Popular African Historical Fiction Books
Find historical fiction books written by authors from Africa for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge. (119)
91.
The Last Gift by Abdulrazak Gunrah EN
TanzaniaDescription:
By the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature Abbas has never told anyone about his past; about what happened before he was a sailor on the high seas, before he met his wife Maryam outside a Boots in Exeter, before they settled into a quiet life in Norwich with their children, Jamal and Hanna. Now, at the age of sixty-three, he suffers a collapse that renders him bedbound and unable to speak about things he thought he would one day have to. Jamal and Hanna have grown up and gone out into the world. They were both born in England but cannot shake a sense of apartness. Hanna calls herself ... continue
92.
The Lovers of Algeria : A Novel by Anouar Benmalek EN
AlgeriaDescription:
Nine-year-old Jallal is old enough to know that his life in Algeria is precarious at best - friends are as likely to kill you as save you. Having run away from home, he lives by selling peanuts and single cigarettes on the street. The proposal by the elderly Swiss woman named Anna is shocking and preposterous: travel with her through war-ravaged lands, as a translator, so she can find her lost husband and pray over the graves of their murdered children. To Anna, however, the risk is no less than when they first met in Algeria during yet another time of unspeakable terror decades ago. As Anna a... continue
93.
The Lying Days by Nadine Gordimer EN
Country: Africa / 
South Africa
South Africa
Description:
Helen Shaw is the daughter of white middle-class parents in a gold-mining town in South Africa. As Helen comes of age, her awareness of the African life around her grows. Her involvement with young blacks leads her into complex relationships of emotion and action in a culture of dissension.
94.
The Madonna of Excelsior : A Novel by Zakes Mda EN
Country: Africa / South Africa
South Africa
Description:
"A generous, patient, wry and intelligent voice...[that] suggests not just a writer who can seduce us through beautiful language and unfailing humor. We also encounter a writer who has the power to shock and frighten us, to astound and anger and unsettle us...In short, his is a voice for which one should feel not only affection but admiration." --Neil Gordon, New York Times Book Review Selection, Summer Reading, New York Times Book Review In 1971, nineteen citizens of Excelsior in South Africa's white-ruled Free State were charged with breaking apartheid's Immorality Act, which forbade sex bet... continue
95.
The Magic of Saida by M. G. Vassanji EN
KenyaDescription:
The Magic of Saida tells the haunting story of Kamal, a successful Canadian doctor who, in middle age and after decades in North America, decides to return to his homeland of East Africa to find his childhood sweetheart, Saida. Kamal's journey is motivated by a combination of guilt, hope, and the desire to unravel the mysteries of his childhood--mysteries compounded by the fact that Kamal is the son of an absent Indian father from a well-to-do family and a Swahili African mother of slave ancestry. Through a series of flashbacks, we watch Kamal's early years in the ancient coastal town of Kilwa... continue
96.
The Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr EN
SenegalDescription:
A masterful coming-of-age novel and a gripping investigation into the life of a mysterious author who disappeared without a trace, by the first writer from sub-Saharan Africa to be awarded France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt. Paris, 2018. Diégane Latyr Faye, a young Senegalese writer, discovers a legendary book published in 1938 titled The Maze of Inhumanity. No one knows what happened to the author, T.C. Elimane, once referred to as the “Black Rimbaud.” After he was accused of plagiarism, his reputation was destroyed by the critics. He subsequently disappeared without a trace. Curiosity turns ... continue
97.
The Orchard of Lost Souls by Nadifa Mohamed EN
SomaliaDescription:
From the author of The Fortune Men, longlisted for The Booker Prize 2021... 'From Somaliland's bitter past blooms a moving and mature novel of conflict and survival' Independent It is 1988 and Hargeisa waits. Whispers of revolution travel on the dry winds but still the dictatorship remains secure. Soon, and through the eyes of three women, we will see Somalia fall. Nine-year-old Deqohas left the vast refugee camp she was born in, lured to the city by the promise of her first pair of shoes. Kawsar, a solitary widow, is trapped in her little house with its garden clawed from the desert, confined... continue
98.
The Past Ahead : A Novel by Gilbert Gatore EN
RwandaDescription:
The Past Ahead is the story of the destinies of two people after their experiences of the genocide in Rwanda. Isaro is orphaned, exiled, and now returned to her native country. Niko is a character in a novel that Isaro writes to help her understand her country's recent horrific past. Isaro's quest to recover the memory of the life she has lost is haunted by her nightmare imaginings, whose horror is given expression through Niko, a mute social outcast. When an army intent on massacre reaches his village, the once gentle young man is forced to become a killer. After the fighting ends, Niko retre... continue
99.
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay EN
Country: Africa / South Africa
South Africa
Description:
“The Power of One has everything: suspense, the exotic, violence; mysticism, psychology and magic; schoolboy adventures, drama.” –The New York Times “Unabashedly uplifting . . . asserts forcefully what all of us would like to believe: that the individual, armed with the spirit of independence–‘the power of one’–can prevail.” –Cleveland Plain Dealer In 1939, as Hitler casts his enormous, cruel shadow across the world, the seeds of apartheid take root in South Africa. There, a boy called Peekay is born. His childhood is marked by humiliation and abandonment, yet he vows to survive and conceives ... continue
100.
The Radiance of the King by Laye Camara EN
GuineaDescription:
At the beginning of this masterpiece of African literature, Clarence, a white man, has been shipwrecked on the coast of Africa. Flush with self-importance, he demands to see the king, but the king has just left for the south of his realm. Traveling through an increasingly phantasmagoric landscape in the company of a beggar and two roguish boys, Clarence is gradually stripped of his pretensions, until he is sold to the royal harem as a slave. But in the end Clarence&’s bewildering journey is the occasion of a revelation, as he discovers the image, both shameful and beautiful, of his own humanit... continue