During the election, the boys are paid by the Small Party to cause trouble. When their attempt to burn down the opposition’s local headquarters ends in disaster, Dantala must run for his life, leaving his best friend behind. He makes his way to a mosque that provides him with food, shelter, and guidance. With his quick aptitude and modest nature, Dantala becomes a favored apprentice to the mosque’s sheikh. Before long, he is faced with a terrible conflict of loyalties, as one of the sheikh’s closest advisors begins to raise his own radical movement. When bloodshed erupts in the city around him, Dantala must decide what kind of Muslim—and what kind of man—he wants to be. Told in Dantala’s naïve, searching voice, this astonishing debut explores the ways in which young men are seduced by religious fundamentalism and violence.

    "If I don't offer it milk, our son will grow up to look like a lizard," she explained. Clearly I had a lot to learn about life in Africa.On the cusp of middle age, Simon Fenton leaves Britain in search of adventure and finds Senegal, love, fatherhood, witch doctors—and a piece of land that could make a perfect guest house, if only he knew how to build one. The Casamance is an undiscovered paradise here mystic Africa governs life, people walk to the beat of the djembe, when it rains it pours, and the mangoes are free. But the fact that his name translates to "vampire" and he has had a curse placed on him via the medium of eggs could mean Simon’s new life may not be so easy.

    A lame and frail Malangana – ‘Little Suns’ – searches for his beloved Mthwakazi after many lonely years spent in Lesotho. Mthwakazi was the young woman he had fallen in love with twenty years earlier, before the assassination of Hamilton Hope ripped the two of them apart.Intertwined with Malangana’s story, is the account of Hope – a colonial magistrate who, in the late nineteenth century, was undermining the local kingdoms of the eastern Cape in order to bring them under the control of the British. It was he who wanted to coerce Malangana’s king and his people, the amaMpondomise, into joining his battle – a scheme Malangana’s conscience could not allow.Zakes Mda’s fine new novel 'Little Suns' weaves the true events surrounding the death of Magistrate Hope into a touching story of love and perseverance that can transcend exile and strife.

    There, he befriends a young girl named Victoria, and for a brief time, their childhood is promising. Soon, the violence that is raging across the country makes its way to Aderito’s doorstep, and both children are abducted by rebels and forced to learn the ways of trained killers in a war they barely understand. With only each other for support, Victoria and Aderito struggle to remain unnoticed among their peers. But the more Aderito kills, the more he needs killing, channeling all his rage into war and becoming a valuable weapon. And Victoria, growing older and prettier by the day, begins to attract unwanted attention from their captors. Caught in a battle that ravages villages and tears families apart, Aderito knows he cannot expect a happy ending. And yet he and Victoria make brave plans to escape—only to find themselves facing torments that no adult, let alone child, should ever have to face. As Mozambique struggles through its defining crisis, Aderito too must find a way to survive the childhood that will come to define him as a man.

    In unearthing memories of her childhood and adolescence, she takes us to the bleakest corners of her family life. She lets us peer into the incongruences of an insular society, and witness how they can force a creator into servitude. Follies, superstition, tradition and unquestioned beliefs clog her world, and the only means of escape is to destroy and recreate.

    In his work, which has included plays, novels, and essays, Ngugi narrates the injustice of colonial violence and the dictatorial betrayal of decolonization, the fight for freedom and subsequent incarceration, and the aspiration toward economic equality in the face of gross inequality. With both hope and disappointment, he questions the role of language in both the organization of power structures and the pursuit of autonomy and self-expression. Ngugi’s fiction has reached wide acclaim, but his nonfictional work, while equally brilliant, is difficult to find. Secure the Base changes this by bringing together for the first time essays spanning nearly three decades. Originating as disparate lectures and texts, this complete volume will remind readers anew of Ngugi’s power and importance. Written in a personal and accessible style, the book covers a range of issues, including the role of the intellectual, the place of Asia in Africa, labor and political struggles in an era of rampant capitalism, and the legacies of slavery and prospects for peace. At a time when Africa looms large in our discussions of globalization, Secure the Base is mandatory reading.

    Go, buy this book now. You’ll thank me. RECOMMENDED."While vacationing in Egypt. . . Jeannette Walker, a cynical scientist jaded by swarms of tour groups and knick-knack shacks, is lured by a teenage tour guide to visit a newly discovered tomb. No other tourists there! Inside the chamber, she tumbles down a shaft and 3000 years back in time. Now, in a world where deities walk the streets and prophecy heats up the air, Jeannette is desperate for normal and the simple pleasures of sanitation and refrigeration. However, a slave master hawking a cat-headed girl derails her homebound mission, and Jeannette—penniless in this ancient world—steals the girl, bringing down the tireless fury of the slaver. Saddled with a newly awakened mummy and the cat-headed girl, Jeannette contrives a plan to free them from the slaver's ire, but will she have to dive into the belly of the beast to succeed?

    African Leaders of the Twentieth Century will complement courses in history and political science and serve as a useful collection for the general reader.Steve Biko, by Lindy WilsonSteve Biko inspired a generation of black South Africans to claim their true identity and refuse to be a part of their own oppression. This short biography shows how fundamental he was to the reawakening and transformation of South Africa in the second half of the twentieth century and just how relevant he remains.Emperor Haile Selassie, by Bereket Habte SelassieEmperor Haile Selassie was an iconic figure of the twentieth century, a progressive monarch who ruled Ethiopia from 1916 to 1974. The fascinating story of the emperor¹s life is also the story of modern Ethiopia.Patrice Lumumba, by Georges Nzongola-NtalajaPatrice Lumumba was a leader of the independence struggle in what is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Decades after his assassination, Lumumba remains one of the heroes of the twentieth-century Africanindependence movement.Thomas Sankara: An African Revolutionary, by Ernest HarschThomas Sankara, often called the African Che Guevara, was president of Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in Africa, until his assassination during the military coup that brought down his government. This is the first English-language book to tell the story of Sankara’s life and struggles.

    Months before, a short film made his face widely recognisable, but now he is shunned by Boer and Brit alike.Three decades later, Henry is the magistrate of Gower, a small inland town in the Union of South Africa, where he makes friends with young newcomer Adaira van Brugge. Adaira’s story will start to echo Henry’s when she takes a secret lover: Ira Gevint, a Jew who fled Europe only to wind up in a town ready to experiment with its own kind of persecution.As events threaten to unravel the careful life Henry has created for himself, desire surfaces alongside nationalist fervour in Claire Roberston’s arresting new novel about the courage to choose love over fear.

    between the past and present, love and infatuation, a man and a woman, two places you call home. Alongside an interview with the author, this story originally appeared in the anthology "Gambit: Newer African Writing" (The Mantle, 2014).