Africa's best books and more...
Incisive, impetuous,impertinent: Rian Malan is the kind of literary animal – or should we say beast? – whose fierceness only matches his sense of the narration. In Resident Alien, his collection of 27 articles, Malan provides a book that is evidently provocative but engaging enough to be recommended to anybody willing to approach contemporary South Africa in oblique and often hilarious ways.
In The Trouble with Nigeria, acclaimed author Chinua Achebe addresses his country’s problems, and the challenges that hold back Nigeria from moving forward. His arguments, however, are relevant not just for Nigeria but for many other countries.
Despite the fact that Africa has had its share of conflicts in the last decade, there has been a general trend towards greater democracy and better governance. As recent events in the Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Egypt, and currently in Libya show, however, the potential for further conflict remains very much a part of Africa’s reality. For Alfred Nhema and Paul Zeleza, both respected African scholars, understanding why conflicts in Africa occur is essential to their resolution and prevention.
In his book, Aids Activist Alex De Waal, questions why, despite its devastation, Aids isn’t top of the agenda for each and every government on the continent? How do governments treat the scourge, he asks?
In this volume of essays, first published in the USA in 2009 by Alfred A. Knopf, Chinua Achebe walks us through time; through his thoughts on politics and personalities; colonialism and self-identity; oppression and history and even the bias of narrative in children’s books.
In this book published in the US in 2010 by Three Rivers Press (and earlier by Verso Books), Mamdani argues that what really happened in Darfur was not a genocide but a civil war, similar to what took place in Northern Uganda, Congo, Chad and other African countries.
The Shackled Continent remains one of the most substantive narratives of the African plight; bad leadership, corruption, tribalism, HIV/AIDS; but, as some critics have argued, it has little to offer on how to move the continent forward.
Edkin’s book, Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of the Empire in Kenya, is the product of nearly a decade’s research. It paints a picture of British colonial rule in Kenya that is deeply at odds with the supposed colonial mission to pacify and civilize the African indigenous people.
The book tries to answer the question whether Luthuli, the Nobel Prize laureate and one-time President of Africa’s oldest liberation movement – the ANC – ever believed in violence as a means to overthrow South Africa’s racist regime. Did
Not everyone involved in the struggle against apartheid came from the Mandela, Sisulu or Tambo political dynasties. And most certainly, not everyone had a chance at the same privileges.
But had it not been for backroom boys like old communist John Edward Matthews, who succumbed to cancer in his 85th year, the wheels of the struggle would not have turned as smoothly.
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