African Metropolitan Architecture Written by David Adjaye, Edited by Peter Allison

About This Book

The architecture and built environment of African cities are documented in groundbreaking photographs by acclaimed architect David Adjaye.  David Adjaye is renowned for his highly acclaimed buildings in Europe and the United States. Of Tanzanian descent but raised and educated in London, he has found endless inspiration for his modern buildings in Africa. This book is the culmination of a personal quest--a decadelong project to document the built environment of every major African city.

“Mama Miti” by Donna Jo Napoli & Kadir Nelson

Through artful prose and beautiful illustrations, Donna Jo Napoli and Kadir Nelson tell the true story of Wangari Muta Maathai, known as “Mama Miti,” who in 1977 founded the Green Belt Movement, an African grassroots organization that has empowered many people to mobilize and combat deforestation, soil erosion, and environmental degradation. Today more than 30 million trees have been planted throughout Mama Miti’s native Kenya, and in 2004 she became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Wangari Muta Maathai has changed Kenya tree by tree—and with each page turned, children will realize their own ability to positively impact the future.

HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness centers around Marlow, an introspective sailor, and his journey up the Congo River to meet Kurtz, reputed to be an idealistic man of great abilities. Marlow takes a job as a riverboat captain with the Company, a Belgian concern organized to trade in the Congo. As he travels to Africa and then up the Congo, Marlow encounters widespread inefficiency and brutality in the Company’s stations. The native inhabitants of the region have been forced into the Company’s service, and they suffer terribly from overwork and ill treatment at the hands of the Company’s agents. The cruelty and squalor of imperial enterprise contrasts sharply with the impassive and majestic jungle that surrounds the white man’s settlements, making them appear to be tiny islands amidst a vast darkness.

Beneath the Lion's Gaze by Maaza Mengiste

Of the many great traumas of 20th-century Ethiopia – invasion by Mussolini, war with Eritrea, with Sudan, with Somalia, famine after famine, two violent regime changes – arguably the greatest was the deposition of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, and the replacement of hundreds of years of imperial rule with a totalitarian Marxist state.

Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou

Munching on his bicycle chicken (apparently a Congolese term for scrawny poultry), Broken Glass - the eponymous narrator - tells us the story of the bar he frequents: the Credit Gone Away, owned by his friend, the Stubborn Snail, who has helpfully provided Broken Glass with a notebook to chronicle the comings and goings.

Looking for Transwonderland by Noo Saro-Wiwa

Nigeria does not top many people's lists of the ideal holiday destination. And for all its amazing vitality and astonishing natural resources, this seems unlikely to change given the unrest over fuel prices and worsening terrorism in the Islamic north, highlighted by the Christmas Day bombings of churches and deadly recent attacks in Kano. So all the more praise to travel writer Noo Saro-Wiwa for producing such an affectionate and irreverent guide to a place so far from the beaten tourist track.
Looking for Transwonderland is unlikely to persuade many people to brave the infamous scrums at Lagos airport, filled as it is with anecdotes of hotel chefs who refuse to cook, terrifying traffic ordeals and casual indifference to cultural heirlooms. Upon arrival, the author shares such concerns. She finds the sign "Welcome to Lagos" almost chilling – "like some kind of sick joke" – while the motto "Centre of Excellence" printed on the city's car number plates is dismissed as a ridiculous conceit.
Yet as she gets to grips with the pace of this unruly giant of a country, jumping onto lethal motorbike taxis, squeezing into overcrowded buses and traipsing round shabby hotels with their drunken managers, outdated furnishings and intermittent water supplies, she ends up performing a valuable service. For in her gentle style, she peels away many of the cliches that envelop Nigeria and reveals both the beauty and brutality of this slumbering superpower, which as any visitor rapidly discovers is one of the world's most exasperating yet exhilarating nations.
So while venal leaders rip off billions from state coffers, museum chiefs flog off ancient artefacts and endless hustling fills the streets, people can leave front doors unlocked and bags unattended on minibuses. "Nobody stole our things, not even the street kids who swarm around vehicles in northern towns to beg for food and money," she writes. Throughout Nigeria, Saro-Wiwa encounters decency, humour, resilience and vast reserves of that famed energy.
She drops in on a dog show, tours a wildlife sanctuary, checks out the men looking for "sugar mummies" in the small ads and visits the amusement park of the title. Billed as the closest thing Nigeria has to Disneyland, it turns out to be a forlorn landscape of motionless machinery. Although Saro-Wiwa is occasionally ground down by the disorder and the dereliction, the chaos and the corruption – and is clearly less comfortable in the north – her tone throughout is one of wry amusement.

The Hairdresser of Harare by Tendai Huchu

The Hairdresser of Harare, set in the hyperinflationary Zimbabwe of a few years ago, is narrated by Vimbai, a hairdresser in her mid-twenties who is unmarried but has a young child. She works at Mrs. Khumalo's salon, and since she is considered the best hairdresser in town can afford to be a bit of a diva -- always arriving late, for example. Her position is challenged, however, when there's a vacancy at the salon, and a young man named Dumisani comes to fill it, immediately wowing one and all with this talents.

Lyrics Alley A Novel by Leila Aboulela

Book Summary

Lyrics Alley is the evocative story of an affluent Sudanese family shaken by the shifting powers in their country and the near-tragedy that threatens the legacy they've built for decades. In 1950s Sudan, the powerful Abuzeid dynasty has amassed a fortune through their trading firm. With Mahmoud Bey at its helm, they can do no wrong. But when Mahmoud's son, Nur, the brilliant, handsome heir to the business empire, suffers a debilitating accident, the family stands divided in the face of an uncertain future.

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

Lauren Beukes (2010)
The winner of the 2011 Arthur C Clarke award, this urban fantasy-noir thriller merges visions of dystopia with faultless plotting and Shona cosmology, bringing the spirit possession of traditional religion to a near-future Johannesburg. Zinzi December finds things, even when she doesn’t want to. When she’s hired to find a missing teenage pop star, it’s almost certain that her shavi (a compulsion or talent with a bitter cost) will bring disaster. There is rhyme and reason to this imagined future – and it’s a believable and engrossing vision.

The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna

Book Summary

Adrian Lockheart is a psychologist escaping his life in England. Arriving in Freetown in the wake of civil war, he struggles with the intensity of the heat, dirt and dust, and with the secrets this country hides. Despite the gulf of experience and understanding between them, Adrian finds unexpected friendship in a young surgeon at the hospital, the charismatic Kai Mansaray, and begins to build a new life just as Kai makes plans to leave.

Lights Out in Nigeria

LAGOS, Nigeria — WE call it light; “electricity” is too sterile a word, and “power” too stiff, for this Nigerian phenomenon that can buoy spirits and smother dreams. Whenever I have been away from home for a while, my first question upon returning is always: “How has light been?” The response, from my gateman, comes in mournful degrees of a head shake.

Bad. Very bad.

The quality is as poor as the supply: Light bulbs dim like tired, resentful candles. Robust fans slow to a sluggish limp. Air-conditioners bleat and groan and make sounds they were not made to make, their halfhearted cooling leaving the air clammy. In this assault of low voltage, the compressor of an air-conditioner suffers — the compressor is its heart, and it is an expensive heart to replace. Once, my guest room air-conditioner caught fire. The room still bears the scars, the narrow lines between floor tiles smoke-stained black.

Sometimes the light goes off and on and off and on, and bulbs suddenly brighten as if jerked awake, before dimming again. Things spark and snap. A curl of smoke rises from the water heater. I feel myself at the mercy of febrile malignant powers, and I rush to pull my laptop plug out of the wall. Later, electricians are summoned and they diagnose the problem with the ease of a long acquaintance. The current is too high or too low, never quite right. A wire has melted. Another compressor will need to be replaced.