africabooks

media type="custom" key="27936291" align="right"Africa Books
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http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/booksandarts/features/african-book-club/

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**Our novels for 2016 as chosen by our listeners**

**//Half of a Yellow Sun// by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (February)** //Half of a Yellow Sun// tracks the complex, intertwined relationships of five main characters: a Nigerian professor and his 13 year old houseboy, twin sisters and an English art buyer. Their lives are dramatically altered by the Nigerian civil war and the personal decisions they each make. First published in 2007, this novel won the Orange Prize (for women writers) in the same year.

===[|African Bookclub: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun] ===

 This is the first in RN's 2016 Bookclub. Adichie's novel is the story of many things: sisters, education, an African middle class, revolution, civil war, family, love and the creation of a new country.

**//Heart of Darkness// by Joseph Conrad (March)** Polish novelist Joseph Conrad wrote this novella in 1899. In it Charles Marlow, sitting with friends on a boat moored on the River Thames, tells of his voyage up the Congo River. Marlow captained a trading boat in search of Kurtz, an enigmatic and rogue ivory trader whom Marlow eventually finds to be gravely ill.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/booksandarts/african-book-club-joseph-conrad's-heart-of-darkness/7088252

**//Things Fall Apart// by Chinua Achebe (April)** First published in 1958, this is said to be the most widely read African book. Nigerian Chinua Achebe writes about Okonkwo, a respected Nigerian tribal leader. He acts with questionable judgement after his family adopts a young boy, and Christian missionaries upset the village's tribal customs. Okonkwo's actions lead to a series of incidents where his standing in the community is seriously undermined.

===[|African Book Club: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart] ===

  //Things Fall Apart// by Nigerian author Chinua Achebetells the story of Okonkwo, a respected Nigerian tribal leader. It's said to be the most widely read African book.

**//Everyday is for the Thief// by Teju Cole (May)** After 15 years away a writer returns home to Nigeria and is reunited with a beloved aunt, reconnects with a boyhood friend and the woman that was his first love. While joyous reunions, he is saddened by the corruption at all levels that has taken over the country. This novella is described as a scathing but loving look at Nigeria in measured, polished prose.

<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #333333; font-family: Cassia,Georgia; font-size: 1.465em;">**//July's People//** **by Nadine Gordimer** **(June)** <span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #333333; font-family: Cassia,Georgia; font-size: 1.465em;">Nobel prize winner Nadine Gordimer tells the story of a white, middle class family who are forced to flee to the remote village of their servant, July. Here they are thrust into a life of poverty, where the power shifts unnervingly from the clarity and comfort they found in the servant/master relationship. Nadine Gordimer died in July 2014.

===<span style="color: #006699; font-family: Calibre,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 20px; text-decoration: none;">[|African Book Club: July's People by Nadine Gordimer] ===

<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; display: block; font-family: Cassia,Georgia; font-size: 12.9613px;"> //July's People// by Nobel Prize-winning author Nadine Gordimer tells the story of the Smales, a white middle-class family from Johannesburg that finds itself caught up in a black revolution in apartheid South Africa.

<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #333333; font-family: Cassia,Georgia; font-size: 1.465em;">**//In the Country of Men// by Hisham Matar (July)** <span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #333333; font-family: Cassia,Georgia; font-size: 1.465em;">//In the Country of Men// secured Libyan author Hisham Mater a place on the Booker Prize shortlist in 2006. Nine-year-old Suleiman's existence in Tripoli is comfortable until Muammar Qaddafi wrests power. Suleiman's father joins a pro-democracy rebel group that goes into hiding, and his mother begins to drink heavily. Amongst this turmoil, Suleiman must find wisdom and stability by himself. Hisham Matar's father was one of the disappeared during the forty year rule of Colonel Gaddafi.

<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #333333; font-family: Cassia,Georgia; font-size: 1.465em;">**//We Need New Names// by NoViolet Bulawayo (August)** <span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #333333; font-family: Cassia,Georgia; font-size: 1.465em;">Civil unrest, an absent, AIDS infected father and a mother who works far away drives Darling from Zimbabwean shantytown Paradise to the dream of America. Her new 'paradise', however, is Detroit, Michigan where she lives with an anorexic aunt whose marriage is falling apart. Zimbabwean author NoViolet Bulawayo received widespread acclaim for her first novel, including a Booker Prize shortlist in 2013, and //The Guardian//and //LA Times// prizes for first fiction.

<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #333333; font-family: Cassia,Georgia; font-size: 1.465em;">**//The Famished Road// by Ben Okri (September)** <span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #333333; font-family: Cassia,Georgia; font-size: 1.465em;">//The Famished Road// won the 1991 Booker Prize for Nigerian author Ben Okri. It tells of 'spirit-child' Azaro and his special vantage point on the mortal world around him. He refuses to relent to his siblings' urging to return to the spirit world and remains in an unnamed African ghetto out of loyalty to his labourer father and hawker mother.

<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #333333; font-family: Cassia,Georgia; font-size: 1.465em;">**//Cry, the Beloved Country// by Alan Paton (October)** <span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #333333; font-family: Cassia,Georgia; font-size: 1.465em;">//Cry, the Beloved Country// is the 1948 classic by South African anti-apartheid campaigner Alan Paton. Reverend Stephen Kumalo, a black Anglican priest, goes to Johannesburg in search of his son. He discovers him in prison, accused of murdering a white racial rights activist. Kumalo unexpectedly encounters the dead man's father, and the tragedy in their meeting gives rise to new understandings of progress, generosity and forgiveness. Born in South Africa 1903, Alan Paton began writing while working as a teacher, and was a lifelong opponent of his country's Apartheid policies. He died in 1988.

<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #333333; font-family: Cassia,Georgia; font-size: 1.465em;">**//Season of Migration to the North//** **by Tayeb Salih (November)** <span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #333333; font-family: Cassia,Georgia; font-size: 1.465em;">In 2001, the Arab Literary Academy said that Egyptian Tayeb Salih's //Season of Migration// to the North was the most important Arabic novel of the 20 th Century. It tells the story of a man who returns to his Sudanese village after seven years of education in England. He is intrigued by a recent arrival to the village, Mustafa, also educated in the West, whose troubled past forms the centre of the story.

===<span style="color: #0086b7; font-family: Calibre,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 20px; text-decoration: none;">[|African Book Club: Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih] ===


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Thursday 24 November 2016

<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; display: block; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.9613px;"> <span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; display: block; font-family: Cassia,Georgia; font-size: 12.9613px;"> Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih. This classic Arab novel is described as The Heart of Darkness in reverse and is considered one of the most important Arab novels of the 20th century. It's our November African Book Club novel.

<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #333333; font-family: Cassia,Georgia; font-size: 1.465em;">**//Disgrace by// JM Coetzee (December)** <span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #333333; font-family: Cassia,Georgia; font-size: 1.465em;">//Disgrace// was awarded the Booker Prize in 1999, and four years later author JM Coetzee won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Professor David Lurie loses more than his job when an affair with a student turns sour. He deserts Cape Town to live with his daughter in rural Salem. At first he finds country living distasteful, but events transpire to hold him there for good.

===<span style="color: #111111; font-family: Calibre,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"> [|African Book Club: Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee] ===


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Thursday 15 December 2016

<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; display: block; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.9613px;"> <span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; display: block; font-family: Cassia,Georgia; font-size: 12.9613px;"> //Disgrace// is Coetzee's first novel set in post-apartheid South Africa.