This memoir of a drought-stricken village in Malawi is uplifting-literally. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, by William Kamkwamba, 2009. ( Related: Want to read more tales by women adventurers? Try these page-turners.) She was the first person to complete a solo east–west transatlantic flight-and that’s nearly the least interesting thing about her life! The author evokes her childhood in the Great Rift Valley of Kenya and her exploits as a bush pilot. West With the Night, by Beryl Markham, 1942. Spellbound by the Sphinx, Mahoney rowed solo down the Nile in a fisherman’s skiff-perilously close to crocs-to survey the cultures along its shores, paying homage en route to the great travelers (Gustave Flaubert and Florence Nightingale) who preceded her. “They make us Moroccan.”ĭown the Nile, by Rosemary Mahoney, 2007. “The stories make us what we are,” a retired surgeon in Casablanca tells him. Inspired by One Thousand and One Nights, Shah travels Morocco collecting stories, from neroli-scented courtyards in Marrakech to cafés in Fes to his own fixer-upper of a mansion in Casablanca.
This collection of essays is ultimately an ode to her and her strong-willed determination to give her son the freedom and choices she never had. The son of a Xhosa mother and a Swiss–German father, at a time when such a union was illegal, Noah in his early years was largely kept hidden indoors by his mother. The Daily Show host recounts a childhood growing up in Soweto township during the last days of apartheid South Africa. Though acclaimed Nigerian novelist Adichie often delves into fraught topics in African history, here she’s more focused on the culture of the diaspora, casting a wry, often romantic eye on the buzz of Lagos, the misty allure of London, and university communities of America’s East Coast.īorn a Crime, by Trevor Noah, 2016.
At the turn of this century, Nigerian lovers Ifemelu and Obinze both make their way to the West, grappling with issues of cultural identity and separation. ( Related: Follow conservationists’ 1,500-mile expedition into Botswana’s Okavango Delta.)Īmericanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2013.
She recorded the airy rhythms and knotty romances of an East Africa lumbering from tradition to modernity. “Looking back on a sojourn in the African highlands, you are struck by your feeling of having lived for a time up in the air,” writes Dinesen, who ran a coffee plantation at the foot of the Ngong Hills, near Nairobi. Her eccentric parents create a home life that continually careens from tragic to ecstatic, but Fuller recounts it all with candor, poignancy, and a hard-won sense of humor. Raised during the Rhodesian Bush War, Fuller scuttles with her family from their scrappy farm in Zimbabwe to Malawi to Zambia in this big-hearted tale of survival. We hope it inspires you to travel through the pages and, one day soon, to Africa.ĭon’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, by Alexandra Fuller, 2001. It’s the latest entry in our Around the World in Books series. These titles range from true tales of growing up in the shadow of apartheid and flying high as a female bush pilot to a centuries-spanning novel of slavery and freedom. We’ve selected 10 books that capture diverse perspectives on a place with countless complicated and fascinating histories. A continent too geographically and culturally vast to be encapsulated even in a library of books has nonetheless inspired generations of writers to try. Sweeping savannas and impenetrable forests.