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Happy World Book Day everyone!
A quick look at the hashtag on social media broke my heart. I noticed that people were putting up the popular books like Things Fall Apart, Americanah, A Grain of Wheat etc.
Here’s the problem with reading the books that everyone else has read. It makes you more like everyone else.
I am not saying that reading these books over and over again is bad, it’s just that you have to remember for every Things Fall Apart out there, there were 10 others written at the same time about the same thing that for whatever twist of cultural fate and cumulative advantage are mostly lost to us.
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While i am quietly mourning this beautiful African literature books that unaccountably never made the 'best of' or bestseller lists, i suggest you put down your Adichie and and pick up one of these.
1. God's Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembène
Written by a Senegalese author, this book details a railroad strike in French West Africa of the 1940s.
2. OGBOJU ODE NINU IGBO IRUNMALE (The Forest of a Thousand Daemons) by D. O. Fagunwa
This was the FIRST full-length novel published in Yoruba language but sadly, it has not been translated to English yet. Although, there are reports that Wole Soyinka translated the book into English in 1968 as 'The Forest of A Thousand Demons', they are not available.
3. The River Between by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
Just like Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, this book uncovers the turmoil, changes and confusion that arose in Africa after Christianity was introduced.
4. Burgers Daughter by Nadine Gordimer
Although it reads more like an essay than a novel, this book gave a fantastic insight into Apartheid and life in south Africa while Mandela was in prison
5. Song of Lawino & Song of Ocol by Okot p'Bitek
This is a very hilarious book that details the struggle between a loud "backward" woman and a recently "modernized" man.
I think i agree that this is one of the most successful African literary works from Uganda.
6. Labyrinths by Christopher Okigbo (poetry)
This is an intense and powerful volume of poetry. Described on goodreads as a kind of decolonial, modernist epic, "Labyrinths" details the poet quest to find himself in a broken world.
Christopher Okigbo is considered one of the most celebrated of Africa's greatest thinkers on African spirituality and tradition. It is quite a shame he died so early.
7. The House of Hunger by Dambudzo Marechera
Winner of the Guardian fiction prize, this novella and short story collection details life in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe in the 1970s. it's a disturbing, unsettling and thought-provoking read.
8. Allah is Not Obliged by Ahmadou Kourouma
This book was a fictionalized account of one of Africa's most horrific conflicts, the Liberian Civil War. It combines the gruesome with the humorous. Allah Is Not Obliged reveals the ways in which children's innocence and youth are compromised by war.
9. Black Mamba Boy by Nadifa Mohamed
Goodreads described this book as perfect for fans of Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This stunning novel is set in 1930s Somalia spanning a decade of war and upheaval, all seen through the eyes of a small boy alone in the world.
10. The Palm-Wine Drinkard & My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola
Drawing on the West African Yoruba oral folktale tradition, Tutuola described the odyssey of a devoted palm-wine drinker through a nightmare of fantastic adventure
When Rain Clouds Gather by Bessie Head
This book details the life of a South African exiled in Botswana whilst fleeing the system of apartheid in South Africa.
SEE ALSO: Throwback to some beautiful books written between the 1970s and late 1980s
RELATED: 10 Best African classics you should read before you turn 30