Book picks similar to
Shameless by Futhi Ntsingila


africa-s
autobiographical
chez-nous
coming-of-age

Happiness is a four-letter word


Cynthia Jele - 2010
    Suddenly, no amount of cocktails can cure the stress that simultaneously unsettles their lives. Nandi’s final wedding arrangements are nearly in place so why is she feeling on edge? Zaza, the “trophy wife”, waits for the day her affair comes to light and her husband gives her a one-way ticket back to the township. Tumi has only one wish to complete her perfect life – a child. But when her wish is granted, it’s not exactly how she pictured it. And Princess? For the first time ever, she has fallen in love – with Leo, a painter who seems to press all the right buttons. But soon she discovers – like her friends already have – that life is not a bed of roses, and happiness never comes with a manual . . .

A Lucky Sixpence


Anne Baker - 2018
     Praise for Anne Baker's Merseyside sagas: 'A stirring tale of romance and passion, poverty and ambition' Liverpool EchoIt's 1937 and for sisters Lizzie and Milly Travis there's nothing quite like the thrill of the funfair at New Brighton. Amid the bright lights and whirling rides, Lizzie wins a lucky sixpence on a stall - as well as the heart of a handsome stallholder.Ben McCluskey isn't the type of man Lizzie's respectable parents had in mind for her, nevertheless the young couple embark on a whirlwind romance. Lizzie's mother worries that history will repeat itself when Ben introduces her daughter to a world she never knew existed. And, as war looms, Milly realises that her sister's luck can't last for ever...

Apocalypse Now Now


Charlie Human - 2013
    As the 16-year-old kingpin of the Spider, his smut-peddling schoolyard syndicate, he's making a name for himself as an up-and-coming entrepreneur. Profits are on the rise, the other gangs are staying out of his business, and he's going out with Esme, the girl of his dreams.But when Esme gets kidnapped, and all the clues point towards strange forces at work, things start to get seriously weird. The only man drunk enough to help is a bearded, booze-soaked, supernatural bounty hunter that goes by the name of Jackson 'Jackie' Ronin.Plunged into the increasingly bizarre landscape of Cape Town's supernatural underworld, Baxter and Ronin team up to save Esme. On a journey that takes them through the realms of impossibility, they must face every conceivable nightmare to get her back, including the odd brush with the Apocalypse.

Coldsleep Lullaby


Andrew Brown - 2005
    The narrative alternates between two stories, three hundred years apart. The modern story is a police thriller, focusing on Inspector Eberard Februarie, a coloured police officer investigating the murder of a young student, Melanie du Preez.

THIS is Africa


Mat Dry - 2012
    THIS is Africa is a compilation of stories that defines the maxim "Truth is sometimes stranger, and more wondrous than fiction." From a place known for its continent-wide diversity, notorious for its dramatic turbulence, and beloved for its animals and untamed wildness, Mat Dry, brings his incredible true tales of living and working in Africa as a Safari Guide.

When A Thug Has Feelings


Senoj - 2017
    When her parents found out, they decided to uproot them to another city. After losing contact with Dreon, she experienced her first heartbreak and decided to shift her focus back on her education. Now twenty-three, Niya is in her final year of law school, but over the years she continued to experience the short end of any relationship she was in, including the relationship with her parents. She finally accepts that her heart has never fully healed, but that all changes once she sees Dreon again. She doesn’t know how he will feel about the secret she’s been keeping from him. Dreon Carter was known for the havoc he wreaked growing up. But after being abandoned by his mother on his grandmother’s steps, he was angry and released that anger on other kids. Sometimes, even letting Niya tag along. Barely graduating high school, due to poor attendance, he went into the streets full time and was now known by the street name Menace. He ended up serving some time in prison, but now at twenty-five, he is the king of the dope game in Cleveland, running the streets with his right-hand man, Renzo. He has a two-year-old daughter by a crazy baby mama who’s set on being a pain in his ass and causing friction between him and Niya. Along with running the streets, he’s trying to run his home, but with the streets and his home life trying to cross, he runs into problems. The bond of Menace and Niya is undeniably unbreakable, but is Niya strong enough to be the woman of a thug, going against everything she’s about, and dealing with the drama that comes along? Can Menace avoid the pressures of the street life and be the man Niya wants him to be, while also not giving up his streets, or will it all be too much?

Mhudi


Sol T. Plaatje - 1970
    A romantic epic set in the first half of the nineteenth century, the main action is unleashed by King Mzilikazi's extermination campaign against the Barolong in 1832 at Kunana (nowadays Setlagole), and covers the resultant alliance of defeated peoples with Boer frontiersmen in a resistance movement leading to Battlehill (Vegkop, 1836) and the showdown at the Battle of Mosega (17 January 1839). Plaatje's eponymous heroine is an enduring symbol of the belief in a new day.

The Last Maasai Warriors: An Autobiography


Wilson Meikuaya - 2012
    Wilson and Jackson are two brave warriors of the Maasai, an intensely proud culture built on countless generations steeped in the mystique of tradition, legend and prophecy. They represent the final generation to literally fight for their way of life, coming of age by proving their bravery in the slaying of a lion. They are the last of the great warriors.Yet, as the first generation to fully embrace the modern ways and teachings of Western civilization, the two warriors have adapted — at times seamlessly, at times with unimaginable difficulty — in order to help their people. They strive to preserve a disappearing culture, protecting the sanctity of their elders while paving the way for future generations.At this watershed moment in their history, the warriors carry the weight of their forbearers while embracing contemporary culture and technology. While their struggle to achieve this balance unfolds exquisitely in this story, their discoveries resonate well beyond the Maasai Mara.

A Time of Angels


Patricia Schonstein - 2004
    Brought up on a rich diet of astronomy, philosophy, and storytelling, Primo accurately reads the futures of the local community who pay him in honey cake, tiramisu, and other delicacies. Pasquale Benvenuto is the owner of a beloved wine bar and delicatessen whose culinary reputation rests on recipes for the fruited breads and salamis his father taught him to make.Together Primo and Pasquale form an easy friendship triangle with the beautiful Beatrice, Primo's wife and Pasquale's former girlfriend. But when Beatrice leaves her husband for her old love, Primo is devastated. He casts spells to spoil Pasquale's creations and to win back Beatrice -- but inadvertently conjures up an unexpected visitor.

Why Your Prescription Takes So Damn Long to Fill


Drugmonkey, Master of Pharmacy - 2010
    I call your doctors office and am put on hold for 5 minutes, then informed that your prescription was phoned in to my competitor on the other side of town. Phoning the competitor, I am immediately put on hold for 5 minutes before speaking to a clerk, who puts me back on hold to wait for the pharmacist. Your prescription is then transferred to me, and now I have to get the 2 phone calls that have been put on hold while this was being done. Now I return to the counter to ask if we've ever filled prescriptions for you before. For some reason, you think that "for you" means "for your cousin" and you answer my question with a "yes", whereupon I go the computer and see you are not on file. The phone rings..." That's part of the reason why your prescription takes so long to fill, and after almost 20 years of this, a question I was never quite able to answer loomed larger and larger each day: "Why did I get into this profession?" Cranky customers whose only questions seem to involve their insurance co-pays. Pointless paperwork. People begging for early narcotic refills. Staff cuts. That was my workday. The struggle to get people the medicine and information they needed seemed almost futile at times. Then one day I got the answer. It hit me like a ton of bricks while driving home one spring evening along the California coast. I was born again, but it had nothing to do with Jesus. It did have a lot to do with a little plastic motorcycle. And I did become the pharmacist who saved Christmas. I absolutely know now why I became a pharmacist. I still don't know why your co-pay is so high.

Listen to My Heartbeat


Prajnaa
    He did not speak. He just kept looking into my eyes without as much as a blink."And then...?" he said, in his arrogant voice. "You want to be my girlfriend next?"Merge yourself in the world of... Aryan, Trisha, Rohan, Danny and Aysha.An inescapable story of love and tears that gets your heartbeat racing.

A Walk in the Night and Other Stories


Alex la Guma - 1962
    During the State of Emergency following the Sharpeville massacre he was detained for five months. Continuing to write, he endured house arrest and solitary confinement. La Guma left South Africa as a refugee in 1966 and lived in exile in London and Havana. He died in 1986.A Walk in the Night and Other Stories reveals La Guma as one of the most important African writers of his time. These works reveal the plight of non-whites in apartheid South Africa, laying bare the lives of the poor and the outcasts who filled the ghettoes and shantytowns.A walk in the night --Tattoo marks and nails --At the Portagee's --The gladiators --Blankets --A matter of taste --The lemon orchard

The Mourning Bird


Mubanga Kalimamukwento - 2019
    Faced with the difficult choice of living with their abusive extended family or slithering into the dark underbelly of Lusaka’s streets, Chimuka and Ali escape and become street kids.Against the backdrop of a failed military coup, election riots and a declining economy, Chimuka and Ali are raised by drugs, crime and police brutality. As a teenager, Chimuka is caught between prostitution and the remnants of the fragile stability that existed before her parents’ death.The Mourning Bird is not just Chimuka’s story, it’s a national portrait of Zambia in an era of strife. With lively and unflinching prose, Kalimamukwento paints a country’s burden, shame and silence, which, when juxtaposed with Chimuka’s triumph, forms an empowering debut novel.

Fools and Other Stories


Njabulo S. Ndebele - 1986
    He has gone on to become one of the most powerful voices for cultural freedom on the whole of the African continent today. Ndebele evokes township life with humor and subtlety, rejecting the image of black South Africans as victims and focusing on the complexity and fierce energy of their lives. "Our literature," says Ndebele, "ought to seek to move away from an easy preoccupation with demonstrating the obvious existence of oppression. It exists. The task is to explore how and why people can survive under such harsh conditions." About Njabulo Ndebele: now Chancellor of Witwatersrand University in South Africa. Ndebele began publishing these stories from exile in Lesotho during the 1980s. Ndebele is now recognised as a major voice in South Africa's cultural life. This is his only fiction collection available in Europe or North America. Ndebele's stories first began appearing in Staffrider magazine, an innovative publishing venture linked to the Soweto branch of South African PEN. Founded after the bloody Soweto riots of the mid-1970s, the magazine took as its symbol the staffriders, un-ticketed commuters from the black townships who every day clung onto or balanced on top of buses and trains to get into the cities to work. Staffrider magazine, and in particular Ndebele's stories, helped define a new tone in black South African literature that went beyond and finally overcame apartheid.

Coconut


Kopano Matlwa - 2007
    Redefining what it means to be young, black and beautiful in the the New South Africa. Winner of the European Union Literary Award.