It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm Anne Strange Champs.

When you pick up a newspaper and you read about Africa today, it's all Ebola and child soldiers and Boko Haram.

Here in the U.S., these just seem to be the stories we want to tell about Africa.

But, you know, there's more to the continent than bleak headlines.

In fact, there's a whole new wave of fiction coming out of Africa, and some of it is a lot of fun.

When I hear about Nigerian science fiction, or Somali fantasy.

Ella Wakatama Alfre from Zimbabwe has just put together an anthology of 39 new young African writers.

And she thinks that the African continent is the most exciting literary scene on the planet today.

For a long time, literature coming out of Africa that has been most recognized as literary fiction.

But what really thrills me is the introduction of really good

genre fiction, crime, some

fantasy. There's a lot of really

interesting work going on with science fiction.

And I think this sort of

widening out to sort of

satisfy all kinds of readers

is what makes me feel especially

thrilled. That's the one of things that is so fascinating because up until now, the stars of African

literature, and I'm thinking about the post-colonial period, were very politically engaged

writers, you know, people like Genoa Shebae and Wolle So Yenka.

But it sounds like the new younger writers are, a lot of the writing is really not politically driven.

Well, perhaps not directly so.

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