Best of
African-Literature

2012

Daughters Who Walk This Path


Yejide Kilanko - 2012
    An adoring little sister, their traditional parents, and a host of aunties and cousins make Morayo's home their own. So there's nothing unusual about her charming but troubled cousin Bros T moving in with the family. At first Morayo and her sister are delighted, but in her innocence, nothing prepares Morayo for the shameful secret Bros T forces upon her. Thrust into a web of oppressive silence woven by the adults around her, Morayo must learn to fiercely protect herself and her sister from a legacy of silence many women in Morayo's family share. Only Aunty Morenike—once shielded by her own mother—provides Morayo with a safe home and a sense of female community that sustains her as she grows into a young woman in bustling, politically charged, often violent Nigeria.

Happiness, Like Water


Chinelo Okparanta - 2012
    Here are characters faced with dangerous decisions, children slick with oil from the river, a woman in love with another despite the penalties. Here is a world marked by electricity outages, lush landscapes, folktales, buses that break down and never start up again. Here is a portrait of Nigerians that is surprising, shocking, heartrending, loving, and across social strata, dealing in every kind of change. Here are stories filled with language to make your eyes pause and your throat catch. Happiness, Like Water introduces a true talent, a young writer with a beautiful heart and a capacious imagination.

There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra


Chinua Achebe - 2012
    The conflict was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people, Chinua Achebe’s people, many of whom were starved to death after the Nigerian government blockaded their borders. By then, Chinua Achebe was already a world-renowned novelist, with a young family to protect. He took the Biafran side in the conflict and served his government as a roving cultural ambassador, from which vantage he absorbed the war’s full horror. Immediately after, Achebe took refuge in an academic post in the United States, and for more than forty years he has maintained a considered silence on the events of those terrible years, addressing them only obliquely through his poetry. Now, decades in the making, comes a towering reckoning with one of modern Africa’s most fateful events, from a writer whose words and courage have left an enduring stamp on world literature.Achebe masterfully relates his experience, both as he lived it and how he has come to understand it. He begins his story with Nigeria’s birth pangs and the story of his own upbringing as a man and as a writer so that we might come to understand the country’s promise, which turned to horror when the hot winds of hatred began to stir. To read There Was a Country is to be powerfully reminded that artists have a particular obligation, especially during a time of war. All writers, Achebe argues, should be committed writers—they should speak for their history, their beliefs, and their people.Marrying history and memoir, poetry and prose, There Was a Country is a distillation of vivid firsthand observation and forty years of research and reflection. Wise, humane, and authoritative, it will stand as definitive and reinforce Achebe’s place as one of the most vital literary and moral voices of our age.

A General Theory of Oblivion


José Eduardo Agualusa - 2012
    As the country goes through various political upheavals from colony to socialist republic to civil war to peace and capitalism, the world outside seeps into Ludo’s life through snippets on the radio, voices from next door, glimpses of someone peeing on a balcony, or a man fleeing his pursuers.A General Theory of Oblivion is a perfectly crafted, wild patchwork of a novel, playing on a love of storytelling and fable.

The Polygamist


Sue Nyathi - 2012
    Set in modern-day Zimbabwe, the story is narrated through the four female protagonists. Joyce is the legitimate first wife of Jonasi Gomora. She has four kids, a shiny black Mercedes Benz and a life every woman is envious of. Joyce believes she has the perfect marriage until Matipa rears her coiffed head.Matipa is an ambitious, educated high flyer with an eye for the good things in life. She does not want to sit around waiting for a guy to realise his potential, she wants instant gratification, which comes in the form of Jonasi. He personifies everything she wants in a man. And so her driving ambition is usurp Joyce’s role as Jonasi’s wife and lover. Essie is the girl next door from the poverty-stricken township where Jonasi grew up in. She lacks Joyce’s sophistication and Matipa’s intelligence, but she cared for Jonasi long before he became the man he is. So Essie plays the role of second fiddle knowing he’ll always come back to herLindani is a beautiful young girl who has nothing going for her but her greatest assets: her beauty and her body. She hopes this lethal combination will be enough to ensnare the affections of a man who will marry her and leave her taken care of, no longer having to worry about how she’ll keep a solid roof over her head. Then she meets Jonasi and thinks all her problems have been answered, not knowing they have only just begun….Told in a gripping, accessible and somewhat shockingly frank style, Sue Nyathi takes readers on a journey beyond the bedroom door of a polygamous man and his four Mrs Rights. Yet lurking below the surface the question remains: is this kind of marriage practice really legitimate in a society plagued by HIV/Aids? Smart, sassy and sexy, The Polygamist shows that sometimes marriage isn’t what you envisioned – rather than being a secure refuge it can be a battlefield!

The Palaver Tree (Berriwood Book 1)


Wendy Unsworth - 2012
    and dangerousLives and fortunes change in the blink of an eye.After suffering a terrible tragedy in her home town, Ellie Hathaway is offered an opportunity she can’t resist. A teaching position in a remote African village, through The Hope Foundation, run by the enigmatic Gabriel Cole.But dark forces and ambitions were in play long before Ellie set foot on the dusty plains of Africa.Just as Ellie is beginning to believe she might find happiness again, she realises something is very wrong at the school. Is Gabriel Cole really the guardian angel everyone believes him to be?Realising she needs to tread carefully, or put those around her at risk, Ellie starts searching for answers. Then political chaos descends, and Ellie finds herself in terrible danger...

The Ghost of Sani Abacha


Chuma Nwokolo - 2012
    26 stories of life and love in the aftermath of autocracy, delivered with wit and insight by one of Africa's most incisive writers...

Hear Me Alone


Thando Mgqolozana - 2012
    Bellewa Miriam shares with Epher that an angel has informed her that she would conceive that very night. Many years later, Epher recounts the events of that meeting in a letter to his patron and friend Theophilus, recounting the consequences suffered as a result of the encounter, which, Epher hopes, will be included in the bible. A reimagining of the Nativity Story, this novel offers an imaginative alternative to the account of the conception and birth of Jesus Christ.

Some Bright Elegance


Kayo Chingonyi - 2012
    In the book this is explored in relation to the search for meaning and consolation in the wake of bereavement, the memorial role of music, and the effects of social change on local communities. The book is also threaded with imagined scenes centred on those defining moments when people, places or objects take on new significances.

Early Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652-1717


Karel Schoeman - 2012
    Thousands more would follow. Slavery was to remain an institution here until the end of the Dutch period in 1795, and well beyond, for it was not until 1834, under British administration, that Cape slaves were finally emancipated. In Early Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope, Karel Schoeman describes the transplanting of slavery from the Dutch colonies in the East and the first sixty years of its development under local conditions, basing his account mainly on contemporary sources and providing as much information on individual slaves and their lives as these allow. Attention is likewise given to the gradual manumission of slaves and the slow development of a 'free black' community at the Cape towards the close of the seventeenth century.

The Adventures of Jewel Cardwell


Fumi Hancock - 2012
    With her school fr-nemies, rivalry and treachery become the order of the day and Jewel is forced to question everything she thought she knew as she struggles to stay alive in a dubious place riddled with demonic activity! Armed with a magical secret from her dying grandmother, a golden locket, she sets a new course in motion. In the middle of this whirlwind of events, she is caught between two boys: Darwin Morton, a lad she's known growing up, and Eric Broder, a soccer team leader with a silver spoon in his mouth. Why her love life has to get interesting now is a question she can't answer!“"I welcomed death with open arms, closed my eyes and listened as the aircraft made rattling and shaking sounds through the dreary weather. If this was my time to go, I would embrace darkness, as I had nothing else to lose -- JEWEL CARDWELL.”Will Jewel be able to solve the mystery before evil is unleashed against those she loves?Join Jewel Cardwell as she sets out to unlock the aged secret to the demonic activities in pursuit of her family lineage.