I’ve decided to join the Africa Reading Challenge, which I first learned about from Matt Cheney. It’s pretty straightforward: read six books this year that are either about Africa or by African authors. Ever since I first put together the unit on African science for my survey course on science in the ancient world, I’ve been deeply aware of how little I know about African history, so this is a great excuse for me to read up. (On the long list of weblog posts I keep not getting around to writing: how trying to teach a unit on the history of science in Africa changed the way I think about teaching the history of science.)
The reading list may change as the year progresses, but this is my preliminary set of six books:
This is list is haphazard at best. The novels were selected based on recommendations, and mostly because I didn’t want to limit myself to nonfiction, although I think nonfiction is where my interests are focused. The point of the challenge is to read broadly, and reading broadly on a topic that’s already as broad as “Africa” is obviously only going to be the first step towards understanding. But it’s a start. (It’s also cheating, a little–I bought the John Reader book last week, before I’d even heard of the reading challenge. It was my vacation reading, and I’m still working my way through it.)
What I’d love, though, are pointers to more readings on pre-colonial history. Are there any good histories of the pre-colonial societies along the Niger, for instance? My teaching on this has been cobbled together from articles and references in other texts, but I’d really love a good thorough history that covers the Kingdom of Ghana, and Gao, and Kanem. Mali in the time of Mansa Musa, or even before. I’m sure these books must be out there, I just haven’t had a lot of luck locating them so far. (I’m hoping that the Klieman book on my list might be a start in that direction, although not quite what I’m looking for.)
So that’s the Africa Reading Challenge. I’ll be posting about the books as I read them. If anyone else wants to join in, just sign up at the original post. (And if you don’t have any idea where to start finding books for your list, there are suggestions both on that page and on Matt Cheney’s post.)
Posted Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 11:07 am. Filed under: academic > personal.
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If you have never read Cry, the Beloved Country, I can’t recommend it enough. The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency is a lot of fun. In my TBR pile is Things Fall Apart. In popular culture I like the writings of Elizabeth Wein and Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu.
Hooray! Glad you’re joining in! Nervous Conditions is a favorite of mine, so I can’t wait to see what you make of it. I hadn’t heard of the Klieman book, but am now fascinated and have to add it to my ever-growing and all-consuming Must Locate This Book list…
I picked up The Royal Kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay, Life in Medieval Africa by Fredrick McKissack as well as Tropical gangsters by Robert Klitgaard.
Happy to find this blog. My daughter is going to studey in jnior year in Ghana.
One of the things I really enjoy about your list is that you’re delving into lots of non-fiction. I’m also hoping to read citizen & subject; i’ll be interested to compare opinions.
welcome to the challenge!
In high school I read, and loved, “Heart of the Ngoni”, a book of sort of folkloric/semi-legendary history from seventeenth century Segu, which I think is now Mali. It’s sort of like Arthurian chivalric romance in tone, a bunch of bad-ass warrior dudes who are all like “to show how butch I am I demand that you shoot at me three times with your musket before I even draw!” and “alas, the fortune teller has told me I am fated to die!”
I haven’t re-read it since back then, so it may not hold up, but it’s semi-historical, pre-colonial, and along the Niger, and it was a lot of fun at the time.
Ben– The library here has that one! I may swap it in for something else on the list, we’ll see. It sounds fun.
One of the very best books I ever came across – you can find second-hand copies on ABE – is called Warriors and Strangers. It’s a memoir by Gerald Hanley of his time serving in Somalia in the second world war. Absolutely beautifully written.
Also, the South African writer James McClure wrote a fantastic series of police procedurals featuring Kramer and Zondie – an Afrikaans and a Zulu detective – set in Trekkersburg (a thinly-fictionalised version of Pietermaritzburg), during Apartheid. The first one, The Steam Pig, won the CWA Gold Dagger Award. They really are fantastic – McClure died recently and I think there are too few people who know about his books any more.
For contemporary, and rather depressing, SA crime novels, my friend Richard Kunzmann’s third book has just come out. He’s published by MacMillan in the UK, and the first two books are also available in US editions.
Oh, and Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong’o's Devil on the Cross is a seriously weird book! If you can find a copy.
As far as Apartheid-era books go, the two classics are Cry The Beloved Country by Paton, which is a cornerstone title, and Andre Brink’s A Dry, White Season. Also, for fun, you might want to look up Flashman and the Tiger, which is – partly – about the battle of Rourke’s Drift.