Wordsworth's List of Books to Read - African Authors Edition!
Browse our list of 2024 African author must-reads for your booklist - Local is always undeniably lekker!
Normal People by Sally Rooney - R275
Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there.
In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation - awkward but electrifying - something life-changing begins.
Normal People is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love.
It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find they can't.
My African Conquest:Cape to Cairo at 80 by Julia Albu - R270
'Next year I'm going to be 80 years old. My car will be 20 years old. Together we'll be 100. We're going to drive to Cairo.'
'And what route are you going to take?'
'I have no idea. I think I'll keep to the right.'
When 80-year-old Julia Albu calls in to her favourite radio show with a zany, half-baked idea, she has no idea that it will lead her to the adventure of a lifetime.
From helping push a 30-year-old Toyota bakkie up a precipitous mountain pass in Malawi to being 'adopted' by the riotous ex-pat South African community in Dar es Salaam and being fed mildly hallucinogenic 'herbs' by her Ethiopian driver-guide, nothing deterred 80-year-old Julia
Albu from her quest to drive through Africa from the Cape to Cairo.
She and her 20-year-old Toyota Conquest, Tracy - a personality in her own right - travelled through 10 African countries, from South Africa to Egypt (and beyond). Julia was accompanied by a series of companions who added texture to her travels: three of her four grown-up children, her son-in-law, and at least one person who began as a complete stranger and ended up as a friend for life.
Reminiscing about her long and interesting life along the way, and maintaining a bright and upbeat outlook regardless of the circumstances, Julia proves that you're never too old to tackle that buck
The Promise by Damon Galgut - R320
There is nothing unusual or remarkable about the Swart family, oh no, they resemble the family from the next farm and the one beyond that, just an ordinary bunch of white South Africans, and if you don’t believe it then listen to us speak...The many voices of The Promise tell a story in four snapshots, each one centered on a family funeral, each one happening in a different decade. In the background, a different president is in power, and a different spirit hangs over the country, while in the foreground the family fights over what they call their farm, on a worthless piece of land outside Pretoria.
Over large jumps in time, people get older, faces and laws and lives all change, while a brother and sister circle around a promise made long ago, and never kept.
The Promise was also the winner of the 2021 Booker Prize!
’n Student se dood in die berg by Stellenbosch lyk verdag. ’n Oud-recce vermoor as ’n boodskap. ’n Mooi veldgids, gewerf as ’n heuningwip vir die grootste dollar-rooftog in die land se geskiedenis. En staatskapers wat elkeen van die ondersoeke saboteer.
Jy’t ’n koel kop nodig om dit alles te ontrafel, om die enorme druk te kan hanteer. Jy moet kalm en gefokus en nugter wees. Maar Bennie Griessel se kop is nie koel nie. Want op 12 Junie moet hy trou.
Dis ’n resep vir ’n ramp.
Man Down by Irma Venter - R330
In Irma Venter’s follow-up to the electric Hard Rain, Ranna Abramson returns home to the lion’s den to resurrect a long-dead past and save the man she loves.
Ranna Abramson wants to disappear.
But she knows she can’t keep running when a former enemy tracks her down in Mumbai with dire news: her onetime lover, journalist Alex Derksen, has disappeared back home in South Africa.
Torn between her desire for him and fear of a homecoming, Ranna knows she’s the only one who can find him. But only two things in South Africa would welcome her—the inside of a cell or the bottom of a grave. There, to the police she’s the prime suspect of three murders. To the press she’s the serial killer Black Widow.
Despite her instincts to stay away, Ranna makes the journey. But the key to finding Alex lies in her painful past. And to uncover it, she’ll need to unravel a web of secrets tied to a long-forgotten crime.
Even if she finds Alex before it’s too late, Ranna must answer for past sins…or risk losing him forever.
A Long Letter to My Daughter by Marita van der Vyver - R345
A long letter to my daughter is the youth memoir of Marita van der Vyver, one of the most loved Afrikaans authors. It is the heart-warming letter from an Afrikaans mom to her French-speaking daughter about growing up in apartheid South Africa in the 1960's and 1970's.
But it is also a story about language and books and the wonder of words. And how a shy bookworm from a first-generation middle-class family became a well-known writer.
It is a book which is hard to put down as it traces Van der Vyver's early years during apartheid, but at the same time it is love letter to a daughter and a language and a country. With a mother who desperately tries to make sense of it all.
Okonkwo is the greatest wrestler and warrior alive, and his fame spreads throughout West Africa like a bush-fire in the harmattan. But when he accidentally kills a clansman, things begin to fall apart.
Then Okonkwo returns from exile to find missionaries and colonial governors have arrived in the village. With his world thrown radically off-balance he can only hurtle towards tragedy.
First published in 1958, Chinua Achebe's stark, coolly ironic novel reshaped both African and world literature, and has sold over ten million copies in forty-five languages.
First published in 1958, Chinua Achebe's stark, coolly ironic novel reshaped both African and world literature, and has sold over ten million copies in forty-five languages.
This arresting parable of a proud but powerless man witnessing the ruin of his people begins Achebe's landmark trilogy of works chronicling the fate of one African community, continued in Arrow of God and No Longer at Ease.
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - R240
The limits of fifteen-year-old Kambili's world are defined by the high walls of her family estate and the dictates of her fanatically religious father. Her life is regulated by schedules: prayer, sleep, study, prayer.
When Nigeria is shaken by a military coup, Kambili's father, involved mysteriously in the political crisis, sends her to live with her aunt. In this house, noisy and full of laughter, she discovers life and love - and a terrible, bruising secret deep within her family.
This extraordinary debut novel from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of 'Half of a Yellow Sun', is about the blurred lines between the old gods and the new, childhood and adulthood, love and hatred - the grey spaces in which truths are revealed and real life is lived.
Buried Treasure by Sven Axelrad - R290
Welcome to Vivo, where the only cemetery is run by old Mateus and his dog, God. Mateus’s eyes aren’t so good these days, which is why he has been burying bodies in the wrong graves, and also why, while out walking with God, he trips over a young homeless girl.
On a whim, Mateus decides to appoint the girl as his apprentice. Novo, who has been sleeping on the street with a dog-eared copy of The Savage Detectives as her pillow, is determined to reorganise the cemetery, but she will have to hurry: buried awry, divorced from their names, the ghosts of Vivo are accumulating, unable to proceed to the afterlife without knowing who they are.
Also, someone, or some thing, is on the loose, killing people and closing in on the one person who can make things right.
Vivo is a town with a pigeon-messaging service, a phone booth used for romantic encounters, and a number of residents who are not quite what they seem, including a prostitute, a professor and a prophetic flower-seller. Oh, and the coffee is hellishly strong.
Vivo is a town with a pigeon-messaging service, a phone booth used for romantic encounters, and a number of residents who are not quite what they seem, including a prostitute, a professor and a prophetic flower-seller. Oh, and the coffee is hellishly strong.
Erudite and wise, magical and quirky, Sven Axelrad’s debut novel is an enchanting adventure that explores what our names mean to us and who we are without them.
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah - R470
Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison.
Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.
Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.
The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty.
His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother’s unconventional, unconditional love.
Long Walk To Freedom by Nelson Mandela - R415
The riveting memoirs of the outstanding moral and political leader of our time, Long Walk to Freedom brilliantly re-creates the drama of the experiences that helped shape Nelson Mandela's destiny.
Emotive, compelling and uplifting, Long Walk to Freedom is the exhilarating story of an epic life; a story of hardship, resilience and ultimate triumph told with the clarity and eloquence of a born leader.
Wayfarers' Hymns by Zakes Mda - R290
Infused with rhythm and melody, Zakes Mda’s new novel invites you to travel from Lesotho’s Mountain Kingdom to the City of Gold through the history of famo.
Famo music was born in the drinking dens of migrant mineworkers in Lesotho, where the men would sing to unwind after work, accompanied by the accordion, a drum and sometimes a bass.
Meet the boy-child Kheleke, a wandering musician, and his surprising sister Moliehi. Then sigh with pleasure at being reunited with Toloki, the professional mourner from Ways of Dying, and his beloved Noria.
Passionate and ambitious, Kheleke is a weaver of songs, and his own story is intertwined with the incredible yet true social history of the music: the Time of the Concertina and the Accordion, the wars of the famo gangs, and the battle for control of illegal mines. The end is always a journey – and what a journey this is!
What are some of your favourite reads by African Authors? Mention them in the comments below!
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