If you're not careful you'll get insane just like your mother. Your mother was a white woman. They had to lock her up, as she was having a child by the stable boy who was a native." It is never clear to Elizabeth whether the mission school principal's cruel revelation of her origins is at the bottom of her mental breakdown. She has left South Africa with her son and is living in the village of Motabeng, the place of sand, in Botswana where there are no street lights at night. In the darkness of this country where people turn and look at her with vague curiosity as an outsider she establishes an entirely abnormal relationship with two men. A mind-bending book which takes the reader in and out of sanity.

    Flush with self-importance, he demands to see the king, but the king has just left for the south of his realm. Traveling through an increasingly phantasmagoric landscape in the company of a beggar and two roguish boys, Clarence is gradually stripped of his pretensions, until he is sold to the royal harem as a slave. But in the end Clarence’s bewildering journey is the occasion of a revelation, as he discovers the image, both shameful and beautiful, of his own humanity in the alien splendor of the king.Camara Laye published his first novel in 1953, the autobiographical L'Enfant noir (The African Child, also published under the title The Dark Child). It follows his own journey from childhood in Kouroussa, his education in Conakry, and eventual departure for France. The book won the Prix Charles Veillon in 1954. L'Enfant noir was followed the next year by Le Regard du roi (The Radiance of the King).

    Mpho's voice is a voice almost never heard in literature or history, a voice from within the struggle of "ordinary" African women to negotiate a world which incorporates ancient pastoral ways and the congestion, brutality, and racist violence of city life. It is also the voice of a born storyteller who has a subject worthy of her gifts - a story for all the world to hear.

    Written in English, the novel tells the story of Tsomo, a young Bhutanese woman who embarks on the difficult and lonely journey of life. Tsomo's travels, which begin after her mother's death, take her away from her family, and leads her across Bhutan and into India. All the while, Tsomo seeks to find herself and a life partner, and grows as a person and a woman. The text of this unusual work is enriched by detailed descriptions of ritual life in Bhutan. The text of this unusual work is enriched by detailed descriptions of ritual life in Bhutan. The novel weaves a complex tapestry of life from a relatively unknown part of the world.

    The long, hot summer has arrived and his friends have left the city. Naser spends his time off sitting beneath the palm tree outside his flat, dreaming of Egyptian actresses, and keeping out of the way of the religious police.

    A young man arrives at the church of a small African village and starts whistling so beautifully that the priest is left in tears. As his weeklong stay continues, the whistler finds himself affected by the colorful inhabitants of the village as they all become bewitched and surrender to the moods of his melodies.

    It is also the first collection of Lao short stories to be published in the English language. Peter Koret's Introduction explores the history of modern Lao literature and considers Outhine's writing within this broader context.

    Odidi Oganda, running for his life, is gunned down in the streets of Nairobi. His grief-stricken sister, Ajany, just returned from Brazil, and their father bring his body back to their crumbling home in the Kenyan drylands, seeking some comfort and peace. But the murder has stirred memories long left untouched and unleashed a series of unexpected events: Odidi and Ajany’s mercurial mother flees in a fit of rage; a young Englishman arrives at the Ogandas’ house, seeking his missing father; a hardened policeman who has borne witness to unspeakable acts reopens a cold case; and an all-seeing Trader with a murky identity plots an overdue revenge. In scenes stretching from the violent upheaval of contemporary Kenya back through a shocking political assassination in 1969 and the Mau Mau uprisings against British colonial rule in the 1950s, we come to learn the secrets held by this parched landscape, buried deep within the shared past of the family and of a conflicted nation. Here is a spellbinding novel about a brother and sister who have lost their way; about how myths come to pass, history is written, and war stains us forever.

    Wrestling with a history marked by war and displacement, the work here presents a fresh and necessary account of an emerging nation, past and present. In vivid, gripping prose, There Is a Country's stories explore youth and love, life and death: a first glimpse of what South Sudanese literature has to offer.

    This is the patrimony of childhood and the stuff of 'An Evening in Guanima.' " A tribut to Cat Island, Bahamas the author's birthplace, these stories recount the adventures of Bouki and Rabbi, Jack and B'er Debbil and other fascinating characters in wry metaphor and hilarious dialogue. Here is a collection of Bahamiana that will fascinate the non-Bahamian and will represent a homecoming for the people in the Bahama islands.

    Tony, a senior police officer in Maputo, has apparently been supporting four other families for many years. Rami remains calm in the face of her husband's duplicity and plots to make an honest man out of him. After Tony is forced to marry the four other women--as well as an additional lover--according to polygamist custom, the rival lovers join together to declare their voices and demand their rights. In this brilliantly funny and feverishly scathing critique, a major work from Mozambique's first published female novelist, Paulina Chiziane explores her country's traditional culture, its values and hypocrisy, and the subjection of women the world over.

    Mugezi's hard-won observations form a cri de coeur for a people shaped by untold losses.

    We learn of a dark chapter in the island’s history: a bush fire destroys the crops, then hundreds perish in a cholera outbreak. Superstition dominates: now the islanders must sacrifice their possessions to the enraged ocean god. What of their lives will they manage to save?Whitmanesque in its lyrical evocation of the island, Ávila Laurel’s writing builds quietly, through the oral rhythms of traditional storytelling, into gripping drama worthy of an Achebe or a García Márquez.

    With her pregnant mother on the verge of labor, her brother anxious to join the Liberators, and a house full of hungry siblings, neighbors, and displaced refugees, Alinda learns what it takes to survive, and eventually to plan for a new life.

    Working his way north over nearly a decade, Kpomassie finally arrived in the country of his dreams. This brilliantly observed and superbly entertaining record of his adventures among the Inuit is a testament both to the wonderful strangeness of the human species and to the surprising sympathies that bind us all.