GeoKIT 2021 (all year): Africa

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GeoKIT 2021 (all year): Africa

1LittleTaiko
Bewerkt: dec 14, 2020, 5:47 pm

2LittleTaiko
Bewerkt: dec 14, 2020, 5:52 pm

This is a year-long KIT intended to challenge readers to read globally but at they own pace. Should you wish to travel through books to Africa here a is the list of the many countries to choose from:

Algeria
Angola
Benin
Botswana
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cabo Verde
Cameroon
Central African Republic
Chad
Comoros
Congo
Côte d'Ivoire
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Djibouti
Egypt
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Gabon
Gambia
Ghana
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Kenya
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Madagascar
Malawi
Mali
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mayotte
Morocco
Mozambique
Namibia
Niger
Nigeria
Rwanda
Réunion
Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha
Sao Tome and Principe
Senegal
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Somalia
South Africa
South Sudan
Sudan
Swaziland
Tanzania
Togo
Tunisia
Uganda
Western Sahara
Zambia
Zimbabwe

3LittleTaiko
dec 14, 2020, 6:13 pm

I'm borrowing this link from one of the other GeoKit threads as it is an excellent place to start in researching books and authors that might work for this challenge.

In the Group, Reading Globally, https://www.librarything.com/groups/readinggloballyficti check out the master list on the front page.

Here's another link to an article about top books about Africa.

https://malwarwick-98471.medium.com/20-top-books-about-africa-including-both-fic...

Additionally here are some suggestions:

Mysteries/Thrillers:

My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey (series set in Ghana)
Black Widow Society by Angela Makholwa
A Carrion of Death by Michael Stanley

Nonfiction:

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
Long Walk to Freedom by Trevor Noah
The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar
One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina

Fiction:

Half of the Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba

4spiralsheep
dec 15, 2020, 4:08 am

I've added a link to this thread from the GeoKIT 2021 wiki page. :-)

5markon
Bewerkt: dec 15, 2020, 5:26 am

Yay! I'll echo Little Taiko's recommendation of Half a yellow sun (or any other Adichie novel.)

I also like Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor.

Adding two more links of places to find titles.

100 best African books of the 20th century

50 books by African women

Lastly, I'm hosting a buddy read of a multi-generational novel set in Uganda, Kintu, over on Goodreads. We'll start in January, and I expect it to take up to two months since this is a long novel.

6dudes22
dec 15, 2020, 7:24 am

I read Mother of Malawi: She Created an Oasis of Love in a Country of Orphans by AL Gibson a couple of years ago and can recommend it. It's the story of Annie Chikhwaza who started an orphanage in Malawi, overcoming many physical and practical obstacles.

7Jackie_K
Bewerkt: dec 15, 2020, 12:50 pm

Oh, I loved Born a Crime - I'd definitely highly recommend it. Also recommend Red Dust Road - a memoir by Scottish makar Jackie Kay about finding her birth parents (her birth father is Nigerian, and she visits there several times).

I've got several books set in Africa that I didn't get round to in 2020s GeoCAT, so I'll read some of them.

8Helenliz
dec 15, 2020, 1:14 pm

I recently read A Woman of Firsts which I would recommend to find out more about one amazing woman.

9Robertgreaves
dec 18, 2020, 11:35 pm

i've still got David Mogo, Godhunter by Suyi Davies Okungbowa on my virtual TBR pile

10Tess_W
dec 19, 2020, 8:00 am

I have James Michener's The Covenant on my shelf so I will attempt that hefty tome about South Africa.

11dudes22
jan 9, 2021, 2:50 pm

I've finished The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony about his efforts to rehabilitate an elephant herd at his game preserve in Zululand, Africa.

12avatiakh
jan 9, 2021, 7:55 pm

I've just finished a crime novel, The Song Dog, by James McClure which is set in northern Zululand. McClure has set this series during the apartheid years and I'll be reading the earlier ones in the series.

13markon
jan 9, 2021, 10:05 pm

Leo Africanus by Amin Maalouf. I enjoyed this novel more than I expected to. (I'd tried it once before and DNFd it as too dry.)

This time I enjoyed the meditative pace, and the unemotional prose telling about what Hasan/Leo did and where he traveled and things that happened totally out of his control. It also paints a glimpse of a picture of North Africa in the 13th/14th century when the Ottoman Empire was rising.

I have the ususal questions about how much a novel featuring an actual person actually follows a person's life and can describe a person's thoughts. I think perhaps Maloof was more interested in exploring the outward aspects of his life rather than his thoughts and emotions.

14spiralsheep
jan 23, 2021, 6:49 am

I read The Desert and the Drum by Mauritanian author Mbarek Ould Beyrouk, which is a bildungsroman about a young Bedouin girl. 5*

15susanna.fraser
jan 23, 2021, 12:32 pm

I just finished Rosewater by Tade Thompson, which is near-future science fiction set in Nigeria. It's excellent, though if you like your protagonists traditionally likable and heroic (which I do) you might find it tough going (as I did, though I'm glad I read it).

16markon
Bewerkt: jan 23, 2021, 4:53 pm

>15 susanna.fraser: Glad you liked Rosewater. This series was well worth reading, though it did warp my head a bit. I look forward to whatever Thompson writes next.

>14 spiralsheep: Desert and the drum sounds intriguing.

17Tanya-dogearedcopy
jan 24, 2021, 3:28 pm

🇬🇭 Homegoing (by Yaa Gyasi) for book club. This was actually a fast read and really compelling; but it's not a plot-driven story. Each chapter is a character POV and very two chapters covers a generation. Starting out in Ghana in the eighteenth century, one sister marries a soldier at the British-held fortress while the other sister is captured during a tribal raid and sold into slavery. We then see how the different branches' fates spins out over the centuries. About half the book takes place in Ghana and; it's written by Ghanian author

18MissBrangwen
jan 30, 2021, 6:52 pm

I finished Ein Mundvoll Erde by Stefanie Zweig, a novel that is very autobiographical. It is about a young Jewish girl growing up on a farm in Kenya where her family has fled to escape Nazi Germany. It's based on the author's life and shows how she feels at home in Kenya, speaking the local languages but hardly any German, being friends with the children living on the farm and thinking and feeling like them, while Germany is a foreign country to her where she doesn't want to go.

19spiralsheep
jan 31, 2021, 2:43 pm

I read Tropical Fish by Doreen Baingana, which is a suite of short stories revolving around a Banyankole family of three young women growing up in Entebbe in Uganda in the 1980s. 4*

20markon
Bewerkt: feb 7, 2021, 12:46 pm


Kintu by Jennifer Nansubugua

At 443 pages this was a long book, but not a difficult read. Towards the end the sections became shorter, and my anticipation to find out what happens in the final section cranked up.

Kintu is the story of the extended clan descended from Kintu Kidda. Per Wikipedia, Kintu is a mythologial figure of the Buganda people and is the father of humans. I can give an overarching description of the arc of the story, but it is more than the sum of its parts.

The first section of the book, set in the mid 18th century, tells the story of Kintu, his family, and the actions that result in a curse being laid on his family and descendants. The next four sections tell the story of one descendant each (and their branch of the family) at the turn of the 20th and 21st century, and the sixth and final section tells the story of the extended family coming together in 2004 to try and remove the curse. Not everything is tied up neatly by the end, but much healing does take place.

This is a rich story that I think will reward re-reading. In addition to the literal story, the family stands in for the people of Uganda and gives us a glimpse of a variety of viewpoints and traditions that dwell together. This is also, in my mind, primarily the story of the male descendants. I am curious about what it would look like if told from a female perspective. It's also a story about the interplay of tradition and modernity. And I'm sure other readers will find other threads/themes they want to follow.

21spiralsheep
feb 16, 2021, 8:43 am

I read Ways of Dying, by Zakes Mda, which is a novel set in an unnamed city on the coast of South Africa, presumably based on Cape Town, in 1993-4, shortly before the transition to inclusive democracy . The protagonist is a professional mourner who meets a woman from his home village at the funeral of her son in the city about twenty years after he last saw her. Unusually the story has a third person plural narrator, a collective "we", the people of the city and the village who have individually witnessed events but are recounting them from a communal perspective (I think this is a nod towards collective oral traditions of narrative and also omniscient ancestors).

The usual "ways of dying" for each age group - accidents, violence, and illness - occur as natural events in various characters' lives. But each day means more when we understand we have so little time on this earth, and the saddest way of dying is giving up on life while you're still alive. 5*

GeoKIT: Africa (South Africa or Lesotho)

22Robertgreaves
feb 16, 2021, 5:29 pm

COMPLETED The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, set in North Africa, as a shepherd from Andalucia goes on a quest to find treasure buried in the pyramids. Much of the book is about his journey in a camel train across the Sahara from West to East.

23Jackie_K
Bewerkt: mrt 12, 2021, 1:27 pm

I've finished Into Africa by Craig Packer. He's an American academic who has worked with Jane Goodall since the 1970s and also led lion studies in the Serengeti. This is an account of a field trip to both Serengeti and Gombe national parks in Tanzania, but also covers some of his earlier work. I really enjoyed it. 4/5.

24pamelad
mrt 17, 2021, 5:09 am

The Ardent Swarm by Yamen Manai is set in a Tunisian village and the author is Tunisian. I liked it and have written more about it here.

25Tanya-dogearedcopy
mrt 17, 2021, 12:17 pm

Beau Geste (by Percival Christopher Wren; narrated by Geoffrey Howard is technically set between two locales: England and Africa; but the majority and heart of the story is set in the desert of Algiers. At one point, the narrator of the story and his party move into other parts of North Africa where they encounter Arabs.

26Cora-R
mrt 24, 2021, 10:22 am

I read How Dare the Sun Rise by Sandra Uwiringiyimana. The first half of the book takes place in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi. (The second half of the book is her life in Rochester, NY as a resettled refugee.)

27Robertgreaves
mrt 26, 2021, 7:09 am

COMPLETED In A Free State by V. S. Naipaul, set in an unnamed East African country shortly after independence.

28sturlington
mrt 28, 2021, 4:48 pm

I read a short novel, The Haunting of Tram Car 015, which is set in an alternate version of Cairo, Egypt, in 1912. Enjoyable if you like fantasy or steampunk.

29spiralsheep
Bewerkt: apr 14, 2021, 4:36 am

I read Sunken cities : Egypt's lost worlds, which is an exhibition catalogue mostly of recent Egyptian marine archaeology, published by the British Museum. It focuses on the lost cities of Canopus and Thonis-Heracleion, now under sea off the western Nile Delta, which first thrived during the Late Period when ancient "Greek" cultures in what are now Turkey, Cyprus, and Greece, established trade links with the richest Mediterranean culture of the ancient world in Egypt. The book then continues on into Greco-Roman ruled Egypt. 4*

GeoKIT: Africa (Egypt)

30spiralsheep
apr 15, 2021, 6:17 am

I read The African Child, aka The Dark Child, by Camara Laye, first published in French in 1954, which is an autobiographical recollection of the author's childhood in a Malinke family in Guinea (then French Guinea), and is considered a classic of Malinke and Guinean literature. The English translation is by poet James Kirkup. Clearly written and informative. 3.5*

GeoKIT: Africa (Guinea)

31Robertgreaves
apr 23, 2021, 2:18 am

In honour of World Book Day 2021, I am now reading David Mogo, Godhunter, an urban fantasy by Suyi Davies Okungbowa, a Nigerian author.

GeoKIT: Africa (Nigeria)

32Robertgreaves
apr 27, 2021, 5:04 am

COMPLETED David Mogo, Godhunter by Suyi Davies Okungbowa:

My review:
After a failed coup in the realm of the gods, the losing side are tossed out and come down to occupy Lagos, trying to make it their base to take over this world.

I really wanted to like this and it kept feeling like it was on the verge of becoming something really good but in the end even the climactic battle was just tedious.

33Cora-R
apr 28, 2021, 10:06 pm

I finished The Missing American by Kwei Quartey. It is a mystery set in Ghana.

34Jackie_K
apr 29, 2021, 4:14 pm

I've just finished The Full Cupboard of Life, the 5th in the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series set in Botswana. I think this is my favourite of the series so far.

35Tess_W
Bewerkt: mei 5, 2021, 5:33 pm

The Covenant by James Michener was the epic saga of the settling of South Africa by the Javanese and British; of course, native Africans already lived there. This was violent and gory from the beginning and didn't get much better, finishing in 1980. Unfortunately, most of the book was the battle between the Dutch and the English. About 250 pages in the middle depicted the once brilliant, but ultimately mad-man, Shaka Zulu. Although I know skin color was very important as pertains to how South Africa became "South Africa", much of the book repeated the same story of how the browns looked down on the black, the mixed looked down on the browns, etc. I could have substituted names and the events were identical. I did learn some South African history, but this work of Michener's was not as enjoyable as other sagas that I have read. (Chesapeake, Texas, Hawaii) 1200 pages 3 stars

36spiralsheep
mei 27, 2021, 10:34 am

I read Mission to Kala, by Mongo Beti, which is a 1957 Cameroonian comic novel about a young failed college student sent on a mission from his home village to find someone else's runaway wife. Our educated westernised city-dwelling protagonist quickly finds himself out of his depth when faced with the wiles of his country village cousins and their traditional ways of getting things done. As you can probably imagine from that description the primary form of humour is satire and no character is spared. 5*

GeoKIT: Africa (Cameroon)

37Tess_W
jun 2, 2021, 3:55 am

The Palm-Wine Drinkard is a weird little story set in Nigeria. I'm not sure what genre it would be, but I'm guessing a folktale, with maybe some fantasy elements (?) The never named narrator tells this story first person as the son of a rich man who loses his tapster and hence his friends. He goes in search of the tapster in various parts of the bush that is inhabited by all sorts of inhuman creatures. Not my cup of tea! 125 pages 3 stars

38VivienneR
jun 5, 2021, 2:11 pm

I'm reading The Tomorrow Tamer by Margaret Laurence, a collection of ten short stories written while Laurence lived in Ghana. They are outstanding.

39NinieB
jun 5, 2021, 4:47 pm

>38 VivienneR: I read her The Prophet's Camel Bell last year, which is a memoir of her time in Somaliland. It too was outstanding.

40VivienneR
jun 6, 2021, 2:59 pm

>39 NinieB: Thanks for the reminder, Ninie. I haven't read it yet but will soon.

41DeltaQueen50
jun 20, 2021, 2:29 pm

I have completed my read of Valley of the Kings by Cecelia Holland. I enjoyed the first half of the book which was about Howard Carter and his discovery in 1922 of King Tut's tomb. Unfortunately the second half of the book travelled back to the time of King Tut and was rather meaningless.

42Tess_W
jul 6, 2021, 11:44 pm

I read The Story of an African Farm by Olive Shreiner. This really wasn't the story of a farm, but of 3 orphaned children (who live in the South African countryside) coming of age and having a difficult time of it. Too much time was spent on atheism and feminism, for my taste. Can't really recommend, although I was looking for something different from the book. 336 pages 2.5 stars CAT: A 19th century classic: any book first published from 1800 to 1899 (1883)

43Tess_W
aug 16, 2021, 3:42 am

The Lioness of Morocco by Julia Drosten. The story of Sibyella, who moves with her husband to Morocco to manage the family's shipping concern. 450 pages 4 stars

44DeltaQueen50
aug 19, 2021, 7:39 pm

I have read Bled Dry by Abdelilah Hamdouchi. Set in Casablanca, the story is about a gruesome double murder, but the story is less of a detective story and more about the conditions in Morocco.

45VivienneR
sep 2, 2021, 6:14 pm

Just finished The Mission Song by John le Carré - Africa

Bruno Salvador, son of a daughter of a Congolese chief and an Irish priest considers himself to be thoroughly British. His flair with languages make him a skilled translator and ripe for British Secret Service picking. He's a gentle, loyal man, an innocent who is unprepared for the lethal mix of power brokers he is facing, from Old Etonians to indigenous Africans, wreaking havoc in the Congo.

As expected, Le Carré's writing is extraordinary. The story is told in first person, a perspective perfect for audio presentation, in this case with an outstanding narration by David Oweloyo who raised my enjoyment of the novel with his voice alone.

46Tess_W
sep 5, 2021, 10:04 pm

Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie The story of the secession of Biafra from Nigeria and its resultant violence.

47chlorine
sep 12, 2021, 3:12 am

I've read several books that fit this kit this year but have been too slow in reading this thread and have not been able to participate until now. My latest African read is Happiness, like water by Chinelo Okparanta and it was a magnificent read.

This book is a gem. These short stories depict nigerian women (in Nigeria or in the US) in a variety of situations: women in love, women ill loved, women who are beaten, women forced by society or their family to follow a path that is not their own... Life for these women is often hard.

The style is at the same time simple, sober and beautiful. It brings out beautifully, almost without mentioning them, the characters' feelings, their doubts, their fears, ofter their patience, their hopes.

I will try to track my other good African reads and talk about them here!

48Robertgreaves
okt 16, 2021, 9:56 am

COMPLETED An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie, the first part of which is set in Togo

49Tess_W
okt 16, 2021, 1:47 pm

>48 Robertgreaves: Putting that one on my list, Robert. Next year I want to read "Africa."