10 beautiful African countries you can visit in books for the month of July

Yaaay! The beautiful month of July is here and we are travelling across Africa in books. For those who have no idea what to read here are titles worth adding to your bookshelf.

1. Visit Ghana via Murder at Cape Three Points by Kwei Quartey

A canoe washes up at a Ghanaian off-shore oil rig site. Inside it are the bodies of a prominent, wealthy couple, Charles and Fiona Smith-Aidoo, who have been ritualistically murdered. Inspector Darko Dawson of the Accra police force is sent out to Cape Three Points to investigate.

2. Visit Mali via The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer

Part travelogue, part intellectual history, part geopolitical tract and part thriller, Hammer tells the remarkable story of the librarian who oversaw a plot to smuggle ancient manuscripts out of Timbuktu, Mali, in an effort to save them from war.

3. Go to South Africa via The Reactive by Masande Ntshanga

Written by the winner of the 2013 PEN International New Voices Award, this book is described by Naomi Jackson as a searing, gorgeously written account of life, love, illness, and death in South Africa.

4. Visit Somalia via A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout

A House in the Sky is a 2013 memoir by Amanda Lindhout, co-written with journalist Sara Corbett. It recounts Lindhout's experience in southern Somalia as a hostage of teenage militants from the Hizbul Islam fundamentalist group.

5. Visit Kenya via Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

Dust is an astonishing, intense which portrays the violent history of Kenya in the second half of the 20th century. This book is a story of power and deceit, unrequited love, survival and sacrifice.

6. Say Hello to Uganda via Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

This book re-imagines the legendary figure Kintu, as a man in modern-day Kampala who is murdered in an act of mob justice, accused of stealing because he has new gadgets in his shack in Bwaise.  A superb book about modern Uganda, it explores the complex relationship between the past and the present, the evolution of a society and the struggle one family faces as they seek to reconcile an unwelcome inheritance.

7. Visit Equatorial Guinea via By Night the Mountain Burns by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, translated from the Spanish by Jethro Soutar

By Night the Mountain Burns reminisces about a series of events on a small island in the Atlantic Ocean, presumably recalling the author’s childhood home of Annobón off the coast of Equatorial Guinea. Both lyrical and unsparingly truthful, this novel draws on oral storytelling to illuminate a little-known corner of Africa.

8. Visit Guinea via The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye

Clarence, a white man, has been shipwrecked on the coast of Africa. Flush with self-importance, he demands to see the king, but the king has just left for the south of his realm. Traveling through an increasingly phantasmagoric landscape in the company of a beggar and two roguish boys, Clarence is gradually stripped of his pretensions, until he is sold to the royal harem as a slave.

9. Visit Angola via Good Morning Comrades; The Whistler by Ondjaki, Stephen Henighan

Good Morning Comrades tells the story of a group of friends who create a perfect childhood in a revolutionary socialist country fighting a bitter war. But the world is changing around these children, and like all childhood's Ndalu's cannot last.

10. Come home to Nigeria via The Interpreters; Season of Anomy by Wole Soyinka

The novel explores "the role of individual will as the agent of social transformation", looking at the actions taken by each of the four main characters in changing the corrupt Nigerian society.

Compliment this list with my thoughts on Why Nigerians should start paying attention to unhyped writersand 10 unpopular African literature books that deserve some recognition.

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