Fiction > African Fiction

My name is Vikram Lall. I have the distinction of having been numbered one of Africa

The history of 'Credit Gone Away', a squalid Congolese bar, is related by one of its most loyal customers, Broken Glass, who has been commissioned by its owner to set down an account of the characters who frequent it. Broken Glass himself is a disgraced alcoholic school teacher with a love of French language and literature which he has largely failed to communicate to his pupils but which he displays in the pages of his notebook. The notebook is also a farewell to the bar and to his fellow drinkers. After writing the final words Br... read more

As one of Britain's foremost poets, Ben Okri is rightly acclaimed for his use of language. And as a Booker Prize winning novelist, this skill was shown to particular effect in both "Starbook" (his most recent work) and in "The Famished Road". In "Tales of Freedom", he brings both poetry and story together in a fascinating new form, using writing and image pared down to their essentials, where haiku and story meet. Thus we discover Pinprop, the slave to an old couple lost in a clearing, who holds the keys to the universe in his quir... read more

"Starbook" tells the tale of a prince and a maiden in a mythical land where a golden age is ending. Their fragile story considers the important questions we all face, exploring creativity, wisdom, suffering and transcendence in a time when imagination still ruled the world. A magnificent achievement and a modern-day parable, "Starbook" offers a vision of life far greater than ourselves.

Rhodesia - a place of great beauty, but also of terrible, man-made, tragedy. The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam is, above all else, a magical evocation of childhood; at times laugh-out-loud funny, at others heartbreakingly sad. It tells the story of two young sisters, Nyree and Cia O'Callohan, who live on a remote farm in the East of what was Rhodesia in the late 1970s. Beneath the dripping vines of the Vumba rainforest, and under the tutelage of their heretical grandfather, Oupa, theirs is a seductive world laced wi... read more

Meet Angel Tungaraza, professional cake-baker, amateur matchmaker, an ear to listen and a shoulder to cry on. A uniquely charming, funny and touching novel of life, life and food set in Rwanda, a country recovers from unimaginable terror and violence. Angel Tungazara has recently moved to Rwanda from her native Tanzania. With her husband, Pius, and the five orphaned children of their late son and daughter, she is hardly short of things to do. But she still finds time to pursue her hobby and her passion, her small but increasingly s... read more

2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction Shortlist The last time Silas Ali encountered the Lieutenant, Silas was locked in the back of a police van and the Lieutenant was conducting a vicious assault on Lydia, his wife. When Silas sees him again, by chance, twenty years later, crimes from the past erupt into the present, splintering the Alis' fragile family life.Bitter Fruit is the story of Silas and Lydia, their parents, friends and colleagues, as their lives take off in unexpected directions and relationships fracture under the weight ... read more

When Pius Fernandes, a retired schoolteacher living in modern day Dar es Salaam, discovers a diary of a British colonial administrator from 1913, he is drawn into a provocative account of the Asian community of East Africa, and the liaisons, feelings and secrets of its people, over the course of a century.Part generational history, part detective story, part social chronicle, M.G. Vassanji's award-winning novel magnificently conjures setting and period as it explores notions of identity and exile. First published 1994.

Paul Rayment is on the threshold of a comfortable old age when a calamitous cycling accident results in the amputation of a leg. Humiliated, his body truncated, his life circumscribed, he turns away from his friends.He hires a nurse named Marijana, with whom he has a European childhood in common: hers in Croatia, his in France. Tactfully and efficiently she ministers to his needs. But his feelings for her, and for her handsome teenage son, are complicated by the sudden arrival on his doorstep of the celebrated Australian novelist E... read more

Maja was five years old when her black Cuban family emigrated from the Caribbean to London, leaving her with one complete memory: a woman singing - in a voice both eerie and enthralling - at their farewell party. Now, almost twenty years later, Maja herself is a singer, pregnant and haunted by what she calls 'her Cuba'. First published 2007.

Abie follows the arc of a letter from London back to Africa to a coffee plantation that now could be hers if she wants it. Standing among the ruined groves she strains to hear the sound of the past, but the layers of years are too many. Thus begins the gathering of her family's history through the tales of her aunts - four women born to four different wives of a wealthy plantation owner, her grandfather. Asana, Mariama, Hawa and Serah: theirs is the story of a nation, a family and four women's attempts to alter the course of her ow... read more

When Abie's family leave her a coffee plantation, she returns to Africa to find herself in a place suspended between past and present; between the real world and the unworldly. Standing among the ruined groves she strains to hear the sound of the past, but 'the layers of years in between us were too many'. So begins her gathering of the past through the stories of her four aunts - Asana, Mary, Hawa and Serah. Each woman recounts her life from a mass of muddied memories and vivid recollections of the father they feared, the men th... read more

Dinah and Lisa are growing up in 1950's South Africa, where racial laws are tightening. They are two little girls from a liberal family. As the shadows of apartheid lengthen, Dinah journeys through childhood and adolescence and the minefields of boys and university in theis vibrant and irrestible novel.

Agu is just a boy when war arrives at his village. His mother and sister are rescued by the UN, while he and his father remain to fight the rebels. 'Run!' shouts his father when the rebels arrive. And Agu does run. Straight into the rebels' path. In a vivid, sparkling voice, Agu tells the story of what happens to him next. His story is shocking and painful, and completely unforgettable.Beasts of No Nation gives us an extraordinary portrait of the chaos and violence of war. It is a gripping and remarkable debut.

Reserved, honourable Mr Malik. You wouldn't notice him in a Nairobi street - except, perhaps, to comment on his carefully sculpted comb over - but beneath his unprepossessing exterior lies a warm heart and a secret passion. Not even his friends at the Asadi Club know it, but Mr Malik is head-over-heels in love with the leader of the Tuesday morning bird walk of the East African Ornithological Society, Rose Mbikwa. While Mr Malik hesitantly plans how he will ask Rose to the annual Hunt Ball, flashy Harry Kahn arrives in town and mak... read more

The Night Country is an enchanting and inspiring story from one of Australia's most popular authors, Bryce Courtenay, which draws on the author's childhood in Africa. Towards the end of the Great Depression a young boy goes with his sister to stay at a farm while their mother is ill. There, during a scorching African summer, he witnesses a trial and punishment which will forever remind him of white men's cruelty to black people. Beautifully packaged with striking watercolour illustrations, The Night Country is a fable for all ages ... read more

Julia belongs to the inner circle of Johannesburg high society. It is rumoured that all those not invited to her wedding pretended to be out of town at their beach houses to save face. But in the New South Africa, things have changed. The days of tea on the lawn are over and white 'madams' of the affluent suburbs like Julia have to adjust. Julia's husband, Douglas, is a serial adulterer and is no longer willing to pay for the small luxuries she has always enjoyed. Her daughter has rebelled herself right out of her life. She doesn't... read more

What makes a father violent? It takes a brave man to find out ...As a volunteer at St Margaret's Hospice, eager and helpful Meryl is looking for a role in life. The arrival of Jamie, the son of a patient, may be just what she is after. He is good-looking, young and, above all, troubled. Jamie's father has only a few days to live, but between father and son is a lifetime of misunderstanding and unhappiness. Could the most powerful legacy Jamie faces be an inability to love? With well-meaning Meryl hovering in the background, Jamie e... read more

THE NO.1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY introduced the world to the one and only Precious Ramotswe - the engaging and sassy owner of Botswana's only detective agency. TEARS OF THE GIRAFFE, McCall Smith's second book, takes us further into this world as we follow Mama Ramotswe into more daring situations ...Among her cases this time are wayward wives, unscrupulous maids, and the challenge to resolve a mother's pain for her son who is long lost on the African plains. Indeed, Mma Ramotswe's own impending marriage to the most gentlemanly of ... read more

She just sat there hardly moving, staring at the drive. Black marks formed under her eyes where her lashes bled their waxy coating onto her skin. Her rouged cheeks were smudged. Mother looked like she was melting in the heat. Faith leads an isolated existence on her family's drought stricken farm in the Northern Transvaal of South Africa. When the rain stopped, her father took to the road as a travelling salesman, returning only at weekends. Now Faith lives with her mother Bella and dog Boesman anticipating his visits – until one d... read more