About Africa Fiction and Non Fiction List 2
Explore a curated list of top African fiction and non-fiction books. Discover must-read novels, biographies, and stories that celebrate Africa's rich culture and history.
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The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
by Alexander McCall Smith
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Fans around the world adore the bestselling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series and its proprietor, Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier lady detective. In this charming series, Mma Ramotswe—with help from her loyal associate, Grace Makutsi—navigates her cases and her personal life with wisdom, good humor, and the occasional cup of tea. This first novel in Alexander McCall Smith’s widely acclaimed The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series tells the story of the delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe, who is drawn to her profession to “help people with problems in their lives.” Immediately upon setting up shop in a small storefront in Gaborone, she is hired to track down a missing husband, uncover a con man, and follow a wayward daughter. But the case that tugs at her heart, and lands her in danger, is a missing eleven-year-old boy, who may have been snatched by witchdoctors. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency received two Booker Judges’ Special Recommendations and was voted one of the International Books of the Year and the Millennium by the Times Literary Supplement.
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The Kalahari Typing School for Men
by Alexander McCall Smith
Fans around the world adore the bestselling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series and its proprietor, Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier lady detective. In this charming series, Mma Ramotswe—with help from her loyal associate, Grace Makutsi—navigates her cases and her personal life with wisdom, good humor, and the occasional cup of tea. Mma Precious Ramotswe is content. Her business is well established with many satisfied customers, and in her mid-thirties (“the finest age to be”) she has a house, two adopted children, a fine fiancé. But, as always, there are troubles. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni has not set the date for their marriage. Her able assistant, Mma Makutsi, wants a husband. And worse, a rival detective agency has opened in town—an agency that does not have the gentle approach to business that Mma Ramotswe’s does. But, of course, Precious will manage these things, as she always does, with her uncanny insight and her good heart.
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Armed and Dangerous
by Ronald Kasrils
A first-hand account of the workings of the Bisho Massacre (1992).
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Dead Before Dying
by Deon Meyer
This brilliantly atmospheric new suspense novel from a rising African thriller writer is about a detective racing to solve a terrifying series of murders. Film rights have been sold to Jungle Media for "Heart of the Hunter" and "Dead at Daybreak."
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When the Lion Feeds
by Wilbur A. Smith
Sean and his twin brother Garrick couldn't be more different. And when fate, war and jealous schemes of a woman interfere with their lives, they are destined to be driven even further apart. But as time progresses and their history unfolds, a continent is awakening. A continent on whose horizons await the promises of fortune, adventure and love. Available in September.
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The Sound of Thunder
by Wilbur Smith
By a cruel twist of fate, Sean Courtney falls under the command of his resentful brother Garrick in the bloody Boer War. One brother returns a hero, the other a coward.
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A Sparrow Falls
by Wilbur Smith
'Mark never heard the Mauser shot for the bullet came ahead of the sound. There was only the massive shock in the upper part of his body, and then he was hurled backwards with a violence that drove the air from his lungs.The earth opened before him, and as he fell, there was a sensation of being engulfed in a swirling vortex of blackness and he knew for just a fleeting instant of time that he was dead.' From the trenches of France, General Sean Courtney comes back to fame, fortune and a seat in the Government. Mark Anders, the courageous young South African whom he has come to regard as his own son, returns to nothing, his grandfather murdered, his property seized by an unknown company. At the bottom of the mystery is Sean's son Dirk, the jealous, violent and power-crazed genius whose all-consuming hatred can only end in blood...
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The Covenant
by James A. Michener
Volume 2 of 2; The story begins 1500 years ago. The Bushmen are facing a crisis. the beautiful lake, long the center of their lives, is drying up, and they must move across a hostile African desert to seek better conditions.
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Boer War
by Thomas Pakenham
The Boers of South Africa responded to Britain's annexation of the gold-and-diamond-rich Transvaal region by declaring war on October 11, 1899. The English believed the fighting would be over by Christmas -- never dreaming they were on the brink of one of the longest, bloodiest, most costly and humiliating military campaigns in their history. Mammoth in scope and scholarship, as vivid, fast-moving and breathtakingly compelling as the finest fiction. Thomas Pakenham's The Boer War is the definitive account of this extraordinary conflict -- a war precipitated by greed and marked by almost inconcievable blundering and brutalities . . . and whose shattering repercussions can be felt to this very day.
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(D)urban Vortex
by Bill Freund
Durban is a remarkable place in which to test propositions about the significance of the city and the significance of change. New urban literature tends to divide very sharply between the problems faced by cities with major resources at the center and the problems faced by cities at the periphery. Many South African cities are simultaneously the site of both kinds of phenomena. These cities have strong traditions of forceful planning from above with considerable capacity to finance change. They witness industrialization, but they are also the site of massive squatter settlements and populations that fall outside the functioning of the "formal" economy. This book highlights the role of networks and the co-operation for survival by Durban's newer citizens as they make space for themselves. In an era of fundamental power shifts, the constant need for re-invention and adaptation to social and economic change, Durban is a genuine social vortex. Through the work of writers from a range of disciplines, this book focuses on the transition since the 1970s and explores contemporary challenges facing Durban.
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The Smell of Apples
by Mark Behr
The story of an affluent white South African family during apartheid. Its narrator is the son of an Afrikaner general and he describes his growing disillusion with the cruelty and arrogance of the whites. Set in the 1970s, the novel follows him from boyhood to soldiering in Angola, fighting the blacks.
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Out of America
by Keith B. Richburg
This soul-searching personal journey into the African-American identity, written by an award-winning reporter for the "Washington Post", takes readers behind today's cultural battlefields. Map.
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The Palm-wine Drinkard ; And, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
by Amos Tutuola
The ghosts live in the center of the jungle and this tells of what happens to the mortals who venture into the world of the ghosts.
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Shantaram
by Gregory David Roberts
Having escaped an Australian maximum security prison, a disillusioned man loses himself in the slums of Bombay, where he works for a drug kingpin, smuggles arms for a crime lord, and forges bonds with fellow exiles.
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Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
by Alexandra Fuller
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A worthy heir to Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham, Alexandra Fuller shares visceral memories of her childhood in Africa, and of her headstrong, unforgettable mother. “This is not a book you read just once, but a tale of terrible beauty to get lost in over and over.”—Newsweek “By turns mischievous and openhearted, earthy and soaring . . . hair-raising, horrific, and thrilling.”—The New Yorker Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is suffused with Fuller’s endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. Fuller’s debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time. From 1972 to 1990, Alexandra Fuller—known to friends and family as Bobo—grew up on several farms in southern and central Africa. Her father joined up on the side of the white government in the Rhodesian civil war, and was often away fighting against the powerful black guerilla factions. Her mother, in turn, flung herself at their African life and its rugged farm work with the same passion and maniacal energy she brought to everything else. Though she loved her children, she was no hand-holder and had little tolerance for neediness. She nurtured her daughters in other ways: She taught them, by example, to be resilient and self-sufficient, to have strong wills and strong opinions, and to embrace life wholeheartedly, despite and because of difficult circumstances. And she instilled in Bobo, particularly, a love of reading and of storytelling that proved to be her salvation. Alexandra Fuller writes poignantly about a girl becoming a woman and a writer against a backdrop of unrest, not just in her country but in her home. But Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is more than a survivor’s story. It is the story of one woman’s unbreakable bond with a continent and the people who inhabit it, a portrait lovingly realized and deeply felt. Praise for Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight “Riveting . . . [full of] humor and compassion.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “The incredible story of an incredible childhood.”—The Providence Journal
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The Constant Gardener
by John le Carre
THE CONSTANT GARDENER Tessa Quayle--young, beautiful, and dearly beloved to husband Justin--is gruesomely murdered in northern Kenya. When Justin sets out on a personal odyssey to uncover the mystery of her death, what he finds could make him not only a suspect, but also a target for Tessa's killers. A master chronicler of the betrayals of ordinary people caught in political conflict, John le Carre portrays the dark side of unbridled capitalism as only he can. In The Constant Gardener he tells a compelling, complex story of a man elevated through tragedy, as Justin Quayle--amateur gardener, aging widower, and ineffectual bureaucrat--discovers his own natural resources and the extraordinary courage of the woman he barely had time to love.
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The Lost Boys of Sudan
by Mark Bixler
Chronicles the lives of four "lost boys" from war-torn Sudan who settled in Atlanta, Georgia, after being brought to the United States as refugees.
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Illustrated History of South Africa
by Dougie Oakes
This updated version of the 1988 edition strips away the curtain of myths and misconceptions that surround South Africa. Much has happened and is still happening in this troubled land, so to better understand the events of recent years, the final two chapters have been revised and three new chapters have been added. 1,000 color photos, maps and illustrations.