Read Around Africa Challenge

Read at least one book by an author from each country in Africa.

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Recommended Challenge Books (291)
61.

Transit : A Novel by Abdourahman A. Waberi, David Ball, Nicole Ball EN

0 Ratings
Country: Africa / Djibouti flag Djibouti
Description:
Waiting at the Paris airport, two immigrants from Djibouti reveal parallel stories of war, child soldiers, arms trafficking, drugs, and hunger. Bashir is recently discharged from the army and wounded, finding himself inside the French Embassy. Harbi, whose wife, Alice, has been killed by the police, is there too—arrested earlier as a political suspect. An embassy official mistakes Bashir for Harbi's son, and as Harbi does not deny it, both will be exiled to France, Alice's home country. This brilliantly shrewd and cynical universal chronicle of war and exile, translated into English for the fi... continue
Genre
Recommended: 20 Feb 2022

62.
The Land Without Shadows

The Land Without Shadows by Abdourahman A. Waberi EN

Rating: 3     1 Vote
Country: Africa / Djibouti flag Djibouti
Description:
Originally published in France in 1994, this newly translated collection presents stories about the precolonial and colonial past of Djibouti alongside those set in the postcolonial era. With irony and humor, these short stories portray madmen, poets, artists, French colonists, pseudointellectuals, young women, aspiring politicians, famished refugees, khat chewers, nomads struggling to survive in Djibouti's ruthless natural environment, or tramps living (and dying) in Balbala, the shantytown that stretches to the south of the capital--Cover.
Genre
Recommended: 05 Jan 2023

63.

Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz EN

Rating: 3.9     23 Votes
Country: Africa / Egypt flag Egypt
Description:
Palace Walk is the first novel in Nobel Prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz’s magnificent Cairo Trilogy, an epic family saga of colonial Egypt that is considered his masterwork. The novels of the Cairo Trilogy trace three generations of the family of tyrannical patriarch al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, who rules his household with a strict hand while living a secret life of self-indulgence. Palace Walk introduces us to his gentle, oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija, and his three sons—the tragic and idealistic Fahmy, the dissolute hedonist Yasin, and the soul-searching in... continue
Genre
Recommended: 02 Jan 2018

64.

A Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif EN

Rating: 4     32 Votes
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
Recommended: 17 May 2018

65.

The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany EN

Rating: 3.6     36 Votes
Country: Africa / Egypt flag Egypt
Description:
"Some live in squalor on its rooftop, others inhabit the faded glory of its apartments and offices - here a womanizing aristocrat, there the secretly gay editor of Le Caire newspaper. Religious fervour jostles with promiscuity; bridery and exploitation with joy and elation; modern life with ancient culture. Taha, the son of the building's doorman, has aspirations and dreams for himself and his childhood sweetheart Busayna. But when those dreams are dashed on the rocks of corruption, hope turns to bitterness - with devasting consequences..." -- back cover.
Genre
Recommended: 17 May 2018

66.

The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz EN

Rating: 4     3 Votes
Country: Africa / Egypt flag Egypt
Description:
"The Queue ... has drawn comparisons to Western classics like George Orwell’s 1984 and The Trial by Franz Kafka. It represents a new wave of dystopian and surrealist fiction from Middle Eastern writers who are grappling with the chaotic aftermath and stinging disappointments of the Arab Spring." -- The New York Times Winner of the English PEN Translation Award In a surreal, but familiar, vision of modern day Egypt, a centralized authority known as ‘the Gate’ has risen to power in the aftermath of the ‘Disgraceful Events,’ a failed popular uprising. Citizens are required to obtain permission fr... continue
Recommended: 07 Apr 2022

67.

Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi EN

Rating: 4     16 Votes
Country: Africa / Egypt flag Egypt
Description:
"All the men I did get to know, every single man of them, has filled me with but one desire: to lift my hand and bring it smashing down on his face. But because I am a woman I have never had the courage to lift my hand. And because I am a prostitute, I hid my fear under layers of make-up." --Excerpt
Genre
Recommended: 21 May 2022

68.

The Translator by Leila Aboulela EN

Rating: 4     12 Votes
Country: Africa / Egypt flag Egypt
Description:
Although they work in the same department at Aberdeen University, she as a translator, he as a lecturer in Postcolonial Politics, Sammar and Rae live in worlds divided by simple facts
Recommended: 04 Sep 2022

69.

The Hidden Face of Eve : Women in the Arab World by Nawal El Saadawi, Nawāl Saʻdāwī EN

Rating: 4.5     3 Votes
Country: Africa / Egypt flag Egypt
Description:
This powerful account of the oppression of women in the Muslim world remains as shocking today as when it was first published, more than a quarter of a century ago. Nawal El Saadawi writes out of a powerful sense of the violence and injustice which permeated her society. Her experiences working as a doctor in villages around Egypt, witnessing prostitution, honour killings and sexual abuse, including female circumcision, drove her to give voice to this suffering. She goes on explore the causes of the situation through a discussion of the historical role of Arab women in religion and literature.... continue
Recommended: 07 Sep 2022

70.

Beer in the Snooker Club by Waguih Ghali EN

Rating: 3.6     4 Votes
Country: Africa / Egypt flag Egypt
Description:
Behind the bar at Jameel's in Cairo hang two mugs engraved with the names of Ram and Font. During their years together in London, they drank many a pint of Bass from these mugs. But there is no Bass in Nasser's Egypt, so Ram and Font have to make do with a heady mixture of beer, vodka and whisky. Yearning for Bass they long to be far from a revolution that neither serves the people nor allows their rich aunts to live the life of leisure they are accustomed to. Stranded between two cultures, Ram and Font must choose between dangerous political opposition and reluctant acquiescence. First publis... continue
Recommended: 08 Oct 2022


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