Read Around Africa Challenge

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

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Recommended Challenge Books (272)
71.

Heart of Fire by Senait Mehari EN

0 Ratings
Country: Africa / Eritrea flag Eritrea
Description:
One girl's extraordinary journey from child soldier to soul singer.
Genre
Recommended: 20 Feb 2022

72.

The Consequences of Love by Sulaiman Addonia EN

Rating: 4     3 Votes
Country: Africa / Eritrea flag Eritrea
Description:
It is summer in Jeddah but Naser's life seems bleak. An immigrant in an unfriendly land, his friends have fled town for cooler climes and left him to his dead-end job and the scrutiny of the religious police, who keep watch through the shaded windows of their government jeeps. He spends his time writing to his mother in Africa and yearning to meet a woman - but in a country that separates men and women with walls and veils he feels increasingly trapped. Then, one of the black-clad women drops a piece of paper at his feet, instructing him to follow her pink shoes and suddenly his black-and-whit... continue
Genre
Recommended: 20 Feb 2022

73.

Gratitude in Low Voices : A Memoir by Dawit Gebremichael Habte EN

Rating: 4     1 Vote
Country: Africa / Eritrea flag Eritrea
Description:
“A candid, inspiring memoir of cultural and historical importance” from an Eritrean-Ethiopian War refugee (Michael Bloomberg). Dawit Gebremichael Habte fled his homeland of Eritrea as a teenager. In the midst of the ongoing Eritrean-Ethiopian war, Dawit and his sisters crossed illegally into Kenya. Without their parents or documents to help their passage, they experienced the abuse and neglect known by so many refugees around the world. But Dawit refused to give up. He stayed resilient and positive. Journeying to the United States under asylum—and still a boy—Dawit found a new purpose in an un... continue
Genre
Recommended: 20 Feb 2022

74.

My Fathers' Daughter : A Story of Family and Belonging by Hannah Pool EN

Rating: 5     1 Vote
Country: Africa / Eritrea flag Eritrea
Description:
What do you wear to meet your father for the first time? In 2004, Hannah Pool knew more about next season's lipstick colors than she did about Africa: a beauty editor for The Guardian newspaper, she juggled lattes and cocktails, handbags and hangouts through her twenties just like any other beautiful, independent Londoner. Her white, English adoptive relatives were beloved to her and were all the family she needed. Okay, if I treat it as a first date, then I'm on home turf. What image do I want to put across?...Classic, rather than trendy, and if my G-string doesn't pop out, I should be able t... continue
Genre
Recommended: 20 Feb 2022

75.

Silence Is My Mother Tongue : A Novel by Sulaiman Addonia EN

Rating: 3     1 Vote
Country: Africa / Eritrea flag Eritrea
Description:
A sensuous, textured novel of life in a refugee camp, long-listed for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction On a hill overlooking a refugee camp in Sudan, a young man strings up bedsheets that, in an act of imaginative resilience, will serve as a screen in his silent cinema. From the cinema he can see all the comings and goings in the camp, especially those of two new arrivals: a girl named Saba, and her mute brother, Hagos. For these siblings, adapting to life in the camp is not easy. Saba mourns the future she lost when she was forced to abandon school, while Hagos, scorned for his inabilit... continue
Genre
Recommended: 07 Sep 2022

76.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese EN

Rating: 4     350 Votes
Country: Africa / Ethiopia flag Ethiopia
Description:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Moving from Addis Ababa to New York City and back again, Cutting for Stone is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, medicine and ordinary miracles—and two brothers whose fates are forever intertwined. This sweeping, emotionall... continue
Recommended: 02 Jan 2018

77.

The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste EN

Rating: 3     5 Votes
Country: Africa / Ethiopia flag Ethiopia
Description:
A gripping novel set during Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, The Shadow King takes us back to the first real conflict of World War II, casting light on the women soldiers who were left out of the historical record. With the threat of Mussolini’s army looming, recently orphaned Hirut struggles to adapt to her new life as a maid in Kidane and his wife Aster’s household. Kidane, an officer in Emperor Haile Selassie’s army, rushes to mobilize his strongest men before the Italians invade. His initial kindness to Hirut shifts into a flinty cruelty when she resists his advances, and Hirut finds... continue
Recommended: 20 Apr 2022

78.

Yes, Chef : A Memoir by Marcus Samuelsson, Veronica Chambers EN

Rating: 3.5     1117 Votes
Country: Africa / Ethiopia flag Ethiopia
Description:
JAMES BEARD AWARD NOMINEE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY VOGUE • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “One of the great culinary stories of our time.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times It begins with a simple ritual: Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmother’s house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for dinner. The grandmother is Swedish, a retired domestic. The boy is Ethiopian and adopted, and he will grow up to become the world-renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson. This book is his love letter to food and family in all its manifestations. Yes, Chef chr... continue
Recommended: 22 Oct 2022

79.

The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu EN

0 Ratings
Country: Africa / Ethiopia flag Ethiopia
Description:
Seventeen years after fleeing the Ethiopian revolution, Sepha Stephanos runs a grocery store in a poor African-American neighborhood in Washington, D.C., where he reflects on his past and the differences between his prospects and the life he imagined.
Genre
Recommended: 10 Nov 2022

80.

Of Beetles and Angels: A Boy's Remarkable Journey from a Refugee Camp to Harvard by Mawi Asgedom EN

Rating: 3.4     8 Votes
Country: Africa / Ethiopia flag Ethiopia
Description:
Read the story that has inspired millions The desert, I remember. The shrieking hyenas, I remember....I remember playing soccer with rocks, and a strange man telling me and my brother Tewolde that we had to go on a trip and Tewolde refusing to go. The man took out a piece of gum and Tewolde happily traded it for his homeland.... So begins the remarkable true story of a young boy's journey from civil war in east Africa to a refugee camp in Sudan, to a childhood on welfare in an affluent American suburb, and eventually to a full-tuition scholarship at Harvard University. Following his father's a... continue
Recommended: 23 Dec 2022


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