Category: Most Popular

Sleepwalking Land

A bus burned down on a dusty road serves as a shelter for old Tuahir and boy Muidinga, fleeing the devastating civil war that is raging everywhere in Mozambique. As is well known, after ten years of anti-colonial war (1965-75), the Southeast African country was faced with a long and bloody internal conflict that extended from 1976 to 1992. The vehicle is full of charred bodies. But there is also another body on the side of the road, next to a suitcase that houses the “Kindzu notebooks”, the long diary of the dead man in question. From there, two stories are narrated in parallel: the journey of Tuahir and Muidinga, and, in flashback, the journey of Kindzu in search of naparamas, traditional warriors, blessed by sorcerers, who, in the boy’s eyes, are the only hope against warlords. Terra Sonâmbula – considered by a special jury at the Zimbabwe Book Fair as one of the twelve best African books of the 20th century and now reissued in Brazil by Companhia das Letras – is an abyss novel, written in a poetic prose that refers to Guimarães Rosa. Couto also uses the resources of magical realism and traditional African narrative art to compose this beautiful fable, which teaches us that dreaming, even in the most adverse conditions, is an indispensable element to continue living.

Une si longue lettre

So Long a Letter, Mariama Bâ’s first novel, is literally written as a long letter. As the novel begins, Ramatoulaye Fall is beginning a letter to her lifelong friend Aissatou Bâ. The occasion for writing is Ramatoulaye’s recent widowhood. As she gives her friend the details of her husband’s death, she recounts the major events in their lives.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Most Popular Nigeria

Half of a yellow sun

Half of a Yellow Sun is a remarkable novel about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race—and about the ways in which love can complicate them all.

Chinua Achebe Most Popular Nigeria

Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart is the debut novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, first published in 1958. Its story chronicles pre-colonial life in the southeastern part of Nigeria and the arrival of Europeans during the late 19th century. It is seen as the archetypal modern African novel in English, and one of the first to receive global critical acclaim. It is a staple book in schools throughout Africa and is widely read and studied in English-speaking countries around the world. The novel was first published in the UK in 1962 by William Heinemann Ltd., and became the first work published in Heinemann’s African Writers Series.