The Inheritors by Eve Fairbanks is historical storytelling done well, writes Wamuwi Mbao. The InheritorsEve FairbanksJonathan Ball Publishers, 2023 David…
Sindi-Leigh McBride reviews Koleka Putuma’s Hullo, Bu-bye, Koko, Come In, a joy to behold even when the subject is devastating….
Carina Venter reviews Paula Fourie’s Mr Entertainment: The Story of Taliep Petersen, finding a life that encompasses a country and…
Believers and Hustlers by Sylva Nze Ifedigbo, winner of the Chinua Achebe Prize for Literature, explores the sinister underbelly of…
Ayanna Lloyd Banwo’s debut novel When We Were Birds makes compelling work of how a world in which the living…
Elif Batuman’s Either/Or is a new and worthy entry into the well-populated gallery of erudite books about people learning how…
Teamhw SbonguJesu’s debut collection of poetry, Bury Me Naked, delivers a conscientious, humorous, much-needed lesson in a poetics of voice…
Poli Poli by Barbara Masekela is a memoir that exemplifies the paradox of the ordinary and the spectacle in black…
The Blinded City by Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon is a lucidly fascinating immersion into the world of the people who occupy the…
Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah’s The Sex Lives of African Women is an important addition to writing that resists the fetishisation of…
Shayera Dark reviews Noor Naga’s experimental debut novel If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English, winner of the Graywolf Press Africa…
Kei Miller’s collection of essays Things I Have Withheld takes the measure of what it means to read and be…
Culture and Liberation: Exile Writings, 1966–1985Alex La GumaEdited by Christopher J LeeSeagull Books 1966 was an interesting year. Future Trump…
To respect this text is to revisit it: Masiyaleti Mbewe reviews the new standalone edition of Toni Morrison’s Recitatif. RecitatifToni…
Entering a world the author has long been building, Wairimũ Murĩithi reviews Things They Lost, the debut novel from 2014…
Carey Baraka reviews The House of Rust, the latest tale from Mombasa, land of fables, and chats to its author,…
Michael Gardiner reviews Letters to Lionel, a series of letters written to the late poet, novelist and teacher Lionel Abrahams…
Shayera Dark reviews In Every Mirror She’s Black by Lọlá Ákínmádé Åkerström. In Every Mirror She’s BlackLọlá Ákínmádé ÅkerströmHead of Zeus,…
Michaela Coel’s Misfits blends an effervescent sense of social realism with a beguiling clarity, writes Wamuwi Mbao. Misfits: A Personal…
Mphuthumi Ntabeni’s The Wanderers is a novel that indicates a storyteller in love with the art of telling tales, writes…
Shayera Dark reviews Ogadinma: Or, Everything Will Be All Right by Ukamaka Olisakwe. Ogadinma: Or, Everything Will Be All RightUkamaka…
Rivers Solomon’s Sorrowland rearranges the furniture of the hardening genre of novels resolved to deal with North America’s history of…
Fernweh, Teju Cole’s latest photobook, feels like a palliative moment amid the uncertainty, loss and raw grief of the pandemic,…
Meron Hadero was recently awarded the 2021 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, becoming the first Ethiopian author to claim…
Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun contemplates the erasure of the imagined boundary between human authenticity and the artifice of…
Lihle Ngcobozi’s Mothers of the Nation reveals the social complexity and political depth of the Manyano Women’s movement, writes Athambile…
Wamuwi Mbao reviews Susan Abulhawa’s Against The Loveless World, winner of the Palestine Book Award. Against The Loveless WorldSusan AbulhawaBloomsbury…
Claudia Rankine’s Just Us is perhaps the most profound meditation on race and violence to emerge in the first two…
While 12 Rules for Life was a snapshot of an intellectual moment, however paltry, Beyond Order is the literary equivalent…
Monica Popescu’s At Penpoint: African Literatures, Postcolonial Studies, and the Cold War is a steadfast engagement with the cultural Cold…
Wamuwi Mbao reviews Rešoketšwe Manenzhe’s novel Scatterlings, winner of the 2020 Dinaane Debut Fiction Award. ScatterlingsRešoketšwe ManenzheJacana Media, 2020 There…
In The Rise of the African Novel, Mukoma Wa Ngugi traces the way African literature has been a space to…
Whether we have learnt from the story of Dr Abdullah Abdurahman remains to be seen, writes Stephen Langtry. Martin Plaut’s…
In The Lie of 1652, Patric Tariq Mellet fills in the ‘before’ that was of little interest to those invested…
The First Woman can be read as Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s answer to people who like to defend patriarchal power by…
Colin Grant’s Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation is an important and valuable text that has captured the voices that…
Wamuwi Mbao reviews Avni Doshi’s Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Burnt Sugar. Burnt SugarAvni DoshiPenguin, 2020 The rather selfish belief that one’s…
Europatriarchy takes centre stage in Minna Salami’s elegant book of essays Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone, writes…
Rustum Kozain reviews In Praise of Hotel Rooms, the fifth collection of poetry by Fiona Zerbst, calling it ‘a fine…
Wamuwi Mbao reviews Irenosen Okojie’s Nudibranch, the ‘immersively deranged’ collection containing her 2020 Caine Prize-winning story. Nudibranch Irenosen OkojieLittle, Brown,…
