Read Around Africa Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in Africa.
Best books from Africa (892)
91.
Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase EN
BotswanaDescription:
"A fierce, furious, and fearless debut that has its finger on the pulse--no, the gushing wound--of our world's most invasive cruelties." --Daniel Kraus, New York Times bestselling co-author of The Shape of Water "Masterful . . . Tsamaase has created a disturbing techno dystopia in a future Botswana that terrifies with its echoes of our own increasingly authoritarian cyber-policed world. This beautifully written work haunts and upends expectations with its resurrected ghosts and gods and ancestors of Motswana cosmology. What an accomplished debut!" --T. L. Huchu, Caine Prize finalist and author... continue
92.
Saturday Is for Funerals by Unity Dow, Myron Essex EN
Description:
Dow and Essex tell the true story of lives in Botswana ravaged by AIDS. Witness the actions of community leaders, medical professionals, research scientists, and educators of all types to see how an unprecedented epidemic of death and destruction is being stopped in its tracks.
93.
The Heavens May Fall by Unity Dow EN
Description:
Unity Dow's fourth novel tells the story of Naledi Chaba, a young attorney who has to battle prejudices within the legal profession and in the broader society. Her clients are mainly women and children, and she finds that under traditional law and modern Botswana law they are without protection.
94.
The Silence of the Wilting Skin by Tlotlo Tsamaase EN
Description:
In an African city, a nameless young woman living in the wards slowly begins to lose her identity: her skin color is peeling off, people are becoming invisible, and the city plans to destroy the train where they bury their dead. After the narrator is given a warning by her grandmother's dreamskin, things begin to fall apart. Struggling to hold onto a fluctuating reality, she prescribes herself insomnia in a desperate attempt to save her family.
95.
The Careless Seamstress by Tjawangwa Dema EN
Description:
This dazzling debut announces a not-so-new voice: that of the spoken-word poet Tjawangwa Dema. Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, Dema’s collection, The Careless Seamstress, evokes the national and the subjective while reemphasizing that what is personal is always political. The girls and women in these poems are not mere objects; they speak, labor, and gaze back, with difficulty and consequence. The tropes are familiar, but in their animation they question and move in unexpected ways. The female body—as a daughter, wife, worker, cultural mutineer—moves continually acr... continue
96.
97.
Thomas Sankara Speaks: The Burkina Faso Revolution, 1983-87 by Thomas Sankara EN
Country: Africa / 
Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso
Description:
Under Sankara's leadership, the revolutionary government of Burkina Faso in West Africa mobilized peasants, workers, women, and youth to carry out literacy and immunization drives; to sink wells, plant trees, build dams, erect housing; to combat the oppression of women and transform exploitative relations on the land; to free themselves from the imperialist yoke and solidarize with others engaged in that fight internationally. Sankara speaks as an outstanding revolutionary leader of working people and youth the world over. Second edition includes a new introduction by editor Michel Prairie, fo... continue
99.
Of Water and the Spirit—Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman by Malidoma Patrice Somé EN
Country: Africa / Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso
Description:
Maliodoma Patrice Some was born in a Dagara Village, however he was soon to be abducted to a Jesuit school, where he remained for the next fifteen years, being harshly indoctrinated into european ways of thought and worship. The story tells of his return to his people, his hard initiation back into those people, which lead to his desire to convey their knowledge to the world. Of Water and the Spirit is the result of that desire; it is a sharing of living African traditions, offered in compassion for those struggling with our contemporary crisis of the spirit.
100.
