37 books like The Color of the Elephant

I discovered this book years ago on a discount table, and it quickly became one of my all-time favorites, a memoir I’ve reread several times and loaned to friends.

Gilman and her college friend—someone she knows, but not really—backpack through China in 1986, right after it’s been opened to travelers after the Cultural Revolution.

Two naive Americans, in way over their heads as things grow stranger and stranger. Described as “a modern heart of darkness filled with Communist operatives, backpackers, and pancakes,” her story is guaranteed to shock and surprise even the most seasoned traveler.

Great title, great writing, and an absolute page-turner.

Following a newbie on her first big adventure always thrills me, and Meaghan’s account of riding her bike from northern BC to Baja, Mexico, accompanied by her equally inexperienced sister, brought me back to my own bicycle travels, 30 years earlier.

What changed, and what remained the same? We shared many of the same struggles: fear of bears and bicycle breakdowns, for starters, and trusting the road to whip our bodies into shape.

Traveling with a cell phone and online access to couch surfing were luxuries I couldn’t have imagined in 1978, but clocking the miles still mightily tests body, spirit, and a tight budget.

Meaghan is funny and vulnerable, engaging the senses in every aspect of her learn-as-you-go odyssey along the Pacific Coast. 

I lived in Lagos for four years in the early ‘90s and have struggled ever since to describe the strange energy and appeal of this troubled, oft-maligned country.

Noo, a British-raised Nigerian, takes us to 12 Nigerian locations in a quest to understand her roots. Her childhood memories of visits to the homeland weren’t great, and she’s highly attuned to the widespread corruption that afflicts almost every aspect of Nigerian life.

Still, she travels with an open mind, asking questions, seeking mini-adventures, and falling in love-and-exasperation with the loud, outspoken, resilient residents of Africa’s most-populated country.

Her lively account, packed with nuggets of history, culture, and one-of-a-kind encounters and conversations, brought me back to a country that stole my heart when I least expected it.  Such a treat!

Would you follow a person you just met into a whole new wilderness life?

That’s exactly what young Pamela does, discarding urban living to ride horseback into the wilds of Hell’s Canyon and partner with her new man as wandering shepherds.

Her risk pays off—unexpectedly, delightfully—and Pamela takes us on a journey of discovery, lyrically describing the beauty and richness of her unusual life. The author and I are the same age, and as she was learning survival skills, I was cycling solo on backroads not far from her—as the crow flies. But our lives since then couldn’t be more different.

If you’ve ever imagined leaving it all for the simple life (with hardships), here’s a sumptuous memoir that takes you there. Like Pamela, you may never want to leave.

The setting for Hermetech is a post-apocalyptic landscape. As with Imajica, the central quest is to heal a ruptured world. Futuristic science and magic coexist in the story as a group of disparate and dysfunctional travellers retrieve Ari and escort her (and the reader) through strange, broken lands and along unfriendly and dangerous roads.

It is a highly imaginative, speculative fantasy with another character who blends and transcends gender and steals a reader’s heart. Zambia Crevecoeur is deeply flawed and tragic, and it is hir journey (emotional rather than geographical) which drew me into this extraordinary novel.

The experience in this book of orphaned siblings living in the streets of Lusaka is harrowing. The children’s narration of their experience is told in a matter-of-fact way which makes it more poignant because they have accepted their fate. A recommended read for anyone who likes stories about the dark side of growing up and feels like a good cry. This is because although Chimuka the protagonist is fictional; they are thousands of real Chimuka’s growing up on the streets. 

I found this new memoir riveting partly because it was so different from my own life experiences. My favourite sections were about the author's childhood in Northern Rhodesia [which became Zambia on independence]. Rod Madocks's childhood years seemed to structure his life for better and worse: leaving Zambia at the age of thirteen to be sent to boarding school in England has an increasingly negative effect for years to come but there are some humorous aspects. I was also deeply drawn to the portraits of the author’s parents as elderly people which was poignant after I as the reader had got to know them so well in the descriptions of his childhood. Rod Madocks is a wordsmith supreme—I hope this book becomes a classic.

A classic of ethnographic description and symbolic analysis based upon fieldwork among the Ndembu of Zambia—a must read for anyone interested in sociological and psychological implications of ritual belief and practice in a small-scale, non-literate, kinship-based society. 

A stellar example of what is lost by cancelling "colonialist" literature and discarding the very concepts of "culture" and "religion" as relics of Western intellectual imperialism. 

In 10 essays on color symbolism, circumcision rites, rites of passage, social dynamics, and more, Turner lays the groundwork for his proposition that ritual is the key to religion and religion is the key to culture. 

The late Nick Wood, a science fiction writer, clinical psychologist, former journalist, humanitarian, and anti-apartheid activist born in Zambia and raised in South Africa, was always learning.

This is reflected in all his writing, including most of the stories in his collection. Largely science fiction stories in a variety of settings: from post-apocalyptic worlds, settled moons, and climate-changed earths, these stories are highly focused on the social and environmental aspects of humanity even in the most science fictional scenarios.

These stories, intersectional, emotionally resonant, exciting, thoughtful, and varied. Learning Monkey and Crocodile is a wonderful way to sample some of South Africa’s interesting science fiction corpus from a voice that has now left us, but which will not be forgotten.

Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift is a cross-genre book that addresses matters of colonialism and a future Africa with brashness and philosophy. Its subversive text is far-reaching in poignant fiction imbued with intimacy and cultural convergence. The story pays special attention to mothers and children, the importance of identity, and the intense need we have as humans to belong.