Popular African Memoir Books
Find memoir books written by authors from Africa for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge. (111)
81.
The Jive Talker : An Artist's Genesis by Samson Kambalu EN
MalawiDescription:
What do you do when it looks like the odds were stacked against you before you were even born, when you're having trouble feeding a family that just keeps growing, when you've got a little too much of an affection for Carlsberg Brown and when the life president of your country, Malawi, keeps shuffling around the public health system that employs you, forcing you and your family into perpetual nomadism? You catch up on your reading, adding I'm OK, You're OK and Nietzsche to the bathroom library. Holding on to your dignity, you keep dressing up in threadbare three-piece suits you ordered from Lo... continue
82.
The Journey by Abdul Musa Adam EN
SudanDescription:
Abdul is just 7 years old when his parents are killed before his eyes.
As a brutal war sweeps Sudan, Abdul and his 3-year-old brother are forced to flee.
Their gruelling journey across the Sahara to a refugee camp in Chad is fraught with danger, and every day is a struggle against hunger and disease.
Until one day Abdul is offered a chance to escape. A chance that could save him, but will force him to make the most heartbreaking decision of his life.
Abdul's death-defying flight leaves deep scars. But his affinity with animals provides a lifeline, when he is offered the chance... continue
83.
The Last Nomad: Coming of Age in the Somali Desert by Shugri Said Salh EN
SomaliaDescription:
A remarkable and inspiring true story that "stuns with raw beauty" about one woman's resilience, her courageous journey to America, and her family's lost way of life. Born in Somalia, a spare daughter in a large family, Shugri Said Salh was sent at age six to live with her nomadic grandmother in the desert. The last of her family to learn this once-common way of life, Salh found herself chasing warthogs, climbing termite hills, herding goats, and moving constantly in search of water and grazing lands with her nomadic family. For Salh, though the desert was a harsh place threatened by drought, ... continue
84.
The Lights of Pointe-Noire by Alain Mabanckou EN
CongoDescription:
A moving meditation on home, home-coming and belonging from Francophone Africa's most important writer.
85.
The Nomads, My Brothers, Go Out to Drink From the Big Dipper by Abdourhaman A. Waberi EN
DjiboutiDescription:
Few of us have had the opportunity to visit Djibouti, the small crook of a country strategically located in the Horn of Africa, which makes The Nomads, My Brothers, Go Out to Drink from the Big Dipper all the more seductive. In his first collection of poetry, the critically acclaimed writer Abdourahman A. Waberi writes passionately about his country's landscape, drawing for us pictures of "desert furrows of fire" and a "yellow chameleon sky." Waberi's poems take us to unexpected spaces--in exile, in the muezzin's call, and where morning dew is "sucked up by the eye of the sun--black often, pin... continue
86.
The Position of Spoons : And Other Intimacies by Deborah Levy EN
Country: Africa / 
South Africa
South Africa
Description:
In The Position of Spoons, Deborah Levy invites the reader into the interiors of her world, sharing her most intimate thoughts and experiences, as she traces and measures her life against the backdrop of the literary and artistic muses that have shaped her. From Marguerite Duras to Colette and Ballard, and from Lee Miller to Francesca Woodman and Paula Rego, we can relish here the richness of their work and, in turn the richness of the author's own. Each page is a beautiful, tender composition of the questioning self- a portrait of Deborah Levy's writing life and intellectual vitality in all o... continue
87.
The Return : Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar EN
LibyaDescription:
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHY WINNER OF THE SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY PRIZE ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES' TOP 10 BOOKS OF 2016 The Return is at once a universal and an intensely personal tale. It is an exquisite meditation on how history and politics can bear down on an individual life. And yet Hisham Matar's memoir isn't just about the burden of the past, but the consolation of love, literature and art. It is the story of what it is to be human.... continue
88.
Country: Africa / South Africa
South Africa
Description:
She does not know how, but has a sabi from her earliest memory that she was different. What she does know is that 'difference' had currency in the past, and it certainly still has currency today. The Sabi will have an effect on you - have no doubt about that. In her debut novel, Diane Brown takes a scenic and open-eyed walk down memory lane to the 1960's when apartheid was in full swing to the early 1990's when South Africa was beginning to sense freedom. She ventures further back in time to help solve the puzzle of the current time, how did South Africa become so angry and so violent? Writing... continue
89.
The Tears of a Man Flow Inward: Growing Up in the Civil War in Burundi by Pacifique Irankunda EN
BurundiDescription:
A prizewinning young author tells the moving story of growing up during Burundi’s ethnic civil war in this powerful memoir hailed as “a jewel of a book” (Margaret MacMillan). “There’s nothing like a great love song, and Pacifique Irankunda sings a beautiful one here to his homeland and to all those who choose love even in the bleakest of times.”—Imbolo Mbue, author of Behold the Dreamers and How Beautiful We Were Pacifique Irankunda’s childhood in Burundi was marked by a thirteen-year civil war—a grueling struggle that destroyed his home, upended his family, and devastated his country’s beauti... continue
90.
The Wife's Tale : A Personal History by Aida Edemariam EN
EthiopiaDescription:
A Finalist for The Governor General’s Award for Nonfiction in Canada In this indelible memoir that recalls the life of her remarkable ninety-five-year old grandmother, Guardian journalist Aida Edemariam tells the story of modern Ethiopia—a nation that would undergo a tumultuous transformation from feudalism to monarchy to Marxist revolution to democracy, over the course of one century. Born in the northern Ethiopian city of Gondar in about 1916, Yetemegnu was married and had given birth before she turned fifteen. As the daughter of a socially prominent man, she also offered her husband, a poor... continue