Examining navigation and shipbuilding; cultural analogies between Native Americans and Africans; the transportation of plants, animals, and textiles between the continents; and the diaries, journals, and oral accounts of the explorers themselves, Ivan Van Sertima builds a pyramid of evidence to support his claim of an African presence in the New World centuries before Columbus. Combining impressive scholarship with a novelist’s gift for storytelling, Van Sertima re-creates some of the most powerful scenes of human history: the launching of the great ships of Mali in 1310 (two hundred master boats and two hundred supply boats), the sea expedition of the Mandingo king in 1311, and many others. In They Came Before Columbus, we see clearly the unmistakable face and handprint of black Africans in pre-Columbian America, and their overwhelming impact on the civilizations they encountered.

    Born in China in 1943, she moved from Chongqing to Taiwan, Spain to Germany, the Canary Islands to Central America, and, for several years in the 1970s, to the Sahara.Stories of the Sahara invites us into Sanmao's extraordinary life in the desert: her experiences of love and loss, freedom and peril, all told with a voice as spirited as it is timeless.At a period when China was beginning to look beyond its borders, Sanmao fired the imagination of millions and inspired a new generation. With an introduction by Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti, this is an essential collection from one of the twentieth century's most iconic figures.

    In 1975 Kapuscinski's employers sent him to Angola to cover the civil war that had broken out after independence. For months he watched as Luanda and then the rest of the country collapsed into a civil war that was in the author's words 'sloppy, dogged and cruel'. In his account, Kapuscinski demonstrates an extraordinary capacity to describe and to explain the individual meaning of grand political abstractions.

    1990 1st Thus Norton

    It is an incisive examination of the problems of independence and freedom in post-colonial Africa states, where few believe they have a stake in the future. In the words of one of the characters: "It was better while we waited. Now we have nothing to look forward to. We have killed our past and are busy killing our future." Francis Imbuga is a playwright and actor. He is the recipient of the Kenya National Academy of Sciences Distinguished Professional Award in Play Writing.

    A wild and passionate people, they are diametrically opposed to the Mesakin in character and temperament. Their knife-fights, dances of love and elaborately painted faces and bodies, which resemble "living Picassos," are unequalled by any surviving primitive race on earth. Leni Riefenstahl does not claim to have captured their entire way of life in this book. Rather, she has concentrated on photographing what distinguishes the South East Nuba from other tribes of her acquaintance. Leni Riefenstahl's unforgettable photographic impressions of the life of the People of Kau bear final witness to a primitive tribe which is menaced by the advance of industrial civilization and slowly subsiding into the mists of time.

    A New York psychoanalyst and a Kalahari Bushman inspire the author to an exploration of primitive consciousness and the modern unconscious and their common promptings and imponderables.

    By the author of Kill Me Quick and Striving for the Wind.

    The ways in which the African world perceives itself as a cultural entity, and the differences between its essential unity of experience and literary form and the sense of division pervading Western literature, are just some of the issues addressed. The centrality of ritual gives drama a prominent place in Soyinka's discussion, but he deals in equally illuminating ways with contemporary poetry and fiction. Above all, the fascinating insights in this book serve to highlight the importance of African criticism in addition to the literary and cultural achievements which are the subject of its penetrating analysis.

    Trouble is in store for a girl who falls in love with a warrior from the enemy village.

    

    In this stunning collection, 247 photographs of masks, identified by tribe, place, and ritual use, are featured. Dogon, Senufo, many more.

    Students of Amharic as well as visitors to Ethiopia and foreign workers will benefit from this concise dictionary with phonetic transcriptions that allow for its use by those unfamiliar with Amharic script.