Popular African Memoir Books
Find memoir books written by authors from Africa for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge. (89)
61.
The Dark Child : The Autobiography of an African Boy by Camara Laye EN
GuineaDescription:
The Dark Child is a distinct and graceful memoir of Camara Laye's youth in the village of Koroussa, French Guinea. Long regarded Africa's preeminent Francophone novelist, Laye (1928-80) herein marvels over his mother's supernatural powers, his father's distinction as the village goldsmith, and his own passage into manhood, which is marked by animistic beliefs and bloody rituals of primeval origin. Eventually, he must choose between this unique place and the academic success that lures him to distant cities. More than autobiography of one boy, this is the universal story of sacred traditions st... continue
62.
The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years : A Novel by Shubnum Khan EN
Country: Africa / 
South Africa
South Africa
Description:
“A dark and heady dream of a book” (Alix E. Harrow) about a ruined mansion by the sea, the djinn that haunts it, and a curious girl who unearths the tragedy that happened there a hundred years previous Akbar Manzil was once a grand estate off the coast of South Africa. Nearly a century later, it stands in ruins: an isolated boardinghouse for eclectic misfits, seeking solely to disappear into the mansion’s dark corridors. Except for Sana. Unlike the others, she is curious and questioning and finds herself irresistibly drawn to the history of the mansion: To the eerie and forgotten East Wing, ho... continue
63.
The Dragons, the Giant, the Women by Wayetu Moore EN
LiberiaDescription:
An engrossing memoir of escaping the First Liberian Civil War and building a life in the United States When Wayétu Moore turns five years old, her father and grandmother throw her a big birthday party at their home in Monrovia, Liberia, but all she can think about is how much she misses her mother, who is working and studying in faraway New York. Before she gets the reunion her father promised her, war breaks out in Liberia. The family is forced to flee their home on foot, walking and hiding for three weeks until they arrive in the village of Lai. Finally, a rebel soldier smuggles them across ... continue
64.
The Girl Who Smiled Beads : A Story of War and What Comes After by Clemantine Wamariya, Elizabeth Weil EN
RwandaDescription:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The plot provided by the universe was filled with starvation, war and rape. I would not—could not—live in that tale.” Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were thunder. In 1994, she and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years migrating through seven African countries, searching for safety—perpetually hungry, imprisoned and abused, enduring and escaping refugee camps, ... continue
65.
The House at Sugar Beach : In Search of a Lost African Childhood by Helene Cooper EN
Description:
The author traces her childhood in war-torn Liberia and her reunion with a foster sister who had been left behind when her family fled the region.
66.
The Jive Talker : An Artist's Genesis by Samson Kambalu EN
MalawiDescription:
What do you do when it looks like the odds were stacked against you before you were even born, when you're having trouble feeding a family that just keeps growing, when you've got a little too much of an affection for Carlsberg Brown and when the life president of your country, Malawi, keeps shuffling around the public health system that employs you, forcing you and your family into perpetual nomadism? You catch up on your reading, adding I'm OK, You're OK and Nietzsche to the bathroom library. Holding on to your dignity, you keep dressing up in threadbare three-piece suits you ordered from Lo... continue
67.
The Journey by Abdul Musa Adam EN
SudanDescription:
Abdul is just 7 years old when his parents are killed before his eyes.
As a brutal war sweeps Sudan, Abdul and his 3-year-old brother are forced to flee.
Their gruelling journey across the Sahara to a refugee camp in Chad is fraught with danger, and every day is a struggle against hunger and disease.
Until one day Abdul is offered a chance to escape. A chance that could save him, but will force him to make the most heartbreaking decision of his life.
Abdul's death-defying flight leaves deep scars. But his affinity with animals provides a lifeline, when he is offered the chance... continue
68.
The Last Nomad: Coming of Age in the Somali Desert by Shugri Said Salh EN
SomaliaDescription:
A remarkable and inspiring true story that "stuns with raw beauty" about one woman's resilience, her courageous journey to America, and her family's lost way of life. Born in Somalia, a spare daughter in a large family, Shugri Said Salh was sent at age six to live with her nomadic grandmother in the desert. The last of her family to learn this once-common way of life, Salh found herself chasing warthogs, climbing termite hills, herding goats, and moving constantly in search of water and grazing lands with her nomadic family. For Salh, though the desert was a harsh place threatened by drought, ... continue
69.
The Nomads, My Brothers, Go Out to Drink From the Big Dipper by Abdourhaman A. Waberi EN
DjiboutiDescription:
Few of us have had the opportunity to visit Djibouti, the small crook of a country strategically located in the Horn of Africa, which makes The Nomads, My Brothers, Go Out to Drink from the Big Dipper all the more seductive. In his first collection of poetry, the critically acclaimed writer Abdourahman A. Waberi writes passionately about his country's landscape, drawing for us pictures of "desert furrows of fire" and a "yellow chameleon sky." Waberi's poems take us to unexpected spaces--in exile, in the muezzin's call, and where morning dew is "sucked up by the eye of the sun--black often, pin... continue
70.
Country: Africa / South Africa
South Africa
Description:
She does not know how, but has a sabi from her earliest memory that she was different. What she does know is that 'difference' had currency in the past, and it certainly still has currency today. The Sabi will have an effect on you - have no doubt about that. In her debut novel, Diane Brown takes a scenic and open-eyed walk down memory lane to the 1960's when apartheid was in full swing to the early 1990's when South Africa was beginning to sense freedom. She ventures further back in time to help solve the puzzle of the current time, how did South Africa become so angry and so violent? Writing... continue