I have always thought that the first book I’d read by Gabriel García Márquez would be One Hundred Years of Solitude. To be honest One Hundred Years intimidates me. This is the tome to Magic Realism,…
Title: The Lover Author: Marguerite Duras Genre: Memoir Published: First published in 1986 I am reading Modern Classics this month. As if my reading ambitions were already not lofty enough, along with #reading SA, #reading Africa,…
Half of a Yellow Sun is about the Biafra war of the late 1960s. A war that was fought between Nigeria and the newly formed Biafra Republic following its secession from Nigeria. The book provides a…
I had just finished Petina Gappah’s first novel, The Book of Memory when I got an invitation to the launch of her recently published collection of short stories – Rotten Row, which follows from her first collection, An…
I am still trying to get the right vocabulary on how best to describe Hanya Yanagihara’s 724-page tome on struggle. Not a struggle of the political kind, but a life filled with unrelenting sorrow. I cried…
Homegoing is a work of fiction about a family history that spans two continents, the North America and Africa. It is the story of half sisters: Effia and Esi whose lives take on very disparate paths.…
Title: The Woman Next Door Author: Yewande Omotoso Published: 2016 Genre: Fiction When I bought this book, I thought that I would be drawn into an exploration of the differing views of the main characters. A…
Title: Letters of Stone: From Nazi Germany to South Africa Author: Steven Robins Published: 2015 Genre: Memoir This book was a Book Club, which I must admit I would not have ordinarily read because of the…
Title: When Breath Becomes Air Author: Paul Kalanithi Published: 2015 Genre: Memoir Paul Kalanithi’s memoir is heartbreaking. I read this in two days and it left me emotionally exhausted. But it was not his writing that…
Title: Negroland – A memoir Author: Margo Jefferson Published: 2015 Genre: Memoir This book was an eye-opener. It was revelatory in not only its analysis of the upper-class world of educated, wealthy and accomplished African-Americans who…
Title: The Quiet Room: A Journey out of The Torment of Madness Author:Lori Schiller and Amanda Bennett Published:1994 Genre: Memoir Again I seem to have reverted to yet another book on mental illness. This one is…
Title: How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit? True Stories of Expat Women in Asia Author: Edited by Shannon Young Published: 2014 Genre: Memoir Every so often I come across a book recommendation on some expat…
Title: Best White and Other Anxious Delusions Author: Rebecca Davis Published: 2015 Genre: Memoir Every so often, whenever I feel the need to laugh a bit, I download books written by young South African writers. Let’s…
Title: Pelt and Other Stories Author: Catherine McNamara Published: 2013 Genre: Fiction In between my getting stuck into the novels on my TBR list, I have also been dipping into my collection of short stories –…
André Brink (1935 – 2015). Photo source: africavivre.com In making my ambitious plans to read everything and anything this year, I decided that one of my reading forays would be into reading South African writers. I…
Harper Lee. I have written about my aversion towards mandated reading that forces one to read a certain genre merely because at the time it is deemed important enough to add to one’s literary repertoire. I…
Title: White Teeth Author: Zadie Smith Published: 2000 Genre: Fiction Zadie Smith’s White Teeth took me close to two months to finish. That for me is a very long time, but it was read between a…
Title: Cry Baby Author: Lauren Liebenberg Published: 2013 Genre: Fiction I read Lauren Liebenberg’s deliciously-named, The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam many years ago. I enjoyed it immensely and had been looking forward to…
Title: The Buddha of Suburbia Author: Hanif Kureishi Published:1990 Genre: Fiction I recently saw an interview on France 24 with Hanif Kureishi discussing his writing. I remembered that I had one of his books, The Buddha…
Title: Stuffed: Adventures of a restaurant family Author: Patricia Volk Published: 2002 Genre: Memoir I have read some scathing reviews about Stuffed, and must say that as accurate as some are in their take on Ms…
Title: France’s got Talent : The woeful consequences of French elitism Author: Peter Gumbel Published: 2013 Genre: Non-fiction I have been sitting on this review for a while. Whilst I really enjoyed Peter Gumbel’s book, in…
Title: QUIET: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking Author: Susan Cain Published:2012 Genre: Non-fiction I am an introvert, or more accurately as I have recently discovered, an ambivert. I can fake…
Title: Hurry Down Sunshine: A Father’s Memoir of Love and Madness Author: Michael Greenberg Published: 2009 Genre: Memoir I read this immediate after reading An Unquiet Mind and can definitely say it gave a different perspective…
Title: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness Author: Kay Redfield Jamison Published: 1996 Genre: Memoir Kay Redfield Jamison is an academic. She is, according to the bio in her book, a Professor of…
Title: Indigo: In search of the colour that seduced the world Author: Catherine McKinley Published: 2011 Genre: Memoir Catherine McKinley writes of her Scottish heritage, and the use of the colour indigo in the tartans of…
Title: Red Ink Author: Angela Makholwa Published: 2007 Genre: Fiction In a word: gripping. I love watching the TV show Criminal Minds, and reading Red Ink was like watching an extended show of it. Angela Makholwa…
Title: The Happiness Project Author: Gretchen Rubin Published: 2009 Genre: Memoir I finally read Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project. It has been on my kindle for a while, but I felt that it would have been a…
Title: Americanah Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Published: 2013 Genre: Fiction I have been sitting on this review for a while. Writing it feels like being unfaithful in some way. Here goes: I was disappointed. I loved…
I have yet to meet anyone that does not profess to loving One Hundred Years of Solitude, and to follow it up with how ‘Márquez’s magic realism brought Latin American to the world.’ It was, when…
Title: The Wife Author: Meg Wolitzer Published: 2003 Genre: Fiction The Wife opens with Joan Castleman making the decision to leave her husband, Joe while en route to Helsinki where he is to be honoured with…
Title: Trinity Rising & Trinity On Air Author: Fiona Snyckers Genre: Fiction Published: 2009 & 2010 The first two books, in a series of three written by Fiona Snyckers were meant to be my holiday reading.…
Title: Fasting, Feasting Author: Anita Desai Genre: Fiction Published: 1999 I enjoyed Fasting, Feasting enough to finish it but can’t really say it is was one of my favourite reads. Anita Desai weaves her story around…
Title: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother Author: Amy Chua Genre: Memoir Published: 2011 When Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother was published two years ago; the furore and debates that followed over the methods used…
Title: Darkness Visible Author: William Styron Genre: Memoir Published: 1990 This was a short read about a terrible illness. Styron writes consciously and matter-of-factly about his depression. Consciously because even before he had given it a…
Title: The Association of Foreign Spouses Author: Marilyn Heward Mills Genre: Fiction Published: 2010 After having recently read Ghana Must Go, The Association of Foreign Spouses, a book based in Ghana, transported me right back to…
Source: www.washingtonpost.com I have added to my list of authors to read, Alice Munro, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize in Literature winner. Yes, because she has won the Nobel Peace Prize, but more so because she…
Title: The Cooked Seed Author: Anchee Min Published: 2013 Genre: Memoir Anchee Min has written extensively about her life in China in the years prior to the Cultural Revolution, when she was chosen to be the…
Title: Ghana Must Go Author : Taiye Selasi Published: 2013 Genre: Fiction Ghana Must Go centres around the Sai family; Kweku Sai, his wife Folasadé and their children. Theirs is a love story of two young,…
Title: The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons and an Unlikely Road to Manhood Author: Ta-Nehisi Coates Published: 2008 Genre: Memoir I read this in two days. I enjoyed it that much. I had also wanted…
Title: Powder Necklace Author: Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond Published: 2012 Genre: Fiction Powder Necklace tells the story of 13/14 year old Lila who is uprooted without warning by her mother from London to Ghana. Although Ghanaian by…
Now that African wanderlust will also also be hosting its book blog – all book-related posts will make their way here. This is slightly belated post, but Golden Baobab announced the longlist for its much coveted…
Title: On Black Sisters’ Street Author: Chika Unigwe Genre: Fiction Published: 2009 As is often the case, my reading choices are made fairly haphazardly. Chika Unigwe’s book must have come recommended by someone, somewhere because I…
Title: Black Orchids Author: Gillian Slovo Genre: Fiction Published: 2008 I enjoyed Black Orchids, a story dealing with race and set in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and England from the 1940s through to the 1960s. It is…
Title: The Buddha in the Attic Author: Julie Otsuka Genre: Novel Published: 2011 Julie Otsuka’s book is written in the first person plural – a style I have never seen used before. It was at first…
Title: The Poisonwood Bible Author: Barbara Kingsolver Genre: Novel Published: 1998 The Poisonwood Bible is the story of the Price family, an evangelical Baptist family that moves from America to Belgian Congo in the years preceding…
Title: Infidel: My Life Author: Ayaan Hirsi Ali Genre: Memoir Published: 2007 When I read Infidel more than four years ago, Ayaan Hirsi Ali had lost her dutch citizenship and her status as a member of…
Title: Unaccustomed Earth Author: Jhumpa Lahiri Genre: Fiction Published: 2008 Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth is a collection of short stories told from the perspective of different characters, all of Indian origin carving out their lives in…
Title: One Thousand White Women : The Journals of May Dodd Author: Jim Fergus Genre: Fiction Published: 2011 This book is a fictional book that is so well-researched and written that I had to keep checking…
Title: The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Author: Alexander McCall Smith Published: 2008 Genre: Fiction This was a joy to read, and I wonder why it has taken me so long to read the Ladies’ Detective Agency…
Title: Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong Authors: Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow Published: 2003 Genre: Memoir This is one of those books I pick up once in a while when I am astounded by how…
Title: The Sense of an Ending Author: Julian Barnes Published: 2011 Genre: Novel The Sense of an Ending is similar to the The Remains of the Day, which I read a month ago. Memory, reflection and…
Title: The Glass Castle Author: Jeannette Walls Published: 2005 Genre: Memoir I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out of the window and saw Mom rooting…
Title: A Thousand Splendid Suns Author: Khaled Hosseini Published: 2007 Genre: Fiction I read this a couple of years back and was reminded of it again when another blogger mentioned they had just read The Kite…
Title: The Remains of the Day Author: Kazuo Ishiguro Published: 1989 Genre: Fiction Kazuo Ishiguro’s book, The Remains of the Day is told from the point of view of Stevens, an English butler who throughout his…
Title: Sorbonne Confidential Author: Laurel Zuckerman Published: 2007 Genre: Memoir When I picked up Sorbonne Confidential I was expecting just an insight into life as a student at the Sorbonne, I got a lot less of…
Title: Pigeon English Author: Stephen Kelman Published: 2011 Genre: Fiction This was a humorous and easy read. Stephen Kelman’s debut novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker for 2011 – a feat that even he was…
Title: The Finkler Question Author: Howard Jacobson Published: 2010 Genre: Fiction I am always reluctant to write about award-winning books. I always want to read them because the writer in me wants to know what it…
Title: How To Read the Air Author: Dinaw Mengestu Published: 2010 Genre: Fiction I am drawn to immigrant stories. There is something in them that speaks of strength and survival in countries foreign that I can…
Title: The Marriage Plot Author: Jeffrey Eugenides Published: 2011 Genre: Fiction The Virgin Suicides, Eugenides’ first book and Middlesex, his second, were both mysterious. The Virgin Suicides in its depiction of a family of three daughters…
Title: The Thing Around Your Neck Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Published: 2009 Genre: Fiction I read this book in two days…I do enjoy short stories at times, it makes the progress faster and there is always…
Title: The Tiger’s Wife Author: Téa Obreht Published: 2011 Genre: Fiction In the Tiger’s Wife, Téa Obreht retells the story of a tiger that escapes from a zoo during the Balkans war. Told through the protagonist,…
Title: Lyrics Alley Author: Leila Aboulela Published: 2011 Genre: Fiction I am going to come across sounding unimaginative I know, but Lyrics Alley is lyrical. A slow-paced introduction to the extended dynastic Abuzeid family leads one…
Title: Shanghai Tango Author: Jin Xing Published: 2005 Genre: Memoir This was a quick read in between the flurry of activity typical of this time of the year. Wishing I had an e-reader given all the…
Title: The Madonna of Excelsior Author: Zakes Mda Published: 2002 Genre: Fiction I read this again right after I finished Chicago, and had just started on The Immigrant by Manju Kapur – which I have yet…
Title: Chicago Author: Alaa Al Aswany Published: 2008 Genre: Fiction In the aftermath of the recent uprisings in the Arab world, this was an informative read. One of the members of my Book Club made a…
I came across this post on one of my favourite blogs and it roused something in me about, what truly makes one well read. I have always grappled with this even more so because in my…
Title: The Centre Cannot Hold – A Memoir of my schizophrenia Author: Elyn R. Saks Published: 2007 Genre: Memoir I enjoyed this book tremendously and was also completely horrified by some aspects of it. Why horrified?…
Title: The shape of water Author: Andrea Camilleri Published: 1994 (English Translation: 2002) Genre: Fiction The shape of water is one in a series of Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano Mystery books. This was a book club read…
Twice in the last month I have had discussions around the issue of whether ‘award-winning’ necessarily equates to good. Different audiences, different situations. The discussions were around books, and what enhances or detracts from their enjoyment. More…
Title: Freedom Author: Jonathan Franzen Genre: Fiction Published: 2010 Inspired me to learn about: Carving out character descriptions through the use of first, second and third person narration. Jonathan Franzen weaves an intricate tale in Freedom; which…