Book picks similar to
Nationalists and Nomads: Essays on Francophone African Literature and Culture by Christopher L. Miller
africa
bunche
criticism-and-theory
curious
Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa
Keith B. Richburg - 1997
Map; updated with a new afterword.
The Master Blaster
P.F. Kluge - 2012
This captivating novel intertwines the stories of several inhabitants on Saipan, America's least-appreciated tropical island. George Griffin is a jaded writer who comes for a press junket and stays far longer than expected; Stephanie Warner is a university professor recently on "trial separation" from her husband; Mel Brodie is an elderly entrepreneur; and Khan is a Bangladeshi laborer who comes to Saipan ("America") to escape hunger. Their voices circle the enthralling element of Saipan-and the hopes that originally drew them to the island. With the versatility that won Kluge accolades as the writer behind Dog Day Afternoon, The Master Blaster is a rare wonder of contemporary storytelling.
The Story of French
Jean-Benoît Nadeau - 2002
After this, Latin was purged from the courts of France by Francois 1st, giving root to French speakers' 21st century obsession with language protection. The obsession progressed as Cardinal Richelieu established the French Academy, a group entrusted with the responsibility of keeping the language pure and eloquent. As French circled the globe, the international cast of characters included Montaigne, Catherine the Great, Frederic II of Prussia, the guides of the Lewis and Clark expedition, Jules Verne, and others. Let Nadeau and Barlow guide you through the story of a language used to write some of the world's great masterpieces of literature, construct some of the most important documents of diplomacy, bedevil millions with its vagaries of pronunciation and beguile everyone with its beauty.
The Hospital
Ahmed Bouanani - 1990
Based on Bouanani’s own experiences as a tuberculosis patient, the hospital begins to feel increasingly like a prison or a strange nightmare: the living resemble the dead; bureaucratic angels of death descend to direct traffic, claiming the lives of a motley cast of inmates one by one; childhood memories and fantasies of resurrection flash in and out of the narrator’s consciousness as the hospital transforms before his eyes into an eerie, metaphorical space. Somewhere along the way, the hospital’s iron gate disappears.Like Sadegh Hedayat’s The Blind Owl, the works of Franz Kafka—or perhaps like Mann’s The Magic Mountain thrown into a meat-grinder—The Hospital is a nosedive into the realms of the imagination, in which a journey to nowhere in particular leads to the most shocking places.
Jules et Jim
Henri-Pierre Roché - 1953
Together they embark upon a riotously Bohemian life, full of gaiety, color and bustle. And then there is Kate, the enigmatic German girl with the mysterious smile.Capricious, untamed and curiously innocent, Kate steals their hearts in turn, and so begins the moving and tender story of three people in love, with each other and with life. Francois Truffaut, whose film of the novel is one of cinema's greatest achievments, has called Jules et Jim "a perfect hymn to love."Henri-Pierre Roch devoted his life to the arts, numbering Duchamp, Brancusi, Braque, Satie and Picasso amongst his closest friends. Jules et Jim, an autobiographical novel, was originally published in France in 1953 and was followed by Deux Anglaises et le Continent, which Truffaut also made into a film."A delightful account of people sharing and unsharing each other."?Times Literary Supplement
On Wine and Hashish
Charles Baudelaire - 1851
As well as providing an absorbing of nineteenth-century drug use, Hashish, Wine, Opium captures the spirit of French Romanticism, in its struggle to free the mind from the shackles of the humdrum and the conventional, and serves as a fascinating prologue to the psychedelic literature of the following centuries.
The Poor Christ of Bomba
Mongo Beti - 1956
Gradually it becomes apparent that the local church men have been using the local girls for their own purposes. This novel is a biting critique of colonial life and missionary activity.
The Republic of Gupta: A Story of State Capture
Pieter-Louis Myburgh - 2017
Since then, they have become embroiled in allegations of state capture, of dishing out cabinet posts to officials who would do their bidding, and of benefiting from lucrative state contracts and dubious loans. The Republic of Gupta investigates what the Gupta brothers were up to during Thabo Mbeki’s presidency and how they got into the inner circle of President Jacob Zuma. It shines new light on their controversial ventures in computers, cricket, newspapers and TV news, and coal and uranium mining. And it explores their exposure by public protector Thuli Madonsela, their conflict with finance minister Pravin Gordhan, and the real reasons behind the cabinet reshuffle of March 2017.Pieter-Louis Myburgh delves deeper than ever before into the Guptas’ business dealings and their links to prominent South African politicians, and explains how one family managed to transform an entire country into the Republic of Gupta.
The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers
Fouad Laroui - 2012
Laroui uses surrealism, laugh-out-loud humor, and profound compassion across a variety of literary styles to highlight the absurdity of the human condition, exploring the realities of life in a world where everything is foreign.Fouad Laroui has published over twenty novels and collections of short stories, poetry, and essays. Laroui teaches econometrics and environmental science at the University of Amsterdam, and lives between Amsterdam, Paris, and Casablanca.
Diva
Carrie Duffy - 2012
Brought up on the mean streets of Detroit, she is determined that nothing will stop her from becoming the world’s next supermodel.Beautiful and innocent, Alyson Wakefield is desperate to escape her upbringing. She decides it is time to take hold of her life and follow her dreams.Heading to the chic streets of Paris, the girls move in with a maverick young designer, Ce Ce Bouvier. Born to a life of luxury and glamour, Ce Ce is determined to stand on her own two feet and take the fashion world by storm.The girls vow to make it to the top, but their friendship is about to be tested to the limits when deception, betrayal and tragedy are played out in the glare of the paparazzi flashbulbs.Can the three girls overcome the ghosts of the past – or will the catwalk consume them?
Fifty Years in Chains
Charles Ball - 1859
His recollections and observations encompass the manner in which he was treated by planters and slaveholders in Maryland, South Carolina, and Georgia; the conditions and treatment of other slaves; the state of morals among cotton planters; and the perils and suffering of fugitive slaves.One of the earliest and most important slave narratives, this account provides a valuable primary source on early nineteenth-century Southern plantation life. An inspiring story of courage and perseverance, it is essential reading for students of American history and African-American studies.
Paris Noir: African-Americans in the City of Light
Tyler Stovall - 1996
Alongside Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Henry Miller was an avant-garde and tightly knit community of African Americans who found in Paris the artistic, racial, and emotional freedom denied them back home. The writers James Baldwin and Richard Wright; the jazz musicians Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Sidney Bechet; and the artists Henry Ossawa Tanner, Lois Mailou Jones, and Jean-Michel Basquiat are among the score of exiles for whom Paris symbolized a color-blind society. Unlike their white compatriots, African Americans in Paris rejected not only American society, but also their victimized status in the U.S. And while black and white Americans inhabited different worlds even in Paris, they found meeting grounds in such places as Bricktop's jazzy nightclub, where the flamboyant owner taught Cole Porter to dance the Charleston. As the historian John Merriman proclaimed, "With skill and passion, Stovall brings this vibrant community to life."
We have now begun our descent: How to Stop South Africa losing its way
Justice Malala - 2015
I am furious. Because I never thought it would happen to us. Not us, the rainbow nation that defied doomsayers and suckled and nurtured a fragile democracy into life for its children. I never thought it would happen to us, this relentless decline, the flirtation with a leap over the cliff.” In a searing, honest paean to his country, renowned political journalist and commentator Justice Malala forces South Africa to come face to face with the country it has become: corrupt, crime-ridden, compromised, its institutions captured by a selfish political elite bent on enriching itself at the expense of everyone else. In this deeply personal reflection, Malala’s diagnosis is devastating: South Africa is on the brink of ruin. He does not stop there. Malala believes that we have the wherewithal to turn things around: our lauded Constitution, the wealth of talent that exists, our history of activism and a democratic trajectory can all be used to stop the rot. But he has a warning: South Africans of all walks of life need to wake up and act, or else they will soon find their country has been stolen.
An Arab Melancholia
Abdellah Taïa - 2008
And that's why I left the apartment.... And there I was, right in the heart of the Arab world, a world that never tired of making the same mistakes over and over.... I had no more leniency when it came to the Arab world... None for the Arabs and none for myself. I suddenly saw things with merciless lucidity....-- An Arab MelancholiaSal', near Rabat. The mid 1980s. A lower-class teenager is running until he's out of breath. He's running after his dream, his dream to become a movie director. He's running after the Egyptian movie star, Souad Hosni, who's out there somewhere, miles away from this neighborhood--which is a place the teenager both loves and hates, the home at which he is not at home, an environment that will only allow him his identity through the cultural lens of shame and silence. Running is the only way he can stand up to the violence that is his Morocco.Irresistibly charming, angry, and wry, this autobiographical novel traces the emergence of Abdellah Taia's identity as an openly gay Arab man living between cultures. The book spans twenty years, moving from Sal', to Paris, to Cairo. Part incantation, part polemic, and part love letter, this extraordinary novel creates a new world where the self is effaced by desire and love, and writing is always an act of discovery.
The Rolling Stones Discover America
Michael Lydon - 2013
His long, intimate piece on the tour, The Rolling Stones Discover America, captures the highs and lows of the grueling tour and has become a classic of rock ‘n’ roll journalism—one that the Maysles brothers studied to guide the editing of their film, Gimme Shelter.