1. Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard.
African magical realism at its best. This is the story in the quest tradition, a young palm wine drinker goes into the land of the dead to bring back his deceased palm wine tapster. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Tutuola is his unusual use of the English language.
2. Camara Laye, Radiance of the King.
An surreal tale about a white man "gone native" in Guinea, West Africa. Translated from the French language. The narrative subverts the idea of travel and racial superiority. Check out a beautiful essay by Toni Morrison on this book titled, "The Foreigner's Home."
3. Ben Okri, The Famished Road.
Ben Okri takes the popular myth of the spirit child, Abiku or Ogbanje, and expands it into this allegory about a nation that is suspended between dying and reincarnation. It won the Booker Prize in 1995.
4. Mariama Ba, So Long a Letter.
Translated from the French. The story of a Senegalese housewife and mother trying to negotiate life after the death of her husband. Written in the epistolary style. Captures beautifully the tensions in the three worldviews: African, Western, and Islamic, through the life experiences of the main character.
5. Dambudzo Marechera, House of Hunger.
Modernist African fiction. Read it for the language and the fearless experimentation with style.
6. Yvonne Vera, The Stone Virgins.
One of the most underrated African authors. Uncompromising, beautiful, haunting--all these adjectives and more to describe my favorite female African writer. This is set in the 1980s during the Zimbabwean civil war through the perspective of two sisters in rural Zimbabwe.
7. Ken Saro-Wiwa, Soza Boy: A Novel in Rotten English.
Set in the Nigerian civil war, 1967-1970. A war story as well as a bildungsroman. Captures the futility and the mindlessness of war, and the paramount importance of survival, written in experimental English.
April 15, 2020
