As I wrote last month, my project for 2024 will be to read one Black African work each month with a review to be published (hopefully!) on the last Tuesday. The list below is an update on that post, incorporating your suggestions, for which I am very grateful. More suggestions are always welcome, as will be readalongers, but please don’t feel you have to comment twice.
Although I have labelled this project ‘Africa’, I really mean sub-Saharan. I will leave North Africa for another day, for a possible ‘Middle East’ project.
Looking at the map above reminds me that Thomas Keneally wrote a novel on Eritrea, Towards Asmara (1989), which I very much enjoyed at the time, though I might now question his connection to the events he was reporting.
I see that Karen at BookerTalk is looking at Africa too – “I want to read authors from each of the 53 nation states rather than just novels set in the country” – though as you can see, rather more ambitiously than I am, and probably over a longer timespan. Hopefully, some of our reading will coincide.
My Audible account was up for renewal in November and rather than risk losing credits in the rollover I hurriedly spent six (one Max Barry and five Africans). My new plan gives me 20, plus bonuses, for the coming year.
January’s book will be No Longer at Ease, Chinua Achebe, which, due to serendipity at the library, I have just finished reading. I hope to write an essay comparing it with Black Mischief and maybe also Mr Johnson.
February’s will be The Famished Road, Ben Okri. Months beyond that will be negotiated with potential readalongers and by the sticking of pins. I hope I can both announce them well in advance, and stick to what I announce.
Although I have put one or two books beside each author, I am open to others, with the proviso I would rather they were available through Audible (or old enough to be downloadable).
Reviews for this project will be, as they are for earlier projects, accessible via the Projects menu.
Black African authors (Audible/Owned/Read/Downloadable/Kindle)
| Author | Country | Novel | Year | ||
| Chinua Achebe | M | Nigeria | No Longer at Ease | 1960 | R |
| Ben Okri | M | Nigeria | The Famished Road | 1991 | O |
| Akwaeke Emezi | F | Nigeria | You Made a Fool of Death with your Beauty | 2022 | A |
| Nnedi Okorafor | F | Nigeria/USA | Who Fears Death | 2010 | R |
| Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | F | Nigeria/USA | Americanah | 2013 | R |
| Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | F | Nigeria/USA | Purple Hibiscus | 2003 | |
| Sefi Atta | F | Nigeria/USA | Everything Good Will Come | 2005 | |
| Téju Cole | M | Nigeria/USA | Open City | 2011 | |
| Helon Habila | M | Nigeria | Waiting for an Angel | 2004 | |
| Ayobami Adebayo | F | Nigeria | A Spell of Good Things | 2023 | A |
| Chibundu Onuzo | F | Nigeria/UK | Welcome to Lagos | 2016 | |
| Oyinkan Braithwaite | F | Nigeria/UK | My Sister the Serial Killer/Thicker than Water | 2017 | |
| Abi Daré | F | Nigeria/UK | The Girl with the Louding Voice | 2020 | |
| Ayobami Adebayo | F | Nigeria | Stay With Me | 2017 | |
| Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi | F | Nigeria | Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions | 2022 | |
| Chigozie Obioma | M | Nigeria | The Fishermen | 2015 | |
| A. Igoni Barrett | M | Nigeria | Blackass | 2016 | |
| Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o | M | Kenya | Wizard of the Crow | 2006 | R |
| Binyavanga Wainaina | M | Kenya | One Day I will write about this place | 2012 | A |
| Okwiri Oduor | F | Kenya | Things They Lost | 2022 | |
| Khadija Abdalla Bajaber | F | Kenya | The House of Rust (UKLG Prize 2022) | 2021 | |
| Maaza Mengiste | F | Ethiopia/USA | The Shadow King | 2019 | A |
| Dinaw Mengestu | M | Ethiopia/USA | Children of the Revolution | 2008 | |
| Namwali Serpell | F | Zambia/USA | The Furrows | 2022 | |
| Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi | F | Zimbabwe | A Girl is a Body of Water | 2020 | R |
| Tsitsi Dangarembga | F | Zimbabwe | Nervous Conditions | 1988 | |
| Tsitsi Dangarembga | F | Zimbabwe | The Book of Not | 2006 | |
| Tsitsi Dangarembga | F | Zimbabwe | This Mournable Body | 2020 | R |
| NoViolet Bulawayo | F | Zimbabwe | We Need New Names | 2013 | A |
| Tendai Huchu | M | Zimbabwe | The Hairdresser of Harare | 2010 | |
| Nadifa Mohamed | F | Somalia/UK | The Orchard of Lost Souls | 2013 | |
| Yaa Gyasi | F | Ghana/USA | Transcendent Kingdom | 2020 | A |
| Peace Adzo Medie | F | Ghana | His Only Wife | 2020 | K |
| Abdulrazak Gurnah | M | Tanzania/UK | Paradise | 1994 | |
| Zakes Mda | M | S Africa | Ways of Dying | 1995 | |
| Yewande Omotoso | F | S Africa | The Woman Next Door | 2016 | |
| Sisonke Msimang | F | S Africa/Aus | The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela | 2019 | |
| Thomas Mofolo | M | Lesotho | Chaka | 1925 | D |
| Bessie Head | F | Botswana | Maru | 1971 | D |
| Mariama Bâ | F | Senegal | So Long a Letter | 1979 | |
| David Diop | M | Senegal/Fr. | At Night All Blood is Black | 2018 | |
| Mohamed Mbougar Sarr | M | Senegal/Fr. | Brotherhood | 2021 | |
| James Ng’ombe | M | Malawi | Sugarcane with Salt | 1990 | K |
| Paulina Chiziane | F | Mozambique | The First Wife | 2002 | K |
| Fatin Abbas | F | Sudan/USA | Ghost Season (NYT review) | 2023 | K |
| Imbolo Mbue | F | Cameroon/USA | How Beautiful We Were | 2021 | |
| Max Lobe | Cameroon/Switz | A Long Way from Douala | 2021 | ||
| Memoir | |||||
| Nelson Mandela | M | S Africa | Long Walk to Freedom | 1994 | |
| Scholastique Mukasonga | F | Rawanda/Fr. | Igifu | 2020 | |
| Emmanuel Mbolela | M | DRC/Neth. | Refugee | 2021 | |
| Elizabeth Nyamayaro | F | Zimbabwe | I Am a Girl from Africa | 2021 | |
| Edafe Okporo | M | Nigeria/USA | Asylum | 2022 | |
| Nanjala Nyabola | F | Kenya | Traveling While Black (essays) | 2020 | |
| Obadiah M | M | Rawanda | Die Walking | 2021 | |
| Aminatta Forna | F | Sierra Leone/Scot. | The Devil that Danced on the Water | 2002 |
Further lists (and an interview):
Thanks WG, A Bibliography of Anglophone Women Writers in Africa
Hopewellslibriaryoflife, top ten list of novels set in African nations
Lisa at ANZLL, novels with the category ‘Africa’
Global Lit. in Libraries, Zimbabwe month
Ann Morgan, A Year of Reading the World, list (c. 2011)
Marcie at Buried in Print, Africa Reading Challenge, 2013, 2018
Amplify Bookstore (Melbourne), Africa list
Brittle Paper, 100 notable African books of 2023
(from Book Jotter) Africa in Dialogue: The Breadth and Beauty of African Literature: A Dialogue with SarahBelle Selig
(recom. by BIP) Heinemann African Writers Series. 270 titles up to 1985, then many more!
African Arguments, The Best African books of 2023
The Australian Legend 
I’ll look to this list for some reads of my own in 2024.
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Great. Let me know what you choose, in case I can make our timing coincide.
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I ‘ve read a few of these as you know, but I do not at this stage have any of your others on the TBR except for Americanah.
But I have Bessie Head’s A Question of Power (Botswana) and will try to join in with that because I’ve meaning to read it for years.
Also
*Haji Jabir’s Black Foam from Eritrea (would you count that one as sub-Saharan?)
* Maaza Mengiste’s Beneath the Lion’s Gaze (Ethiopia)
* Chaka by Thomas Mofolo (Lesotho)
* Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)
* At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop (Senegal)
I have quite a few from South Africa, mostly Andre Brink and Nadine Gordimer writing as white activists under apartheid and four by Abdulrazak Gurnah from Tanzania, but I’m unlikely to read many of them because I’m going to try and clear a backlog of Kiwi fiction in 2024 with A Year of reading New Zealand Lit.
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Jabir writes in Arabic, so let’s say not sub-Saharan, for the time being anyhow. I’ll add the authors I don’t have to my list. And the Bessie Head if I think I can get a copy.
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Great list and project Bill. I have read a few African authors, but not a lot, and I categorise them by country, not continent, so I can’t pull them out as a bunch. Africa is such a big and complex place – which you clearly recognise by at least separating out North Africa. I have been a bit schizophrenic in my categorising of English vs British writers. Should I just lump English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish writers in together as British or should I separate them out?
Anyhow, all that’s irrelevant. I like this project and if I get an opportunity I will join in somewhere.
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WG, I said somewhere else that Marcie suggested I do just Nigeria, which might have given me more insight, but I was looking for an overview, a way to get started on what is clearly a very lively literature (or collection of literatures – though I can’t imagine they don’t feed into each other).
I thought Karen might jump on you for ‘British’. I think we Australians are close enough to Britain to treat those national literatures separately. Which leads of course to, Is Australian Indigenous a separate Lit.? I think some of its writers are saying yes it is.
I hope you do join in. Feel free to write and suggest a book and month, especially if I already have it on Audible.
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Excellent list. If you do the Sefi Atta I will read along with that as I want to read that. The Ba. Adiche’s Americanah, Emezi, Gyasi and Daré books are the ones from your list so far that I’ve read and can heartily recommend.
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Americanah I didn’t particularly like, and I thought that compared with Okorafor the writing was flat – standard American SF. Marcie is inclined to think that was a feature, not a flaw which is why I’m thinking about Purple Hibiscus, to give her another try.
I’ll check out Sefi Atta and see if I can get a copy.
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I don’t think Americanah was SF was it, just standard novel of immigrant experiences?
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Now I’m going to have to find it again and reread it. But wiki agrees with you, so I guess I was wrong. 2018 was a long time ago!
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I would always rather read a book by author who lives onsite, as it were, rather than flavoured, however subtly, by the experience of living in the west.
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I agree, but so many live in the US or UK that I’ve been checking to see what their lived experience of back home actually is. That said, expatriate writing seems to be an accepted part of African national literatures.
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BTW I’m getting a pop up message here, inviting me to sign up for new posts. I’ve been an email subscriber for years now, so I don’t know why that’s happening except that I don’t seem to have received notification of this new post in my email.
Looks like WP is playing games with us…
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I’ve been going over all my regular follows to make sure they’re still working. Not all of them were, and I suspect that if some of my older, largely inactive follows suddenly post no one will see.
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Does it have anything to do with your side menu ‘Blogs I Follow’?, that is, does WP put those blogs there for you if you subscribe to them, and conversely not have them there if you don’t and not send you updates for the missing ones?
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When they instituted the new comment box, I think you had to refollow, but the sidebar was unchanged. Jennifer from Tas is still in mine, but I don’t receive notifications, and it was the same with Liz Dexter and others.
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Well, that’s not it then.
Hopefully it’s just a temporary glitch.
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So good to discover that our minds are running on parallel tracks with this project Bill. I’ve read several of the books you list –
both the Adiche’s (Americanah is not SF by the way);
His Only Wife (thought it was poor)
Abi Daré – really enjoyed that
The Woman Next Door – OK
Long walk to Freedom – superb
We Have No Names – enjoyed that
I gave up on The Famished Road. Thought it was just dire ….
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If I can find Americanah again in the library I’m going to have to reread it. I must have had it mixed up in my head with the Nnedi Okorafors I read around the same time. I only added His Only Wife yesterday, I thought it sounded interesting. I’ll check your review
https://bookertalk.com/his-only-wife-by-peace-ado-medie/
You haven’t entirely put me off.
Let’s hope we don’t agree about The Famished Road!
One of your readers asked for suggestions, perhaps we can choose a book for later in the year and compare our impressions.
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What a great project, Bill. Black African writing is a glaring gap in my reading life (I’ve read plenty of white African writers) so might see if I can squeeze in a few reads and join along. I have both the Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie novels in my TBR.
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Also, while I remember, if you need to source African books in Oz, highly recommend Melbourne-based Amplify bookstore: https://amplifybookstore.com/the-store/africa
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Thanks Kim. My son should be in Melbourne in January, I’ll send him in for a look (hey Lou, my birthday’s in March).
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I’m overwhelmed already by the number of books I have to choose from, but there’s a good chance I’ll read Purple Hibiscus (though looking at Audible, Adichie has a number of interesting novels).
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I just saw this today: https://brittlepaper.com/2023/11/announcing-brittle-papers-100-notable-african-books-of-2023/
It’s not really very useful in the sense that it doesn’t tell you anything about the books or the authors and may well have been written by AI. There’s nothing to indicate what their criteria were for inclusion. Even the link to the actual list has only a brief blurb which links to Amazon. Anyone interested has to do the work of finding credible reviews for herself.
But still, you may find something there.
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Thanks Lisa, I’ve added it to my list of lists. It’s becoming increasingly clear that 12 books will barely scratch the surface of Black African Lit.
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Well, we don’t have to read them all!
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When I first started reading your list, I thought maybe you got stuck in Nigeria, or were only given recommendations for Nigeria. I’m not sure what the catalyst was, but around 2000 there was a big influx of students from Nigeria coming to study on the US. Maybe something political.
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I don’t know Nigerian politics, I’m not sure it’s been in the papers since ‘Biafra’ in the 1960s (civil war and famine, if I remember correctly). But it is possible that wealth arising out of oil production, however problematic Shell has been for Nigeria, led to large numbers of the new middle class being able study overseas – in the US, UK and Canada. The little fiction I have read points to easy movement without stating the cause.
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Ah! If that’s true, it makes sense. It has to be incredibly expensive to send a student overseas for four years to study.
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Very exciting! I’m curious about the ones I’ve not read and, of those I have already read, most of them are appealing as rereads too (those which aren’t, it’s a matter of access). There are so many of interest, I can’t single out any in particular. My reading plans for 2023 were backlist oriented (pre-2000 mostly) and this year didn’t unfold as expected, so I’m still deciding whether to repeat my 2023 goals but, even if I take that route, you’ve got plenty of inspiring choices here from earlier decades too. Did you find that the more you looked, the more you found? Was it hard to narrow your list?
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I certainly found the more I looked the more I found including the list you sent me (thank you!) a month or so ago which I have just included. We now have 55 titles, plus the lists at the end, so that is a considerable resource.
I think we should read UKLG 2022 Prize winner The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber, don’t you. Looks it up – available on Audible Aust.
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Maybe we should plan to do so not long before the UKLG list is announced for next year? (It’s not readily available to me, so I’ll have to plan.)
The Heinemann list would make for such an outstanding project. It’ll send you on a second-hand bookstore crawl for sure though.
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Suits me.
Perth over the last decade has become almost entirely bereft of secondhand bookshops (The one remaining, that I know of, is Bill’s in Fremantle).
Sorry, forgot Elizabeth’s, also in Freo.
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I am not aware of any African authors I have read in the past, but I did pick up Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun in the swap street library this week. I see this author on your list. I might get onto this next year sometime,
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Shes’s an interesting author, though my feeling was she wrote in straight American English, rather than Nigerian English, which for me detracted from the experience.
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Catching up on old posts sitting in my inbox.
I have The Fishermen and Americanah on the shelf, I might join you. (I’m interested in David Diop too)
Happy reading, it’s a wonderful project and a great way to discover Africa.
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Good to hear from you Emma, and on a weekday too! I’m making very little progress on choosing what to read, and in which month, beyond the first two, but I am looking forward to all this new-to-me reading.
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Have you seen this list? https://aflit.arts.uwa.edu.au/FEMECalireEN.html It’s extensive. (I’d love it if you put you list into alphabetical order like it is!!) I found it when looking for the African author of the book I am about to review.
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That’s an astonishing list. I’ll add it to my post. If only WP had a relational database, I would sort my data any way you wanted.
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Amazing isn’t it, and it’s from UWA. Which I suppose is not surprising given your relative proximity to Africa that they would have it.
Re your sort … fair enough!
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[…] little contribution to Bill’s Africa Project. Lisa also enjoyed this […]
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This book (that I’ve just reviewed) is in that list I sent you under Michot not Mushita.
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[…] Curiously in 2015 when I spotted a secondhand copy in box at a school market day in the Blue Mountains, I found myself tempted once again. It has sat on my TBR ever since, apparently waiting for Bill @The Australian Legend to announce his 2024 Africa Reading Project! […]
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[…] was led to this novel by Bill@The Australian Legend ‘s ‘Project 2024 Africa’. This is the third author I’ve read so far from Bill’s […]
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[…] picked up this novel thanks to Bill at The Australian Legend’s Project 2024 – Africa. This is the fourth book I’ve read on Bill’s list and I hope to read the fifth shortly. Thanks, […]
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