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The New Carthaginians

By Nick Makoha

The New Carthaginians

By Nick Makoha

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Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE TS ELIOT PRIZE 2025 '(c) Codex' SHORTLISTED FOR THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST SINGLE POEM 'Profound, sheer originality... a tantalising jigsaw puzzle of a book' Tristram Fane-Saunders, Telegraph In The New Carthaginians, time - and with it the world - is out of joint. A hijacked plane lands at Entebbe International Airport in 1976, triggering the crisis that will lead to Idi Amin's Uganda becoming a pariah state and, within a few years, to the young Nick Makoha's flight from the country. A mysterious writer daubs poetic slogans on the walls of late-'70s New York City, signing them SAMO(c). Three characters who are also one - the Poet, a Black Icarus and a resurrected Jean-Michel Basquiat - journey through a time that is both our own and not, watching TV, discussing art and literature and tucking their wings into their jackets on the way to airport security. Concerned throughout with flight and falling, the sample and the loop, The New Carthaginians is a poetry collection of staggering originality: a work by an author at the height of his powers, in which the familiar Western canons of art, history and philosophy are prised apart and reassembled in a new configuration. Drawing on Basquiat's technique of the 'exploded' collage, our heroes' odyssey gathers the symbols of a new mythos, through which the othering of Black life might be undone and the stage set for some fresh emergence, some transfigured understanding of myth and life. 'Hold that note,' writes the poet. 'In this place you are no longer the chorus ... In any future, remember you are a New Carthaginian.' A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST SUMMER BOOK OF POETRY 2025 'In this book, Nick Makoha has found an otherworldly, visionary voice and diction that arrest you from the first page and never let you go.' Jason Allen-Paisant, Winner of the TS Eliot Prize
Product details
Binding:
Paperback
Edition:
1
Number of Pages:
112
Release Date:
2026-02-26
Publication Date:
2026-02-26
Publisher:
Penguin Books Ltd (UK)
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
1802067078
ISBN13:
9781802067071
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Weight:
125 g
Height:
152 cm
Width:
191 cm
Thickness:
12 cm
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