Africa has a rich and sprawling literature—historical fiction included. Chinua Achebe's writing forms an important pillar in the the African canon and features frequently here; other firm Five Books favourites include Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose 2022 novel Afterlives is set in what is now Tanzania during the era of German colonial rule, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, whose Women's Prize-winning novel Half of a Yellow Sun is set during Nigeria's Biafran War.
You may also be interested in reading the interview with Zimbabwean novelist Tendai Huchu, who recommended his personal historical fiction highlights. As a genre, he notes, African historical fiction can play an important role in emphasising pre-colonial history: "Africans were supposed to have been timeless: they never developed, they never advanced, they never had any ideas until the Europeans came along. And then they started imposing. History really starts when the Europeans conquer Africa." But, as many of these enchanting books make clear, this insidious narrative was never true.
The Blunder
by Mutt-Lon
The Blunder by Mutt-Lon, the pen name of Nsegbe Daniel Alain, is a historical novel set in early 20th century Cameroon, when the country was split between French and English colonial administrations. It's based on the true story of Dr. Eugène Jamot, a French military doctor whose head still graces a monument outside the Ministry of Public Health in Yaoundé, the capital, but whose legacy is decidedly mixed. The book is a revealing, refreshing and entertaining read, written in French and translated into English by Amy Reid.
Afterlives
by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Afterlives, written by Nobel Prize winning Abdulrazak Gurnah, opens in the early years of the 20th century, during Germany’s brutal colonial rule in East Africa.
“In the hands of a careless writer, A Sin of Omission might have been an impossible read, but Marguerite Poland’s restraint, whilst not sparing us, beckons us on. We trust her, and when you trust an author, you enjoy being absorbed into the world being offered, whatever the delights or otherwise of that world itself.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fiction: The 2020 Walter Scott Prize Shortlist
Katharine Grant, Historical Novelist
“This novel from a decade ago should be read by every American interested in immigration. While it deals with a lot of medical details, the essence of it is about urban life in developing countries and about the immigrant experience. It is both moving and thought-provoking.” Read more...
The Best Economics Books to Take on Holiday
Daniel Hamermesh, Economist
“Is this not a fun read?…Just the ambition of it, and the sweep of it, and the depiction of these ancient African kingdoms that you don’t really get anywhere else in popular culture.” Read more...
Tendai Huchu, Novelist
“I particularly like this book because of how it moves over a very long time span. We have two wars—World War II and then the Zimbabwean war for independence—somewhere in there. It shows really well how history isn’t just a static force. You can’t just say that stuff happened and then it’s over and it’s gone. The effects of these things that happened long ago still reverberate today. And I think, for me, that is why I had to choose this novel.” Read more...
Tendai Huchu, Novelist
“The sense that we’re changed by migration—that home is no longer the same because we are no longer the same—was very powerful in that book and that’s part of why it sticks with me.” Read more...
The Best Transnational Literature
Mohsin Hamid, Novelist
“Waiting for the Barbarians was the Coetzee book that I was always most attached to – I think it’s the Coetzee book that most South Africans are attached to. Coetzee takes the mood of the 1980s state of emergency – when people were being detained and disappearing and there was a fear of communist or black madness on the borders – and he makes it more interesting by creating this partial allegory of some unnamed empire…It’s about a magistrate. He works for the empire, you don’t know what the empire is and you don’t know what century it’s taking place in. The magistrate is trying to administer law and order, he’s trying to be a figure of some kind of justice. And all the time there’s fear that the barbarians are about to invade and take down the empire. All sorts of draconian measures and violations of decency are carried out in the name of emergency. Needless to say, it ends unhappily.” Read more...
The Best South African Fiction
Imraan Coovadia, Novelist
“It’s quite an old-fashioned story of sin and redemption, yet a hugely ambitious tale for Kingsolver to take on. It’s about filial responsibility as a wife and as daughters and sisters; it’s about guilt, bitterness and revenge.” Read more...
The best books on Displacement
Michelle Jana Chan, Novelist
Half of a Yellow Sun
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
***Winner of the 2007 Women’s Prize for Fiction***
The most celebrated of a new generation of Nigerian novelists bravely and brilliantly tackles an event that still seems to whisper in the heart of the country’s affairs perhaps more than any other: the devastating civil war of 1967-70.
“It’s a novel about life in the late 1960s, before, during and after the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Biafran War because of the attempt by the region of that name to secede. And it really highlights a fundamental problem of modern state-building in Nigeria and in many African countries and that is the challenge of forging unity amidst diversity within the often very arbitrary boundaries created by Europeans.” Read more...
The best books on African Politics
Evan Lieberman, Political Scientist
“It almost feels like a cliché to say that this is one of my favourite books. But there is no way you can escape this book. It is such a part of African literature. It is an inescapable classic. It is a brilliant feat of storytelling, the economy of it, the brevity, the imagery, the ear he has for the traditional language.This is the story of Okonkwo, one of the chiefs in the village who rose from poverty and becomes one of the leading figures. He is a leader and local wrestling champion in Umuofia, a fictional group of nine villages in Nigeria, inhabited by the Igbos. He tries to stick to the tradition that he knows and is hopeless when confronted with the modern. He cannot wrap his mind around change in the form of the British and the missionaries and ultimately he is destroyed by that. Even though it is a tragic story you are still captivated by it.” Read more...
Helon Habila, Novelist
