100 books like Th Scramble for Africa

A poignant, perceptive memoir of the author’s time in Africa—and her experiences there, her discovery of love and the loss of that love; evocations of people and sky, contemplations of weather and landscape unlike any other I’ve read.

It should be read (and always honoured) because it’s as close to a reverie on sorrow and wonder, the mystery of stark wildernesses and solitudes, as I’ve found. It’s the book I wish I’d written, above so many others.

As entertaining as the PBS series about Yorkshire veterinarian James Herriott (pseudonym for author James Alfred Wight) is, the book is even better.

A blend of memoir, travelogue, and journal, Herriott’s tales of life among the farmers of England’s Yorkshire Dales are heartwarming, hilarious, and riveting. From his familial relationships with the Farnon brothers, with whom he lives, to the sometimes endearing, sometimes mercurial encounters with his patients—both the 2-legged and 4-legged variety—reading the adventures of this country vet is both informative and engaging.

You’ll go places you never imagined, want to watch the series—original and remake—all over again, and will, if you’re like me, make a solemn pledge to visit the Dales before you die! 

The Sunbird was Wilber Smith’s first book. It was one of the first books on Wild African Adventure that I read and has kindled in me a lifelong passion for Africa, African animals, and the love of wildlife. It was a reason that I became a veterinarian and that I wanted to work with African Wildlife. It is a mix of contemporary and historic African Fiction. It is memorable because it is a wonderful story that I would want to share around the fire in a camp somewhere in the heart of the African bush. I would want Wilbur Smith to tell me the story as we sit around the fire. It evokes all that is magical and wonderful about Africa, the continent I love and live on. The book taught me that the story is paramount. Not the skill of the author as a literary giant. I want to… show more.

This is the true story of a game ranger who worked with African Wildlife in the early part of the history of the Kruger National Park. It is a well-written account of a bygone error where the heroic deeds of one man could make a difference. I loved this book because it evoked in me a sense of the dramatic history of the Southern African Game Reserves and the struggle to attain recognition during the early days when animals were a resource only to be hunted. There were a few brave men who recognized the value of conservation and preservation of wildlife, leading to the wildlife game reserve industry as we know it today. If not for the efforts of these few brave souls our world today would be a poorer place.

A mere 172 pages, this book examines the brutality of European colonialism in the 19th century, uncovering genocides I had never heard of that were perpetrated by so-called “civilized people” on so-called “primitive people.” 

The justification for this barbarism was that they for the benefit of the people annihilated because they could not live in the modern world. 

That justification is the same one often used on this side of the ocean for the genocide or “removal” of Indigenous people from their ancient lands and for the enslavement of African people who were “improved” by being around white people. 

Part travelogue, part history, part literary analysis – Lindqvist focuses on Joseph Conrad’s novel The Heart of Darkness – the book cannot be easily categorized and when reading it I often wondered what he was doing. 

But my understanding of both colonialism and what the Europeans did when they came to… show more.

Africa as a Living Laboratory is a far-reaching study of the thorny relationship between imperialism and the role of scientific expertise—environmental, medical, racial, and anthropological—in the colonization of British Africa. A key source for Helen Tilley’s analysis is the African Research Survey, a project undertaken in the 1930s to explore how modern science was being applied to African problems. This project both embraced and recommended an interdisciplinary approach to research on Africa that, Tilley argues, underscored the heterogeneity of African environments and the interrelations among the problems being studied. While the aim of British colonialists was unquestionably to transform and modernize Africa, their efforts, Tilley contends, were often unexpectedly subverted by scientific concerns with the local and vernacular to the understanding of imperial history, colonial development, and the role science played in both.

Joseph Conrad's book stands as a seminal work exploring the depths of forbidden territories, both physical and psychological.

Set in the mysterious and impenetrable heart of the Congo, Conrad delves into the darkness of the human soul amidst the backdrop of colonialism. Through vivid imagery and haunting prose, he navigates the moral ambiguity of imperialism and the forbidden realms of the unknown. 

A brand-new gripping, revealing history of German colonialism, focused on the brutal diamond trade in Southwest Africa on the eve of World War I. With pellucid prose, Press tells how the Germans cordoned off a so-called “forbidden zone,” behind which rapacious explorers, colonial authorities, miners, and businessmen carted off these precious, if largely useless rocks, for which there was a huge, artificially created demand, especially in the United States.

Owen White’s excellent book has given Algerian wine the place it deserves in the wine history of both Algeria and France. Wine production, introduced to Algeria by French settlers in the late 1800s, was an anomaly because the majority Muslim population of the colony did not drink. But it became essential to the French wine industry because it was commonly blended with the then-anemic wines of southern France to make wines with colour and strength. Even so, many French wine producers regarded Algeria as a rival and there was a constant tension between producers who needed Algerian wine and those who resented it. It was resolved when Algeria won independence from France and the wine industry there went into steep decline. 

How better to understand the motivations of decolonizing peoples than to go to one of the most influential sources of anticolonial philosophy?

Frantz Fanon’s Marxist critiques of nationalism and imperialism, his psychoanalytic discussion of the dehumanizing effects of colonization on individuals and societies, and his framing of decolonization as an inherently violent process all pull the reader into the perspective of a liberation seeker, forcing them to question narratives of anticolonial violence that have emerged from Western archives.

Fanon’s writing is essential reading for today’s students of decolonization.