kiswahili. Hadi hii leo amechapisha riwaya nne. Katika mahojiano haya yaliyofanyika tarehe 30 Machi, mwaka 2004, huko Chuo Kikuu cha Dar es Salaam tulitia mkazo zaidi kwenye riwaya yake mpya Makuadi wa Soko Huria (2002). Hivi sasa mwandishi ni Profesa na Mkuu wa Idara ya Sosholojia ya Chuo Kikuu cha Dar es Salaam.

The bilingual Tanzanian writer William Eliezer Mkufya was born on the 18th of June 1953 in Tanga region. Mkufya is a self-trained writer as he had a scientific education. Ua la Faraja (The flower of consolation) won the TEPUSA best manuscript award in 2001 and was published in 2004. it is supposed to be the first part of the trilogy Maua (Flowers) in which the author commits himself to the fight against the plague of AIDS in the context of the existentialist philosophy. In more than 400 pages he presents several persons affected by this frightening disease and even if no one recovers his or her health, the author did not sink into pessimism, but presents a sign of hope, or rather a `flower of consolation`. Mkufya returns with Ua la Faraja to the realistic novel, assuming the traditional role of a teacher. Although his main concern is to convey a message explaining how to face the calamity that is affecting Africa more severely than any other part of the world, he has achieved it with an anti-melodramatic approach and with great skill.

I would like to present the latest novel by Said Ahmed Mohamed, Babu alipofofuka (\'When Grandfather came to life again\'), published at the end of the last year. The mine will be only a first, preliminary and very inadequate attempt as, I am sure, this work will challenge us for quite a few years. In fact, after five realistic novels the author has adopted a new technique, turning to magic realism as he himself defines his work, but perhaps it is a too limitative definition. He depicts our world in a near future, when Tanzania and other African countries will have already undergone the process of globalization. The results are disastrous: impoverished and dulled masses are governed by a handful of immensely rich, powerful and arrogant persons mostly of foreign origin, deprived of all human qualities, who have thrown away any inhibition and deliberately sunk in all sorts of physical and moral debasement; nothing embarrasses nor frightens them anymore as they feel unpunishable.

The study focuses on the use of various languages including Swahili by the author Moyez G. Vassanji against the English background of his works, by concentrating on two of his ´African´ novels, namely The Gunny Sack and The In-Between World of Vikram Lall. In his novels, Vassanji uses multiple literary devices involving the use of different languages, such as code switching and code shifting among others. The paper analyses the use of these various ´language-mixing´ devices in his novels from a literary point of view. A set of literary instruments allow the author to attain various tasks, such as creating ´local colour´, restoring social relationships, and also expressing the characters´ search for new identity, as well as reflecting the author´s own background as a multi-cultural person and writer.

Sifa mojawapo ya umahiri wa Shaaban Robert ni namna anavyounda katika maandiko yake taswira mbalimbali za viumbe wenye mbawa kama vile ndege wakubwa ‘wahamao’, ndege waimbao, malaika na wadudu, kwa minajili ya kuwajengea wasomaji wake motifu za upazo, ukwezi na safari. Wahakiki mbalimbali wameusadifu ufundi wake wa kuunda taswira za kisitiari na ishara katika fasihi ya Kiswahili kwa ujumla. Hata hivyo, uchunguzi wa hakiki zao kifani una mapengo haswa katika kubaini taswira na ishara zitokanazo na kiumbe ndege. Makala haya yanachambua namna Robert anavyotanabaisha kanikinzani mbalimbali kupitia taswira za ndege. Robert amefuzu kuchota taswira za ndege kutoka katika mitholojia ya ndege ya wanajamii wake ili kuwagusa kisitiari wasomaji wake. / One of the key aspects of Shaaban Robert’s artistic techniques is his remarkable molding of winged creature images in the form of extraordinary migratory birds, songbirds, angels and winged termites to infuse the motif of ascendance, progress and journey. So far critics of Robert’s works have given this significant artistic tool a very low prominence in spite of its recurrence in his writings. This paper argues that Robert devulges two opposing forces through scary bird imagery. Robert successfully displays his creative artistry by supplanting the bird mythology drawn from the reservoir of folkloric knowledge of his people to appeal metaphorically to his readers’ senses.

Instead of discussing an outstanding literary work by a well-known Swahili writer, this time I would like to present a second- or third-rate book by a renownless author (at least to my knowledge), Gilbert Gicaru Githere.2 Its title is Mwana Maji na Mrembo (The Marine and the beauty). It was published in 1990 by an otherwise unknown publishing house, Merengo Publishers, and printed in Hawaii. I have chosen this book because, in spite of its many flaws, it has some interesting features: The whole novel is written almost as a film script; descriptions of actions and landscapes are film-like, and the characters are seen as if they were on the screen. The problem is that this narrative technique does not work, so I want to analyse what is wrong with it.

The depiction of family ties is one of the core elements of Swahili novels in Tanzania, especially in the post-Independence, socialist period, conveying all the contradictions of that social and cultural context. On one hand the representation of family relationships in terms of tense and aggressive behaviour (Mlacha 1987: 82) reflects the clashes of those years, between town and countryside, between genders and between different generations. On the other hand, the image of a new family - like for instance Chonya, Masika and her baby in Ndyanao Balisidya’s novel Shida (1975) - stands as a commitment to an alternative society, a dream of a better life inspired by Ujamaa which marked the Swahili prose of the 1970’s (Mbughuni 1980: 92). Said A. Mohamed, after his first novels which dealt with the colonial and pre-revolutionary past, turned his attention to contemporary society, but has continued to develop the idea of the family as a symbolic space where relationships between the characters articulate the inequalities and the conflicts within Zanzibari society. His literary discourse, as will become clear in the following pages, brilliantly investigates the deep roots and the countless facets of authoritarianism in contemporary Zanzibari society, depicting a gallery of fathers - in a biological and in a metaphorical sense – who are despotic, immoral, hypocritical, and increasingly cynical.

\"Are there any national literatures in black Africa yet? The simple answer is no. [...] If one examines the development of the African language literature that do exists, one is struck by certain recurring tendencies. Many of the books produced, particularly the early works, are of a predominantly moralistic nature. Sometimes they are retelling of folk stories or Bible stories, sometimes imitations of European religious literature, sometimes both.\\\" (Lindfors 1997: 121; 123) Certain anomalies are obvious in the above extract. Swahili written literature with its long-standing tradition, dating far back to the 17th century, has relativly gathered its own aesthetic criteria, values and sensibility, hence \\\''own\\\'' integrity and world view. I dare say that Lindfors will be suprised to learn today, how fast the Swahili novel has developed since when he had left it when he read Andrzejewski et al (1985) and Gérard (1981), who (by the way), themselves did not then see the their works as presenting a complete picture of African literatures in African languages. This essay aims at showing the predicament of the Swahili novelist at the crossroads and how, in a contemporary situation, s/he works out his or her strategies towards resolving the impasses.