100 books like The Child Soldiers of Africa's Red Army

Emma McCune was a beautiful young British aid worker who fell for—and married—Riek Machar, a rival of John Garang for most of the long years of Sudan’s second civil war (1983-2005), reluctant leader of a bloody post-independence revolt, and now one of the country’s five (sic) Vice-Presidents. Emma died in 1993 in a traffic accident in Kenya, but wherever I have been in both Sudan and South Sudan, hosted by aid workers, I have found echoes of her. Emma wanted to make the world a better place—who can knock that?—but her naivete allowed her to be easily manipulated and impressed by raw power, increasingly blind to the corruption and violence within the cause she had adopted. She is buried at Leer, South Sudan, the hometown of Riek Machar.

This story is set in Sudan among rebel leaders in a war-torn country with hardened guerillas, idealistic aid workers, evangelical young women, and a pilot responsible for bringing aid and people in and out of the area. I was quickly drawn into this complex world through the varied voices and life experiences of the characters, especially as an unlikely and tragic romance emerges.

History, politics, and the human heart are all in play. As a reader I struggled along with the characters as the narrative took on fraught moments of international intrigue and probed the hearts and emotions of the characters, suggesting that in the end, politics is an extension of the human heart in conflict, often in conflict with itself. 

This is a collection of short stories by well-known writers—Irvine Welsh and Alex Garland among others—whom The Daily Telegraph newspaper assembled and flew to Africa in 2000, with an open brief to write one short story each; the book’s proceeds went to famine relief. One story in particular, by Telegraph editor W.F. Deedes, resonated in particular with me. The British government, responding to concerns that a UK-based oil company—Phoenix—is contributing to human rights abuses committed in the context of the Sudanese civil war, establishes “A Small Mission of Inquiry” (the title of the story). For most of my diplomatic posting in Sudan (2000-2003), I found myself dealing with strikingly similar allegations against a Canadian company, addressed equivocally by the Canadian government with just such a commission. 

Lizzie Shackleford, serving at the time as a junior Foreign Service Officer at the American Embassy in Juba, was of invaluable assistance to me as I tried to orchestrate the emergency evacuation of Canadian citizens (nearly all of them dual South Sudanese/Canadians) when Juba imploded in December 2013. With Canada declining to send evacuation aircraft I depended largely on her to secure seats on USAAF Hercules aircraft. She helped save dozens of lives. So, I read her account of the opening of South Sudan’s civil war with great interest.

It’s an eye-opening counterpoint to the glamour and sophistication that many outsiders associate with the diplomatic lifestyle, but it’s also an indictment of short-sighted and misguided American policy-making in the region. The eponymous Dissent Channel is the outlet US diplomats have to express their personal discomfort with official policy. More than once I have found myself wishing that the Canadian diplomatic… show more.

When One Book, One Philadelphia called me in my office at Drexel University and asked me to select 10 students to interview 10 South Sudanese refugees for a One Book project, I read Dave Egger’s epic tale of Valentino Achak Deng’s survival as a so-called “Lost Boy" of Sudan. Valentino along with thousands of other “Lost Boys” was forced to separate from his parents at a young age and trek thousands of miles across Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya without resources to food or water to arrive at several refugee camps. This is Valentino’s story yet it resonates with fleeing people worldwide. Anyone who lives in freedom will stop and listen to the plight of others after reading this astonishing book.

If you are interested in gaining a better understanding of why the UN fails so miserably at building and sustaining peace – read this new book. Adam Day works at the UN and uses ideas from complexity science to both explain why the UN is so challenged in its ultimate mission to sustain peace, and what it should do to move in the right direction. Day uses two current case studies on some of the most challenging situations faced by the international community and applies new ideas in useful and practical ways. This is the state-of-the-art of complexity-informed peacebuilding.

Prolific author and intellectual Francis Mading Deng became South Sudan’s first ambassador to the United Nations. Meeting Dr. Deng in person was one of the highlights of my life. To read any of his 40-some books is a privilege. It is possible to read Dinka Folktales as astonishing anthropological events, but Francis Mading Deng provides an introduction that reveals the “truth” in storytelling. These folktales contain the philosophical, religious, and day-to-day practices of the Dinka, who are the largest ethnic tribe in South Sudan. Given the civil war with north Sudan and the south’s dramatic victory in establishing their own country, these extraordinary stories belong in the ranks of world literature. 

I planned to read this book for research but ended up so immersed in the story that I kept forgetting to take notes. The narrative, a “clever inversion of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,” follows the travels and travails of a young protagonist tangled in the contradictions of his African childhood, his formal education in England, and his return home with what he sees as the boon of modern thought. Part mystery, part romance, part history, part monomyth, part psychological thriller, the novel is set in an “unsettled and violent no-man’s-land between…tradition and innovation, holiness and defilement...” This book fascinated and haunted me even as it informed me about the complexities, dichotomies, and dissonance of colonization. Shot through with “allusions to Arabic and European fiction, Islamic history, Shakespeare, Freud, and classical Arabic poetry,” Salih’s novel should first be read for what it is: a brilliant work of art.

30,000 children some of whom were as young as six were orphaned and displaced from their homes when their villages were attacked in the Civil War. They met and banded together to trek across Sudan to Ethiopia and Kenya, looking for a new home. This was a journey of almost 1,000 miles. Thousands died on the way, but over 3,000 survived and many were resettled in America. I learned what can happen to children when their village is attacked and their parents killed. It's a fascinating story of perseverance and the importance of hope.

The Red Pencil is a beautifully written novel in verse that gives readers a heartbreaking view into the life of Amira, a twelve-year-old Sudanese girl whose life is turned upside down when her village is destroyed by the Janjaweed and she is forced into a refugee camp.

This story of trauma and loss also contains hope as Amira is given a pencil and notebook, which serve to remind her of dreams that extend beyond the grief and loss she is enduring. I believe novels in verse are a powerful vehicle for telling powerful, hard stories, and Pickney’s verse provides literal and figurative beauty while revealing the ugly reality of the Civil War in Darfur.