FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS Forthcoming titles 2027 By City of Words New publications from City of Words in 2027 include a pioneering nineteenth-century Brazilian novel, historical memoirs of South Sudan and Tahiti, a classic poetry anthology and a collection of reportage and commentary from The Guardian Bom Crioulo: The Good Black Man is a new translation into… Read More

News from Hokkaido Hisashi Urashima’s Northern Lights By City of Words The editor of Hokkaido’s leading English-language magazine on the need for public recognition of the island’s artisans. In the Hokkaido newspaper Kachimai, Hisashi Urashima, principal of the Joy English Academy in Obihiro, explains how, in the 1980s and 1990s, he commissioned and published the… Read More

Memorial Remembering Willie Jones (1931–2025) By Orosz Péter Willie Jones, author of Out of Our Hands, remembered as a writer, teacher and cross-country runner by the travel writer Orosz Péter. Willie Jones in his study in Sapporo ‘Who first had the idea of folding red-hot iron, and discovered that when the red-hot iron is mixed… Read More

Book Review Go to school? Or join a militia? By City of Words Documenting ‘a heroic effort to keep a secondary school functioning in a country where getting anything done is a headache.’ Armed youth in Eastern Equatoria, South Sudan. Photograph by Javier Sauras In a review in Sudan Studies, Joanna Oyediran discusses Liz Hodgkin’s… Read More

Book Review A rare and moving memoir By City of Words A review of The Amulet in Sudan Studies describes it as ‘a rare and moving memoir of boyhood and coming of age’. Set amongst Hadendowa and Shukriya nomads in Eastern Sudan in the 1940s and 1950s, The Amulet is the story of a khalig… Read More

Obituary Hamid Dirar, 1940–2023 By John Ryle Hamid Dirar, Sudanese microbiologist, born 1940 in Wadi el Khireissab, Sudan, died 23 April 2023 in Khartoum. Hamid Dirar was the most celebrated Sudanese scientist of his generation, a gifted writer who illuminated the lives of ordinary Sudanese — and his own remarkable upbringing — with profound knowledge,… Read More

Book Review Barefoot in the forests of Sudan By City of Words Hamid Dirar’s ‘mesmerising’ account of his childhood in the borderlands of Sudan and Ethiopia is reviewed in The Times Literary Supplement by Robert Irwin, novelist and scholar of the Arab world. ‘The book is a mesmerising account of a childhood that was simultaneously… Read More

PODCAST / REVIEW Neuromantics discuss Letters from Isohe By City of Words Elizabeth Hodgkin’s Letters from Isohe discussed in the Neuromantics podcast and the Brixton Review of Books. Neuromantics is a long-running podcast hosted by the neuroscientist Sophie Scott and the writer and composer Will Eaves. Their conversations range across language, gesture, and other modes… Read More

Book Launch How do you study when there’s nothing to eat? By City of Words Fundraising for education in South Sudan at the launch of Letters from Isohe at the School of Oriental and African Studies. School assembly at St Kizito’s Primary School. Photograph by John Ryle. More than £1000 was raised to support education… Read More

The Book Business City of Words pop-up book stall By City of Words Recycling used books is a City of Words side-hustle. Buy while stocks last, and the weather holds. On sale 24/7 in an open-air pop-up shop in West London are two or three hundred used books, sold in aid of the Dalgarno Trust,… Read More