Category: Most Popular

Living, loving and staying awake at night

Post author By afrikanseries
Post date June 25, 2020
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A first book of short stories from this writer, exploring the range of female experiences in South Africa, from the village to the towmships, and whose tone ranges from humour to tragedy.

Guinea Most Popular

The Dark Child

Long regarded as Africa’s preeminent Francophone novelist, Laye (1928-1980) herein marvels over his mother’s supernatural powers, his father’s distinction as the village goldsmith, and his own passage into manhood, which is marked by animistic beliefs and bloody rituals of primeval origin. Eventually, he must choose between this unique place and the academic success that lures him to distant cities. More than an autobiography of one boy, this is the universal story of sacred traditions struggling against the encroachment of a modern world.

A passionate and deeply affecting record, The Dark Child is a classic of African literature.

Ivory Coast Most Popular

Les soleils des indépendances

Post author By afrikanseries
Post date June 24, 2020
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What will be the fate of Fama, authentic Prince Malinké, in times of independence and the single party? The old and the new confront each other in a duel that is both tragic and derisory as history goes by, with its procession of joys and sufferings. Beyond the political fable, Ahmadou Kourouma restores like no other the whole depth of African life, mixing everyday life and myth in a language reinvented as close as possible to the human condition. Since its publication in 1970, this book has established itself as one of the great classics of African literature.

L’aventure ambiguë

L’Aventure ambiguë is a novel by Senegalese author Cheikh Hamidou Kane, first published in 1961, about the interactions of western and African cultures. Its hero is a boy from the Diallobé region of Senegal who goes to study in France. There, he loses touch with his Islamic faith and his Senegalese roots

Ualalapi

Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa first published Ualalapi: Fragments from the End of Empire in Portuguese in 1987. Named one of Africa’s hundred best books of the twentieth century, it reflects on Mozambique’s past and present through interconnected narratives related to the last ruler of the Gaza Empire, Ngungunhane. Defeated by the Portuguese in 1895, Ngungunhane was reclaimed for propaganda purposes by Mozambique’s post-independence government as a national and nationalist hero. The regime celebrated his resistance to the colonial occupation of southern Mozambique as a precursor to the twentieth-century struggle for independence. In Ualalapi, Ungulani challenges that ideological celebration and portrays Ngungunhane as a despot, highlighting the violence and tyranny that were hallmarks of the Gaza Empire. This fresh look at the history of late nineteenth-century southeast Africa provides a prism through which to examine the machinations of those in power in Mozambique during the 1980s.

Bones

Features information on bones, presented as part of the allHealth.com resource of iVillage, Inc. Includes daily u.

Burger’s Daughter

This is the moving story of the unforgettable Rosa Burger, a young woman from South Africa cast in the mold of a revolutionary tradition. Rosa tries to uphold her heritage handed on by martyred parents while still carving out a sense of self. Although it is wholly of today, Burger’s Daughter can be compared to those 19th century Russian classics that make a certain time and place come alive, and yet stand as universal celebrations of the human spirit. Nadine Gordimer, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born and lives in South Africa.

Blood Knot

Blood Knot is a play about two brothers, who live in a one-room shack in a crumbling section of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. They are different in temperament, but they reaffirm and support each other. Morris is a light-skinned colored man, Zachariah is a black man. They are half-brothers, who have the same mother. They have shared the same one-room shack for about a year. Zachariah works as a gatekeeper at a park. His job is to keep black people from coming into the whites-only park. He has footsores, from having to stand on his feet all day. Morris prepares hot water for Zach to bathe his feet. Morris has been saving the money that Zach earns, so that they can buy a two-man farm. Meanwhile, the lonely Zachariah has struck up a pen-pal relationship with a white girl, and entertains fantasies that she might fall in love with him. The more level-headed Morris tries to disabuse Zachariah of such notions, and warns him that in segregated South Africa, such a relationship can only mean trouble, especially since the girl has indicated in letters that she has a brother who’s a policeman. The girl says in her next letter that she is coming to visit Port Elizabeth, and that she wants to meet Zach. She does not know that he is black. Zach suggests that, since Morris is light-skinned, he should take Zach’s place, and pretend to be a white man. Zach spends their savings on a suit of clothes for Morris, telling him that he should go to see Ethel. In the end the girl decides not to visit. Morris and Zachariah will, apparently, remain together for many unhappy years to come, needing each other, but unable to bridge the gap brought about by their respective skin tones.

Algeria Most Popular

Fantasia, an Algerian Cavalcade

Post author By afrikanseries
Post date June 21, 2020
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In this stunning novel, Assia Djebar intertwines the history of her native Algeria with episodes from the life of a young girl in a story stretching from the French conquest in 1830 to the War of Liberation of the 1950s. The girl, growing up in the old Roman coastal town of Cherchel, sees her life in contrast to that of a neighboring French family, and yearns for more than law and tradition allow her to experience. Headstrong and passionate, she escapes from the cloistered life of her family to join her brother in the maquis’ fight against French domination.Djebar’s exceptional descriptive powers bring to life the experiences of girls and women caught up in the dual struggle for independence – both their own and Algeria’s.

Buchi Emecheta Most Popular

The Joys Of Motherhood

In this novel, Emecheta reveals and celebrates the pleasures derived from fulfilling responsibilities related to family matters in child bearing, mothering, and nurturing activities among women. However, the author additionally highlights how the ‘joys of motherhood’ also include anxiety, obligation, and pain.