To My Children's Children
10 best books like To My Children's Children (Sindiwe Magona): Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa, Welcome to Our Hillbrow, After Freedom: The Rise of the Post-Apartheid Generation in Democratic South Africa, Murambi, The Book of Bones, Bones, Fools and Other Stories, Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter, The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, Kehinde, The Farm in the Green Mountains
Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa
| Author | Antjie Krog |
| ISBN | 0812931297 |
Ever since Nelson Mandela dramatically walked out of prison in 1990 after twenty-seven years behind bars, South Africa has been undergoing a radical transformation. In one of the most miraculous events of the century, the oppressive system of apartheid was dismantled. Repressive laws mandating...
| Author | Phaswane Mpe |
| ISBN | 0869809954 |
This is a very short novel, a novella really, only 124 pages. It is written as a narrative from a second person, to the main protagonist, who is already dead as the book is written.
Hillbrow is a very violent suburb of Johannesburg in South Africa, and the title of the book is very ironic, as there...
After Freedom: The Rise of the Post-Apartheid Generation in Democratic South Africa
| Author | Katherine S. Newman |
| ISBN | 0807007463 |
Twenty years after the end of apartheid, a new generation is building a multiracial democracy in South Africa but remains mired in economic inequality and political conflict.
This spring, South Africa will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the fall of apartheid and the first free...
Murambi, The Book of Bones
| Author | Boubacar Boris Diop |
| ISBN | 0253218527 |
"[W]hat is true of Rwanda is true in each of us; we all share in Africa." --L'Harmattan
"[This novel] comes closer than have many political scientists or historians to trying to understand why this small country... sank in such appalling violence." --Radio France International
In...
| Author | Chenjerai Hove |
| ISBN | 0435905767 |
Bones is a poetic novel about the guerilla fight for freedom in Zimbabwe, but unlike a conventional novel, all the action is interior monologues -- some by specific characters, others by representatives of certain types produced by colonial history, or by spirits. The story involves a mother's love,...
| Author | Njabulo S. Ndebele |
| ISBN | 0930523202 |
These stories from the closing days of apartheid rule in South Africa won the Noma Award, Africa's highest literary award, and announced Njabulo Ndebele as an assured and impressive literary voice. He has gone on to become one of the most powerful voices for cultural freedom on the whole of the African...
Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter
| Author | J. Nozipo Maraire |
| ISBN | 0385318227 |
Written as a letter from a Zimbabwean mother to her daughter, a student at Harvard, J. Nozipo Maraire evokes the moving story of a mother reaching out to her daughter to share the lessons life has taught her and bring the two closer than ever before. Interweaving history and memories, disappointments...
| Author | Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o |
| ISBN | 0435901915 |
This is a beautifully written book about Kenyan Culture and their struggle for independence. It shows how brutal, cheap, manipulative, money monger the white man was. How the capitalists exploited the natives. One of my favourite quotes from the book is
"Two laws. Two justices.One law and...
| Author | Buchi Emecheta |
| ISBN | 0435909851 |
Kehinde and her husband Albert had always intended to return to Nigeria. When the opportunity arises, Kehinde realises she is reluctant to leave London and the independence she has enjoyed there. Albert, longing for the prosperity and status that will be his in Nigeria, is determined not to be thwarted...
| Author | Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer |
| ISBN | 0933050461 |
The Farm in the Green Mountains is the story of a family finding home halfway across the world from their homeland.
Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer and her husband, the playwright Carl Zuckmayer, lived at the heart of intellectual life in Weimar, Germany, counting among their circle Stefan Zweig, Alma...
| Author | S. Josephine Baker |
| ISBN | 1590177061 |
New York’s Lower East Side was said to be the most densely populated square mile on earth in the 1890s. Health inspectors called the neighborhood “the suicide ward.” Diarrhea epidemics raged each summer, killing thousands of children. Sweatshop babies with smallpox and typhus dozed in garment...
The Lights of Pointe-Noire
| Author | Alain Mabanckou |
| ISBN | 1846689805 |
###I found brilliant###
The pictures after every chapter. Lovely! Each chapter is actually devoted either to a family member or to a place. I really appreciate the pictures at the end to illustrate the person or the point that was discussed previously.
###What to expect###
After...
Sizwe's Test: A Young Man's Journey Through Africa's AIDS Epidemic
| Author | Jonny Steinberg |
| ISBN | 1416552693 |
At the age of twenty-nine, Sizwe Magadla is among the most handsome, well-educated, and richest of the men in his poverty-stricken village. Dr. Hermann Reuter, a son of old South West African stock, wants to show the world that if you provide decent treatment, people will come and get it, no matter their...
To Quote Myself: A Memoir
Khaya Dlanga has established himself as one of the most influential individuals in South African media, particularly social media, a platform he uses to promote discussion on topics that range from the frivolous to the profound. In To Quote Myself, Khaya recounts entertaining and moving stories...
Ice Diaries: An Antarctic Memoir
| Author | Jean McNeil |
| ISBN | 1770413189 |
What do we stand to lose in a world without ice?
A decade ago, novelist and short story writer Jean McNeil spent a year as writer-in-residence with the British Antarctic Survey, and four months on the world’s most enigmatic continent — Antarctica. Access to the Antarctic remains largely...
Time to Write: More Than 100 Professional Writers Reveal How to Fit Writing Into Your Busy Life
| Author | Kelly L. Stone |
| ISBN | 1598694383 |
"Okay, no more excuses. Light bulbs went off in my head as I read Kelly L. Stone's Time to Write with its shrewd observations and sage, practical advice for making time to write."
-Hallie Ephron, author of Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel and 1001 Books for Every Mood"When it's a writing day,...
“You are too close to the water,” Paul whispered. “There are barbels in the mud. They will wake up if you step on them.”
When Paul and Dominique are sent to boarding schools in Natal, their idyllic childhood on a Free State farm is over. Their parents’ leftist politics has made life...
Terms & Conditions: Life in Girls’ Boarding-Schools, 1939–1979
| Author | Ysenda Maxtone Graham |
As we discover from Ysenda Maxtone Graham’s quietly hilarious history of life in British girls’ boarding-schools between 1939 and 1979, this was a not untypical reaction. Today it’s hard to grasp the casual carelessness and even hostility with which the middle and upper classes once approached...
Tales From a Troubled Land
| Author | Alan Paton |
| ISBN | 0684825848 |
كتاب خفيف و ممتع لكاتب فذ و اكثر امتاعا. علاقتي بالان باتون ترجع الى اواخر تسعينيات القرن الماضي حينما قرأت له قصة قصيرة بعنوان "هابيني" و هي لفظة مرخمة من كلمة...
| Author | Ken Bugul |
| ISBN | 2723608387 |
The subject of intense admiration—and not a little shock, when it was first published— The Abandoned Baobab has consistently captivated readers ever since. The book has been translated into numerous languages and was chosen by QBR Black Book Review as one of Africa's 100 best books of the twentieth...
Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography
| Author | Clifton Crais |
| ISBN | 0691135800 |
Displayed on European stages from 1810 to 1815 as the Hottentot Venus, Sara Baartman was one of the most famous women of her day, and also one of the least known. As the Hottentot Venus, she was seen by Westerners as alluring and primitive, a reflection of their fears and suppressed desires. But who was...
| Author | Charles Mungoshi |
| ISBN | 0949932027 |
waiting for the rain is a beautiful book. it explores the nature of life itself in a unique kind of juxtaposition. its simplicity exudes a type of complexity not quite easy to explain. mungoshi speaks of how we all have felt at some point in our young lives. we want to leave home, we want to move out of the familiar...
Freedom: The Sequel to Slave
Mende Nazer’s shocking story of modern-day slavery – told in the global best-seller ‘Slave’ – touched the world. Later made into a film, it told the harrowing story of a girl from the Sudan taken into captivity, and then sold into slavery. Written by the award-winning journalist Damien Lewis,...
| Author | Gillian Slovo |
| ISBN | 0393323994 |
"Written with the pace of a thriller"—Times Literary Supplement. Red Dust is set in a rural South African town, where three people are about to meet their past. Sarah Barcant has left her law career in New York to assist an old friend as prosecutor on a Truth Commission hearing. Dirk Hendricks, a former...
