Mohamed Amin was a famous Kenyan photojournalist – there’s much more to his work than images of tragedy: Kenyan photojournalist Mohamed Amin (1943-1996) rose to fame for documenting the 1984 famine in neighbouring Ethiopia with powerful images of the tragedy. He also captured the Ethiopian people’s suffering during the brutal reign of Mengistu Haile Mariam. …
Zambia’s foreign debt tragedy – what needs to happen to resolve the crisis: Three years after defaulting on its foreign debt, Zambia is still trying to reach agreement with all its creditors on how to manage this situation. This has left the southern African country in a state of development finance limbo. It is handicapped …
Compatible seabirds may make better parents, but personality clashes can lead to family tragedy and ‘divorce’: Black legged kittiwakes often mate for life. Frank Fichtmueller/Shutterstock Is there anything worse than a disappointing first date? It is particularly disheartening when a potential partnership that had so much promise turns out to be one big personality clash. …
Senghenydd colliery disaster: how Britain’s worst mining tragedy revealed the true price of coal: Miners working at the Universal Colliery in Senghenydd, south Wales, were in the middle of their morning shifts 2000ft below the ground when a massive explosion ripped through the deep pit at 8.10am. A spark from an electric bell had ignited …
Ay??bámi Adébáy??’s new novel is a modern Nigerian tragedy about the rich and the poor: Ay??bámi Adébáy??, whose novel A Spell of Good Things has been longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize. Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images Nigerian writer Ay??bámi Adébáy?? took the literary world by storm with her debut novel Stay With Me in 2017. Six …
I watched Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer in Ukraine: his Greek tragedy is our reality: Following the recent release of Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer continues to infuse summer 2023 with atomic energy. Stylistically, of course, the two couldn’t be more different. What Anderson shows as a blast outside a diner’s window that doesn’t so …
The Greek migrant shipwreck is another preventable tragedy at the borders of Europe: The Mediterranean route between Libya and Italy has been described as the “world’s most dangerous maritime crossing”. This was proven once again last week in the tragic shipwreck of a boat full of men, women and children, around 50 miles away from …
Kenya’s starvation cult left over 100 dead – a psychologist’s view on how to support people as they process tragedy: A Kenyan investigator at a mass gravesite in Shakahola in April 2023. Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images In early April 2023, Kenyan police discovered a mass grave linked to a Pentecostal church in the coastal …
National Theatre’s Phaedra review: suicide tragedy leaves a bad taste: Suicide is an act so shocking and violent that it undoes not only sensation, memory and feeling, but meaning. Poet and novelist Ocean Vuong describes how it unpicks even the connective tissue of language. The death of my best friend by suicide last summer completely …
How Sylvia Plath’s profound nature poetry elevates her writing beyond tragedy and despair: I cannot stop writing poems! … They come from the vocabulary of woods and animals and earth. From a letter from Sylvia Plath to her mother, 1956 Popular perceptions of Sylvia Plath tend to dwell on a deeply troubled version of the …
Al-Shabaab is just a symptom of Somalia’s tragedy – the causes are still in place: Abdurashid Abdulle Abikar/AFP via GettyImages For at least 14 years now, the militant group Al-Shabaab has terrorised the southern region of Somalia. Its ambition is to impose a tyrannical dictatorship over the entire country through fear and brutality. To achieve …
Cameroon’s ‘exploding lakes’: disaster expert warns deadly gas release could cause another tragedy: The waters of Lake Nyos, Cameroon, turn a murky brown following a deadly release of toxic gas. Photo by Thierry Orban/Sygma via Getty Images A sudden change on 29 August 2022 in the colour and smell of Lake Kuk, in north-west Cameroon, …
Tavern tragedy reinforces need to give priority to tackling underage drinking in South Africa: The cause of the deaths of 21 young people in a South African pub is still unclear. STR/AFP via Getty Images On 26 June 2022, 21 young people died at the Enyobeni tavern in East London, in South Africa’s Eastern Cape …
San Antonio migrant tragedy: 53 deaths down to criminals and a failed US migration system: Emergency services in San Antonio were called out on June 27 to what turned out to be the deadliest migrant smuggling incident at the US-Mexico border region in the last decades. More than 50 undocumented migrants were found dead – …
Grenfell Tower: the difficult task of creating a fitting memorial to the tragedy: In the days and weeks after the 2017 Grenfell Tower tragedy, in which 72 people lost their lives in a fire that consumed the 24-storey residential block in North Kensington, London, dozens of memorials appeared in the vicinity of the building. People …
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Nigeria’s law makes it a crime to attempt suicide – there are better ways to prevent tragedy: There is no evidence that punishment can serve as deterrent. Love the Wind/Shutterstock Suicide – self-inflicted injury with a fatal outcome – has been part of human history since ancient times. According to the World Health Organization, about …
Charting the wonderful touchstones on tragedy that go beyond a Western view: Tragedy in literature has come a long way since its Greek origins. George E. Koronaios/ Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature is the latest book from Ghanaian literary critic Ato Quayson. In this Q&A with The Conversation Africa Ghana editor Godfred …