The best books of African literature

The best books of African literature

Oral tradition has allowed the various peoples of the world to have spread great teachings and expressed the essence of a certain culture throughout history. In the case of a continent like Africa, the various tribes made this art one of their flagship forms of communication until the arrival of colonization and the impositions of foreign powers condemned their traditions. Fortunately, the new millennium has allowed a wave of African authors to reveal to the world the legacy of a continent as eroded as it is full of stories and poetry. You want to know the next best books of African literature?

Everything falls apart, by Chinua Achebe

Everything falls apart from Chinua Achebe

If there is a book that defines like few others the great problems that colonization posed for Africa, that is Everything falls apart. Magnificent work of the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, who like many others in his country were victims of the first attempt at Anglican evangelization in the 1958th century, this novel published in XNUMX tells the story of Okonkwo, the most powerful warrior of Umuofia, a fictional people of Igbo culture whom the first evangelizers arrive with the aim of changing the norms and contributing their vision of reality. Told like a story, and ideal to immerse yourself in the terms and culture of this unique corner of Africa, Todo se dismorona is a must-read for all those who want to delve into the history of the largest continent in the world.

Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Americanah, that's what Nigerians call someone who once marched from the West African country to the United States and returned. A word by which we could also refer to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, possibly the most influential African writer today. Aware of a feminism that defends tooth and nail in her talks, stories, and conventions, Ngozi made this novel the most successful in the United States by telling the story of a young woman and her hardships to advance after immigrating to the other side of the pond. Published in 2013, Americanah has received among others the National Book Circle Award, one of the most prestigious literary awards in the United States.

My longest letter, from Mariama Bâ

My longest letter from Mariama Ba

Unlike western countries, polygamy is still common in much of Africa. A tradition that condemns women to be subjected by their husbands and see their possibilities to advance in places like Senegal, a country whose reality is addressed in this book by Mariama Ba, an author who waited until she was fifty-one years old to tell her truth. The protagonists of My Longest Letter are two women: Aïssatou, who decides to leave her husband and move abroad, and Ramatoulaye, who despite staying in Senegal, begins to show a change of position coinciding with the winds of change that it brought the independence of this West African country in 1960.

Misfortune, by JM Coetzee

Misfortune of JM Coetzee

El apartheid that South Africa suffered until 1994 it was one of the last remnants of a colonization that had been hitting Africa for centuries. And one of the authors who has best known how to capture the reality of that episode and its subsequent consequences has been Coetzee, Nobel Prize for Literature that in this "Misfortune" traces a story that plunges us into the depths of a well full of secrets. Devastating, the story of college professor David Lurie and his relationship with his daughter Lucy trace a journey through nuanced, everyday South Africa that will seduce the most daring readers.

A grain of wheat, from Ngugi wa Thiong'o

A grain of wheat from Ngugi Wa Thiong'o

Influenced by the first book he ever opened, the Bible, Kenya's best known writer captured in A grain of wheat, a title taken from a verse of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, the chronicle of a people and their history during the four days prior to Uhuru, the name by which he is known Kenyan independence reached on December 12, 1963. Published in 1967, A Grain of Wheat is one of Thiong'o's flagship works, imprisoned at the time for promote Kikuyu language theater in rural areas of your country and one of the Eternal aspirants for a Nobel Prize in Literature that continues to resist him.

Sleepwalking Earth, by Mia Couto

Sleepwalking Earth by Mia Kouto

Considered as one of the best African novels ever, Sleepwalking Earth becomes a crude story about the civil war in Mozambique in the 80s through the eyes of the old man Tuahir and the boy Muidinga, two characters hidden in a wrecked bus where they discover the notebooks in which one of the passengers wrote his life. Masterpiece of Kouto, a flagship author in understanding the history of a Mozambican nation discovered in 1498 by the Portuguese Vasco de Gama and considered today as one of the most underdeveloped in the world.

Allah is not bound by Ahmadou Kourouma

Allah is not bound by Ahamadou Kourouma

A native of the Ivory Coast, Kourouma was considered by many to be the francophone version of Chinua Achebe. Aware of the problems of his land and continent, the author, who began to write at the age of forty, left as the best example of his vision Allah is not obligated, a work that presents us with the crude history of Birahima, an orphan sent to Liberia and Sierra Leone as a child soldier. One of the best books in African literature when it comes to approaching the corrupted childhood of thousands of children used in two countries considered by Kourouma as "a brothel".

The fire of the origins, by Emmanuel Dongala

The fire of the origins of Emmanuel Dongala

Born in 1941 in the Republic of the Congo, Emmanuel Dongala is the most representative author of what has been one of the countries hardest hit by foreign colonization. The fire of the origins obeys the many questions of the protagonist of this novel, Mandala Mankunku, throughout a century in which colonization, Marxist rule and independence they weave the chronicle of a troubled nation.

What are in your opinion the best books of African literature?


Be the first to comment

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked with *

*

*

  1. Responsible for the data: Miguel Ángel Gatón
  2. Purpose of the data: Control SPAM, comment management.
  3. Legitimation: Your consent
  4. Communication of the data: The data will not be communicated to third parties except by legal obligation.
  5. Data storage: Database hosted by Occentus Networks (EU)
  6. Rights: At any time you can limit, recover and delete your information.