English books from Africa

Recommended English books (425)
Travel the world without leaving your chair. If you speak English here are some English books from Africa for the next part of the "Read Around The World Challenge".
11.

A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Country: Africa / Kenya flag Kenya
Description:
A masterly story of myth, rebellion, love, friendship and betrayal from one of Africa's great writers, Ngugi wa Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat includes an introduction by Abdulrazak Gurnah, author of By the Sea, in Penguin Modern Classics. It is 1963 and Kenya is on the verge of Uhuru - Independence Day. The mighty british government has been toppled, and in the lull between the fighting and the new world, colonized and colonizer alike reflect on what they have gained and lost. In the village of Thabai, the men and women who live there have been transformed irrevocably by the uprising. Kihika, le... continue

12.

A LONG WAY FROM DOUALA by Max Lobe EN

0 Ratings
Country: Africa / Cameroon flag Cameroon
Description:
On the trail of Roger, a brother who has gone north in search of football fame in Europe, Choupi, the narrator, takes with him the older Simon, a neighborhood friend. The bus trip north nearly ends in disaster when, at a pit stop, Simon goes wandering in search of grilled caterpillars. At the police station in Yaounde, the local cop tells them that a feckless boza who wants to go to Europe is not worth police effort and their mother should go and pleasure the police chief if she wants help! Through a series of joyful sparky vignettes, Cameroon life is revealed in all its ups and downs. Issues ... continue

13.

A Long Way Gone : Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah EN

Rating: 4 (11 votes)
Description:
My new friends have begun to suspect I haven’t told them the full story of my life. “Why did you leave Sierra Leone?” “Because there is a war.” “You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?” “Yes, all the time.” “Cool.” I smile a little. “You should tell us about it sometime.” “Yes, sometime.” This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them... continue

14.

A Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif EN

0 Ratings
Country: Africa / Egypt flag Egypt
Description:
In 1900 Lady Anna Winterbourne travels to Egypt where she falls in love with Sharif, and Egyptian Nationalist utterly committed to his country's cause. A hundred years later, Isabel Parkman, an American divorcee and a descendant of Anna and Sharif, goes to Egypt, taking with her an old family trunk, inside which are found notebooks and journals which reveal Anna and Sharif's secret.
Genre

15.

A Practical Guide to Levitation : Stories by Jose Eduardo Agualusa EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Country: Africa / Angola flag Angola
Description:
A luminous collection of dryly humorous stories that revel in the surreal and fantastic, from the pen of José Eduardo Agualusa, winner of the International Dublin Literary Award Perfect for readers of Haruki Murakami, Julio Cortázar, and Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift Vividly translated into English for the first time by long-time Agualusa collaborator Daniel Hahn, the jewel-like tales gathered in this collection are an exuberant celebration of story-telling in all its various forms. On the sands of Itamaracá, an old fisherman dreams of fish: shad in the morning, when the water’s smooth and s... continue

16.

A Question of Power by Bessie Head EN

0 Ratings
Description:
"When Elizabeth learns the devastating truth about her mother, locked away for defying Apartheid, she flees South Africa and begins a new life in Botswana, at Motabeng, the village of the rain-wind. But Elizabeth is tormented by two men, Dan and Sello, who represent for her a private vision of hell into which she sinks deeper and deeper. This novel interweaves one woman's terrifying experience of insanity with the madness and cruelty of life in a divided society. A Question of Power is the unforgettable study of an individual - and a race - whose identity has been annihilated, and their result... continue

17.

A Spell of Good Things : A novel by Ayobami Adebayo EN

0 Ratings
Country: Africa / Nigeria flag Nigeria
Description:
A dazzling story of modern Nigeria and two families caught in the riptides of wealth, power, romantic obsession, and political corruption from the celebrated author of Stay with Me • "A stunning debut novel ... in the lineage of great works by Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Eniola is tall for his age, a boy who looks like a man. Because his father has lost his job, Eniola spends his days running errands for the local tailor, collecting newspapers, begging when he must, dreaming of a big future. Wuraola is a golden girl, the perfect child of a... continue

18.

A Tunisian Tale by Hassouna Mosbahi, مصباحي، حسونة EN

0 Ratings
Country: Africa / Tunisia flag Tunisia
Description:
After ne'er-do-wells spread rumors about a widowed mother's weak moral character among the people of a slum on the outskirts of Tunis that festers with migrants who have come to the metropolis from the heartland in search of a better life, her twenty-year-old son takes matters into his own hands and commits an unspeakable crime. An imaginative and disturbing novel told from the alternating viewpoints of this unrepentant sociopath, as he sits and fumes on death row but willingly guides us through his juvenile exploits and twisted memories, and his murdered mother, who calmly gives an account of... continue
Genre

19.

A Woman of Firsts by Edna Adan Ismail EN

0 Ratings
Country: Africa / Somalia flag Somalia
Description:
'The Muslim Mother Teresa' Huffington Post Imprisonment. Mutilation. Persecution. Edna Adan Ismail endured it all - for the women of Africa.

20.

Abyssinian Chronicles : A Novel by Moses Isegawa EN

0 Ratings
Country: Africa / Uganda flag Uganda
Description:
Every once in a while there emerges a literary voice with the power and urgency to immerse readers deep within a previously "invisible" culture. From a young African writer who has already earned comparisons to Salman Rushdie and Gabriel Garcia Marquez comes this masterful saga of life in 20th-century Uganda. The teller of this panoramic tale is Mugezi, a quick-witted, sharp-eyed man whose life encompasses the traditional and the modern, the peaceful and the insanely violent, the despotic and the democratic. Born in a rural community in the early 1960s, he is raised by his grandfather, a depos... continue


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