Showing titles in African

From creation myths and foundation legends to fascinating stories of human relationships and animal tales, these stories provide a diverse look at the countries and cultures across the African continent. Noted folklorist Helen Nde provides context for history and colonial influences for the stories.

A compelling anthology of Black voices from England, America, Africa and the Caribbean, from people who lived, worked, campaigned and travelled in Britain from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library. Professor Hakim Adi, shortlisted for the...

“The poet is endemic with life itself,” Will Alexander once said, and in this searing pas de trois, Refractive Africa: Ballet of the Forgotten, he has exemplified this vital candescence with a transpersonal amplification worthy of the Cambrian explosion. “This being the ballet of the forgotten,” he writes as diasporic witness, “of refracted boundary points as venom.” The volume’s opening poem pays homage to the innovative Nigerian-Yoruban author Amos Tutuola; it ends with an encomium to the modernist Malagasy poet Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo.

Learning to kick a football in a suburban schoolyard. Finding your feet as a young black dancer. Discovering your grandfather’s poetry. Meeting Nelson Mandela at your local church. Facing racism from those who should protect you. Dreading a visit to the hairdresser. House-hopping across the...

Quand l'ambition et la tradition tuent l'amour... Boussoura et Seini forment un couple moderne qui vit à Yaoundé. Il est médecin, elle est professeure de littérature. Une famille épanouie jusqu'au jour où tout bascule quand Seini est rattrapé par son passé. Fils de roi, il est appelé à prendre la succession. Malgré les réserves de son épouse, l'attrait du pouvoir est le plus fort. Devenu lamido, commandeur des croyants et garant des traditions et de la religion, il se transforme en roi tout-puissant.

SOUTH AFRICA, 1989. In a deeply divided country on the brink of change, two women from vastly different backgrounds share an unlikely friendship. Sofia Levantis, a Greek-Cypriot immigrant, longs to keep her family close, but when her children want to leave South Africa, the future she’s imagined begins to slip away. Meanwhile, Grace Molepe, Sofia’s housekeeper and trusted friend, pins her hopes on her son’s education and a future where he’ll no longer be treated like a foreigner in his own country.

In ärmlichen Verhältnissen im Süden Afrikas aufgewachsen, heiratet Mary einen Farmer. Doch das weiße Paar hat sich wenig zu sagen, und der finanzielle Ruin rückt Jahr für Jahr näher. Als ein schwarzer Farmarbeiter als Diener ins Haus geholt wird, wird Mary für ihr rassistisches Verhalten bestraft. "Afrikanische Tragödie" erzählt nicht nur die Geschichte einer missglückten Ehe, sondern demonstriert die erstickende Kraft kolonialer Herrschaft in Rhodesien, dem heutigen Simbabwe. Eva Mattes liest den 1950 erschienenen Debütroman von Doris Lessing, die selbst in Rhodesien aufwuchs und 2007 den Literaturnobelpreis erhielt.

The Ugandan Tales is set in Uganda and is about the struggles of ordinary Africans against post-independence African rulers that preach freedom and emancipation but have turned into oppressors. This collection of poetry dives deep into topics of police brutality, social injustices, and oppression through the landscape of the tortured cities. Ordinary people seek to reassert their rights against an intransigent regime that is determined to keep them oppressed. The poems chronicle everyday struggles that are faced at the hands of fellow Africans masquerading as Pan-Africanists.

1996: in a Ugandan dive bar, the 'freight dogs' gather. An anarchic group of mercenary pilots from Texas, Russia, Kenya and Belgium who transport weapons between warring African nations, without allegiance. And tonight they have a new recruit—Manu, a nineteen-year-old cowherd fleeing Congo's bloody war. Taken in by this band of unlikely brothers, Manu hopes to reinvent himself. But no matter how fast he flies, trouble always seems to follow closely behind... 

Ífè Myths presents one of the earliest English-language collections of Yoruba sacred stories—gathered directly from the people of Southwestern Nigeria during the author’s years of service as an Assistant District Officer. Living among Yoruba communities, the collector gained rare access to fragments of oral tradition, ritual incantations, and passing references that, when carefully assembled, reveal glimpses of the spiritual worldview that shaped one of Africa’s greatest civilizations.

Urban Poetry & Truth: The Echo of the Streets Raw. Real. Resilient. The streets have a voice—do you hear it? Urban Poetry & Truth: The Echo of the Streets is a lyrical journey through the grit, soul, and unbreakable spirit of city life. Through powerful storytelling, rhythmic flow, and hard-hitting truth, this collection captures the voices of those who live, love, fight, and survive in the urban landscape. Divided into Three Powerful Sections: The Streets & The Struggle – Survival, injustice, and the fight to make it through another day.

Brought to you by Penguin. *Winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize 2018* *Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award 2018* Translating as 'initiation', kumukanda is the name given to the rites a young boy from the Luvale tribe must pass through before he is considered a man. The poems of Kayo Chingonyi's...

Brought to you by Penguin. An expansive new collection from one of the UK’s most daring and celebrated poets In The New Carthaginians, time – and with it the world – is out of joint. A hijacked plane lands at Entebbe International Airport in 1976, triggering the crisis that will lead to...

The first genocide of the 20th century, though not well known, was committed by Germans between 1904-1907 in the country we know today as Namibia, where they exterminated thousands of Herero and Nama people and subjected the surviving indigenous men, women, and children to forced labor. The perception of Africans as subhuman - lacking any kind of civilization, history, or meaningful religion - and the resulting justification for the violence against them is what author Elizabeth R. Baer refers to as the "genocidal gaze", an attitude that was later perpetuated by the Nazis.

Kamali Danladi has sworn never to get married again. But his meddling mother is bent on hitching him to any eligible female that comes along to the next family gathering. There's only one thing for it. Get fake-hitched to his executive assistant. If anyone is more averse to marriage than he is, it's her. So they'll be perfect together. Or at least, they'll fake perfect together. Ebun Forson doesn't do families. She certainly doesn't do festivities.

Lara Johnson is coping with the emotional scars of losing both parents in a tragic incident and facing the challenges of starting a new school. Getting involved in a relationship isn't on her priority list. Certainly not this illicit desire for a man, who demands the best from her, yet leaves her breathless in his presence. All Ike Thomas wants to do is to keep out of trouble and get through the one year internship required for his degree program.

Mine Mine Mine is a personal narration of Uhuru Portia Phalafala’s family’s experience of the migrant labor system brought on by the gold mining industry in Johannesburg, South Africa. Using geopoetics to map geopolitics, Phalafala follows the death of her grandfather during a historic juncture in 2018, when a silicosis class action lawsuit against the mining industry in South Africa was settled in favor of the miners.

Um reencontro consigo mesmo e com aqueles que nos cercam, diante da delicada arte de seguir vivendo. Em Afagos e afins, Jairo Pereira apresenta uma poesia que nasce do corpo e retorna para ele como cuidado. Seus versos pulsam no ritmo do peito, entre feridas abertas e gestos de acolhimento, afirmando o afeto como força vital, ética e política.

Legends of the Yoruba gathers together a treasury of folktales from the Yoruba people of Southern Nigeria—stories shaped by centuries of oral tradition, ancestral memory, and a deep, intimate relationship with the natural and spiritual worlds. These tales, preserved and retold by M. I. Ogumefu, reveal the adventures of humans, animals, and spirits alike, offering imaginative explanations for the mysteries of nature: why women have long hair, how the leopard gained its spots, why certain creatures behave as they do, and many more wonders observed in the world around us.

Named after the first man at the creation of the world in Malagasy mythology, Ietsy Razak was raised to perpetuate the glory of his namesake and expected to be as illuminated as his Great Ancestor. But in the chaos of modernity, his young life is marked only by restlessness, maddening insomnia, and an adolescent apathy.