I’ve always loved good literary fiction for the opportunity it provides to step into someone else’s life for a brief period. I’ve lived and worked intensely in the medical and health development field for over two decades in many beautiful parts of the great African continent. I’ve come to understand that we all go about our lives with similar goals, concerned with the same universal themes. What a joy it is to find great books by authors who know their African settings. Not only do the characters’ stories move me, but I learn and become more curious about the political history in the background.
This astonishing mashup of fact and fiction tracks three generations from three different lineages starting around 1900, describes their convergence over the century, and carries on into present-day Zambia, beyond the book’s publication date. This gives it the opportunity to morph into “science fiction” towards the end. The prose is often superb and the characters are vividly described. Obscure but authentic historic and technical details, e.g., the Afronaut story (who knew?) and some clinicopathologic aspects of malaria, are impressive examples of the research the author put into the book. The McCall’s pattern numbers she referenced for a fictional seamstress were even correct! It’s a long read, chock-a-block with characters. I had to reference the genealogy at the front often to keep track of it all. Serpell has immense talent and I’ll definitely read more of her future work.
“A dazzling debut, establishing Namwali Serpell as a writer on the world stage.”—Salman Rushdie, The New York Times Book Review
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Dwight Garner, The New York Times • The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • The Atlantic • BuzzFeed • Tordotcom • Kirkus Reviews • BookPage
WINNER OF: The Arthur C. Clarke Award • The Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award • The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction • The Windham-Campbell Prizes for Fiction
1904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the…
Yusuf is a young boy, an indentured servant to an Arab trader, living in a cloistered environment amidst much he doesn’t understand. On a trading trip from the Swahili coast, through the foothills of Kilimanjaro, and on to Lake Victoria, he has the opportunity to see foreign wonders, learn how the trader negotiates, and see the attitudes of the Swahili traders toward the people from the interior, the relatively new Indian immigrants, and the German colonizers. The trip is brutal; descriptions are straightforward and realistic but the author never sensationalizes events. This is an important piece of the incredible variety in the mosaic of African culture and history. The honesty and authenticity the author provides make it clear what he has to offer the literary world and why he was awarded a Nobel prize.
Sold by his father in repayment of a debt, 12-year-old Yusuf is thrown from his simple rural life into the complexities of precolonial urban East Africa. Through Yusuf's eyes, Gurnah depicts communities at war, trading safaris gone awry, and the universal trials of adolescence.
When Jennifer Shea married Russel Redmond, they made a decision to spend their honeymoon at sea, sailing in Mexico. The voyage tested their new relationship, not just through rocky waters and unexpected weather, but in all the ways that living on a twenty-six-foot sailboat make one reconsider what's truly important.…
The lives of two estranged, upper-class sisters play out against the Biafran war in this gripping story. It starts in the heady days before the war, when, for the primarily Igbo southerners, secession promised freedom from harsh treatment at the hands of northern Nigerians. It was chilling to realize that Adichie was leading me slowly and steadily through a descent into Hell. She describes the forced conscription of men and boys by the Biafran army, terrorism, and cruelty from the invading Nigerians, and the deliberate policy to starve the Biafrans. Readers should gird their loins – many details are hard to read. I loved the complexity of the characters and the way the terrible war puts personal issues between the sisters into perspective. Adichie said she drew on her own parents’ lives and their faith in a victory for Biafra during the war years and was pleased the book has started conversations among her generation about what happened there.
Winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2007, this is a heartbreaking, exquisitely written literary masterpiece
This highly anticipated novel from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is set in Nigeria during the 1960s, at the time of a vicious civil war in which a million people died and thousands were massacred in cold blood.
The three main characters in the novel are swept up in the violence during these turbulent years. One is a young boy from a poor village who is employed at a university lecturer's house. The other is a…
When an American Southern Baptist missionary takes his wife and four daughters into the Congo in 1959 to spread his harsh, inflexible version of Christianity, there are bound to be conflicts, both within the family and between the cultures. Kingsolver deftly weaves these with the history and politics of the Congo at the time to produce an unforgettable story. She doesn’t shy away from describing the hypocrisy of the USA and other Western powers, who demonstrated their willingness to sacrifice the democratic process when they perceived a threat to their own interests from an elected “socialist/communist” president. The book has so much: wonderous descriptions of the rainforest; complex family dynamics; unique, well-developed characters; and a compelling plot. This is one of my favorites!
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An international bestseller and a modern classic, this suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and their remarkable reconstruction has been read, adored and shared by millions around the world.
'Breathtaking.' Sunday Times 'Exquisite.' The Times 'Beautiful.' Independent 'Powerful.' New York Times
This story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959.
They carry with them everything they believe they will…
This memoir chronicles the lives of three generations of women with a passion for reading, writing, and travel. The story begins in 1992 in an unfinished attic in Brooklyn as the author reads a notebook written by her grandmother nearly 100 years earlier. This sets her on a 30-year search…
Marion and his twin brother Shiva, adopted sons of Indian doctors, come of age in a missionary hospital in Addis Ababa in the 1960s and 70s. Verghese shows his knowledge of this setting in detailed descriptions of life in the hospital and its environs. These evoked vivid memories for me of the time I spent working in similar Ethiopian hospitals. All you could do, often, wasn’t enough. I could see, hear, and smell the rich detail Verghese provides. Against this background, he unrolls a family drama centered on the conflict between the twins. Marion finishes medical school in Addis amidst unrest as the civil war heats up and Shiva, with no formal education, becomes, nonetheless, a skilled fistula surgeon. When Marion’s association with a member of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front upsets the dynamics further, the action moves to New York City and the flourishing Ethiopian community there. Verghese shows deep understanding of the human potential for both grand and malevolent acts with beautifully articulated insights into the mysteries of universal themes: love, betrayal, revenge, forgiveness, and redemption.
My brother, Shiva, and I came into the world in the late afternoon of the twentieth of September in the year of grace 1954. We took our first breaths in the thick air of Addis Ababa, capital city of Ethiopia. Bound by birth, we were driven apart by bitter betrayal. No surgeon can heal the would that divides two brothers. Where silk and steel fail, story must succeed. To begin at the beginning...
Two girls are born in newly independent Tanzania into very different circumstances. Joy is a village girl, painfully aware of her limited education, a domestic worker often desperate for work to support her family. Neema comes from a powerful family, well-known for their work towards Independence. But Neema has her own limitations, and when she tries to get what she thinks she deserves, she sets in motion events that reverberate down into the lives of the most humble. An example of how corruption in the health system impacts the innocent, informed by the author’s years of experience in the sector,Crossing Pathsencourages readers to consider integrity in an unfamiliar culture — and reminds us that, across cultures, we are still more alike than different.
The authoritative but accessible history of the birth of modern American intelligence in World War II that treats not just one but all of the various disciplines: spies, codebreakers, saboteurs.
Told in a relatable style that focuses on actual people, it was a New Yorker "Best of 2022" selection and…
During the 1970s and 80s, the Soviet Union penetrated the corporate economy and financial systems of the United States to engage in industrial espionage.
Cold Warrior is the story of Kasia Kerenski, a street mime who is “discovered” to work as a Hollywood actress. Coerced into becoming a double agent…