A uniquely vivid and wickedly funny memoir of growing up ambitious, creative and sometimes hungry in Malawi. With exuberant prose, a cast of extraordinary characters and a rebellious spirit, Samson Kambalu tells the story of how a little boy obsessed with fashion, football, Nietzsche and Michael Jackson won a free education at the Kamuzu Academy ('The Eton of Africa') and began his journey to art school and artistic success. The son of a philosophising, hard-drinking, poorly paid hospital manager, Kambalu's award-winning conceptual work is shown in galleries across the world, and still evokes that childhood landscape of literary excitement, family chaos and music; post-colonial injustice, poverty and Aids.

About the Author
Samson Kambalu was born in 1975 in Malawi. He lives and works in Oxford where he is an Associate Professor of Fine Art and a lifelong fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford University. Kambalu is an artist and writer working in a variety of media, including site-specific installation, video, performance and literature. His work is autobiographical and approaches art as an arena for critical thought and sovereign activities. It fuses aspects of the Nyau culture of the Chewa, the anti-reification theories of the Situationist movement and the Protestant tradition of inquiry, criticism and dissent. Kambalu has won research fellowships with Yale University and the Smithsonian Institution. His work Antelope will appear on Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth in 2022.

Reviews
'An African memoir unlike any other I have read ... Filled with wonder, humour and hope. It is a magnificent achievement.' - Aminatta Forna, Sunday Telegraph 'Read Kambalu, cry, clap your hands.' - Iain Finlayson, The Times 'A truly original book.' - Pride Magazine 'The charming and rare story of coming of age as an artist in Malawi.' - Daniel Bergner, author of Sing for your Life



Book Information
ISBN 9781914613180
Author Samson Kambalu
Format Paperback
Imprint September Publishing
Publisher September Publishing