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Ferdinand Dennis

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Ferdinand Dennis
FRSL
Born (1956-03-18) 18 March 1956 (age 68)[1]
Kingston, Jamaica
EducationLeicester University (1975–78);
Birkbeck College, London University (1978–79)
Occupation(s)Writer, journalist and broadcaster
Notable workBehind the Frontlines: Journey into Afro-Britain (1988);
The Sleepless Summer (1989);
The Last Blues Dance (1996);
Duppy Conqueror (1998)
Awards1988 Martin Luther King Memorial Prize

Ferdinand Dennis FRSL (born 18 March 1956)[2] is a writer, broadcaster, journalist and lecturer, who is Jamaican by birth but at the age of eight moved to England, where his parents had migrated in the late 1950s.[3] Dr James Procter notes: "Perhaps as a result of his Caribbean background (a region probably marked more than any other by movements and migration), Dennis is a writer ultimately more concerned with routes than roots. This is foregrounded in much of his fictional work, notably his most recent and ambitious novel to date, Duppy Conqueror (1998), a novel which moves from 1930s Jamaica to postwar London and Liverpool, to Africa. Similarly, Dennis' non-fiction centres on journeying rather than arrival, from Behind the Frontlines: Journey into Afro-Britain (1988) to Voices of the Crossing: The Impact of Britain on Writers from Asia, the Caribbean and Africa (2000)."[2]

Biography

Ferdinand Dennis was born in Kingston, Jamaica,[4] and grew up in north Paddington, London,[5] where he and his siblings – two brothers and a sister – relocated in 1964 to join their parents.[3]

Dennis read sociology at Leicester University (1975–78),[2][6] after which he was employed as an educational researcher in Handsworth, Birmingham.[7][8] He studied for a master's degree at Birkbeck College, London University (1978–79).[2][6] In 1991 he was made Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck.[4] He received a Wingate Scholarship in 1995.[9] He has lectured in Nigeria, and from 2003 to 2011 taught Creative and Media Writing courses at Middlesex University.[10]

As a broadcaster, he has written and presented numerous talks and documentaries for BBC Radio 4[11] – such as the series After Dread and Anger (1989),[12] Journey Round My People, for which he travelled in West Africa, Back To Africa (1990)[13][14] and Work Talk (1991–92; conversations with black people living in Britain, including Diane Abbott, Valerie Amos, Emeka Anyaoku, Norman Beaton, Winston Branch, Margaret Busby, Merle Collins, Val McCalla, and Josette Simon, produced by Marina Salandy-Brown)[15] – as well as a television programme about Africa for Channel 4.

Dennis has also worked as a journalist for publications including Frontline and City Limits magazines.[2] His writing has been published in a range of magazines, newspapers and anthologies, among them The Guardian,[16] Granta,[17] Critical Quarterly,[18] Black British Culture and Society: A Text Reader (ed. Kwesi Owusu, 2000), Hurricane Hits England: An Anthology of Writing About Black Britain (ed. Onyekachi Wambu, 2000), and IC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain (2000).[19]

With Naseem Khan, Dennis co-edited Voices of the Crossing: The Impact of Britain on Writers from Asia, the Caribbean and Africa (2000). He also was a co-researcher (with Kole Omotoso and Alfred Zack-Williams) of the 1992 compilation West Africa Over 75 Years: selections from the raw material of history, edited by Kaye Whiteman.

Dennis is the author of three novels – The Sleepless Summer (1989), The Last Blues Dance (1996); and Duppy Conqueror (1998) – and two travelogues: Behind the Frontlines: Journey into Afro-Britain (1988) – his first book, which won the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize – and Back to Africa: A Journey (1992), in which he visited Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria and Senegal. In 2021, his collection of short stories written over five decades, The Black and White Museum, came out from HopeRoad Publishers.[20]

Dennis was elected to the management committee of the Society of Authors in October 2017, to serve for a three-year term.[21][22]

Critical reception

Dennis's first novel, The Sleepless Summer (1989), is said to enjoy "cult status in Britain's African-Caribbean community",[23] while his second, The Last Blues Dance (1996), is described as "Warm, humorous, poignant... a wonderfully engaging novel that weaves together the lives of a rich cast of characters, creating a sense of both community and individuality, tenderness and suspense."[23]

In praise of 1998's Duppy Conqueror, World Literature Today said:

"Ferdinand Dennis is faultless in his depiction of artifacts, customs, speech, and behavior in the three continents of Marshall's adventures; his descriptions of the externals and his analyses of the internal motivations of his characters–both minor and principal–are quite arresting, whether he is writing about 'the unintended arrogance of the shy person' or commenting on 'love that came without duty and expired without money, leaving a rancid odour of guilt.' Duppy Conqueror is neither a bildungsroman nor a political treatise, though it shares some of the elements of both subgenres; it is almost a fictional biography of a sixty-year-old thinking proletarian searching for racial and ideological roots. Some readers will read Dennis's novel as a roman a clef, others as a contemporary version of Claude McKay's Banana Bottom and Home to Harlem extended to Africa; but few will read it without admiration and considerable satisfaction."[24]

Other favourable coverage came from The Times Higher Education: "This very ambitious novel is nothing less than a history of the twentieth century, seen though Afro-Caribbean spectacles... Framed as a postcolonial picaresque, it has a hurtling energy which raises it above Dennis's previous work. Finally, and most importantly, Duppy Conqueror brims with humour and low comedy. It is a pleasing change from the wilfully ponderous treatment of historical memory and diasporic identity in much contemporary postcolonial fiction."[25] According to The Independent′s Rachel Halliburton: "Duppy Conqueror presents a giant's eye view of the exiled African psyche. An ambitious and compelling novel.... This is a novel packed to the brim with layers of symbolism, individual and cultural memories, and fascinating historical stories. Reading it once just won't be enough."[26]

Calling Voices of the Crossing (2000) "a fine anthology of 14 memoirs by writers from Africa, the Caribbean, India and Pakistan" (E. A. Markham, Attia Hosain, Beryl Gilroy, John Figueroa, David Dabydeen, Mulk Raj Anand, Dom Moraes, Buchi Emecheta, Rukhsana Ahmad, G. V. Desani, Homi Bhabha, James Berry, Farrukh Dhondy and Nirad Chaudhuri), the New Statesman reviewer Robert Winder wrote: "...the memoirs in this book, while not the major works of any of the writers concerned, might be as significant as their more ambitious work.... They are more direct, eye-opening tributes to the spirited resolve that underpins all literature, not just 'colonial' literature."[27]

On the publication of his 2021 book The Black and White Museum, Margaret Busby described Dennis as "[a] writer inspired by the idea and realities of Africa and the African diaspora, which he has explored in novels, short stories and travelogues, creating a unique body of work that deserves greater recognition",[20] while Maya Jaggi's review in The Guardian said that the collection "confirms Ferdinand Dennis as a flâneur and urban philosopher exploring territory he first began to map in his now classic novels."[28] Amidst other favourable critical attention, Gary Younge characterised Dennis as "an elegant writer, both in fiction and non-fiction, who deftly weaves the tales of the diaspora into his work", while Yvonne Brewster noted: "Dennis does not disappoint... Riveting sensitive snapshots of inner city London life."[20]

Bibliography

Novels
  • 1989: The Sleepless Summer, Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 978-0340502822
  • 1996: The Last Blues Dance, HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0006497837
  • 1998: Duppy Conqueror, Flamingo. ISBN 978-0006497844.
  • 2021: The Black and White Museum (short stories), Hope Road, paperback ISBN 9781913109837
Non-fiction
As editor
  • 2000: Voices of the Crossing: The Impact of Britain on Writers from Asia, the Caribbean and Africa (co-edited with Naseem Khan), Serpent's Tail. ISBN 978-1852425838

Awards and recognition

References

  1. ^ Aatkar, Sofia, "Ferdinand Dennis", The Literary Encyclopedia, 17 October 2016.
  2. ^ a b c d e f "Ferdinand Dennis" Archived 18 May 2015 at the Wayback Machine, British Council, Literature Matters.
  3. ^ a b Ferdinand Dennis, "My father's island", The Guardian, 10 June 2000.
  4. ^ a b Ferdinand Dennis author page, HarperCollins.
  5. ^ "Postmark Notting Hill: Running Down The Hill", Marxism Today, September 1988, p. 9.
  6. ^ a b Ferdinand Dennis at LinkedIn.
  7. ^ Handsworth Alternative Scheme.
  8. ^ Ferdinand Dennis, "Birmingham: Blades of Frustration" (from Beyond the Frontlines), in Kwesi Owusu (ed.), Black British Culture and Society: A Text Reader, p. 195.
  9. ^ "Mr Ferdinand Dennis", Wingate Scholarships.
  10. ^ Patsy Hickman, "Following the Writer's Flame", National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE).
  11. ^ Conference Contributors, NAWE, 2010.
  12. ^ "After Dread and Anger", BBC Radio 4.
  13. ^ "Back To Africa", Radio Listings.
  14. ^ "Dear Mr. Ferdinand Dennis...", English 10: Writing Portfolio, Catholic Memorial High School, 2006–2007.
  15. ^ "Work Talk", Radio Listings.
  16. ^ Ferdinand Dennis, "The choice of a new generation...", The Guardian, 19 August 2000.
  17. ^ Ferdinand Dennis page, Granta.
  18. ^ F. Dennis (1999), "The Black and White Museum", Critical Quarterly, 41: 28–34. doi: 10.1111/1467-8705.00259. Wiley Online Library, 24 January 2003.
  19. ^ "IC3: the Penguin book of new black writing in Britain", WorldCat.
  20. ^ a b c "The Black and White Museum". HopeRoad.
  21. ^ "Mary Hoffman, David Donachie, Philip Womack and Ferdinand Dennis elected to the Management Committee", The Society of Authors, 2017.
  22. ^ Katherine Cowdrey, "Dennis, Hoffman and Womack join SoA management committee", The Bookseller, 17 October 2017.
  23. ^ a b "The Last Blues Dance"[permanent dead link‍], Kentake Page.
  24. ^ A. L. McLeod, Review of Duppy Conqueror, World Literature Today, 22 June 1999. The Free Library.
  25. ^ "Paradise, Jamaica", Times Higher Education, 29 June 1998.
  26. ^ Rachel Halliburton, "The road out of Paradise", The Independent, 19 September 1998.
  27. ^ Robert Winder, "The longest journey. Post-imperial writing is suffused by a sense of exile and loss. But what the authors have most in common is the pursuit of individual freedom...", New Statesman, 13 March 2000.
  28. ^ Jaggi, Maya (17 December 2021). "Book of the day | The Black and White Museum by Ferdinand Dennis review – city snapshots". The Guardian.
  29. ^ Shaffi, Sarah; Knight, Lucy (12 July 2022). "Adjoa Andoh, Russell T Davies and Michaela Coel elected to Royal Society of Literature". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 23 June 2023.

Further reading

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