Africa and Madagascar

 

A selection of our books on Africa

A Hedonist's Guide to Marrakesh

Intended for the discerning and urbane traveller, this comprehensively illustrated and well-designed guide to Marrakesh includes gourmet restaurants, elegant hotels and chic bars as well as where to shop and play in this fascinating ancient city.

Filmer 2004

ISBN 0954787803

Hbk £13.99

Algeria: Lonely Planet Guide

Lonely Planet guide to the second largest African country and one which is slowly opening up to tourism. Includes advice on travelling around the country, safety, the roman coast, the desert and its people.

Lonely Planet 2007

ISBN 1741790999

Pbk £14.99

African Adventure Atlas

The African continent has the ultimate in adventure destinations - from trekking Kilimanjaro to white water rafting the Zambezi to wildlife watching in Central Africa. This atlas includes an introductory section, followed by 40 pages of detailed, large-scale maps covering selected national parks highlight airfields, park camps, facilities and driving routes. Detailed maps to the scale of 1:1,000,000 and 1:3,500,000 feature relief terrain and include border posts, airports, all major and minor routes and their distances, points of interests, trails and national parks/reserves. There are also detailed street plans of selected major African cities and towns, together with indexes. The plans feature buildings and sites of interest, plus options for accommodation. Six adventure activities are explored for each geographical region, from river rafting and hot air ballooning to hiking and pony trekking.

National Geographic Society 2003

ISBN 1566951739

Pbk £25.99

Hg2 Marrakech

A stylish, charming guide for the discerning traveller. Ideal for booking a romantic break in the vibrant and colourful city of Marrakech. Painstakingly researched this guide will show you where to eat in the finest restaurants and drink in the chicest bars. A highly reccomended book for the stylish traveller in search of the hottest addesses.

Hedonist Guide 2006

ISBN 9781905428069

Hbk £13.99

South Africa and Namibia: Handpicked Accommodation

Greenwood Guides started ten years ago with South Africa, listing the places they loved to stay in the country from the beaches on the Garden Route, the winelands, to the incredible landscapes of the Drakensberg Mountains and KwaZulu Natal.
The authors state "We have personally visited and chosen each place to stay for its exceptional character and genuine friendliness. These are the places that we ourselves would choose to return to on holiday."
This edition includes listings for Namibia and the Okavango Delta.

 

Greenwood Guides 2009

(Eight Edition)

ISBN 9780955116049

Pbk £13.95

Africa Overland: 4x4, Motorbike, Bicycle, Truck

Siân Pritchard-Jones & Bob Gibbons

'Be vigilant when driving through Africa: camels are careless when crossing the road and women carrying waterpots are little more watchful' warn the authors of this fifth edition of Africa Overland. They also give updated information on each country's political and security situation; provide an expanded Route Outlines section including information on border crossings; and offer revised recommendations on vehicles including practical coverage on buying a vehicle, maintenance and driving.

Bradt Guides 2009

ISBN 1841622834

Pbk £16.99

Burkina Faso Bradt Guide

Katrina Manson & James Knight

Burkina Faso offers thriving culture, laidback cities and stunning wildlife encounters. The authors help visitors discover dramatic mask festivals, Fulani horse-dancing and both the pan-African Siao film festival and the Fespaco craft fair, both in Ougadougou - two of the largest events of their kind on the continent. The romance of the Sahel desert can also be explored and information on desert markets, camel safaris and secret dune encampments is covered for the intrepid traveller.

Bradt Guides 2006

ISBN 1841621544

Pbk £14.99

Angola Bradt Guide

Mike Stead & Sean Robinson

Angola is no destination for beginners. It has no Starbucks or McDonalds, and there's only one functioning escalator in the whole country. Only seven years have passed since it emerged from three decades of armed struggle; the land is littered with 10million unexploded mines (which, interestingly, the elephants have learnt to detect and avoid) and there are few tourist facilities. But for the adventurous, this country offers over 1,000km of unspoilt beaches, excellent fishing and surfing, tropical forests and magnificent bird life. The first-ever English guidebook to the country, Bradt's Angola is essential reading for business travellers and pioneering adventurers alike.

Bradt Guides 2009

ISBN 9781841623047

Pbk £17.99

Aya

Marguerite Abouet

For the residents of Yopougon, everyday life is good. It is the early 1970s, a golden time - work is plentiful, hospitals are clean and well equipped, and school is obligatory. The Ivory Coast is an island of relative wealth and stability in West Africa. But for the teenagers of the town, like nineteen-year old Aya and her fun-loving friends Bintou and Adjoua, worries are plentiful, and life in Yop city is far from simple.

Jonathan Cape 2007

ISBN 9780224081849

Hbk £14.99

Say You're One of Them

Uwem Akpan

'Nothing interests Maman today, not even Jean, her favorite child ...She acts dumb, bewitched, like a goat that the neighborhood children have fed sorghum beer.' These extraordinary stories centre on African conflicts as seen through the eyes of children and describes their resilience and endurance in heartbreaking detail. From child trafficking to inter-religious conflicts, Uwem Akpan reveals in beautiful prose the resilience and endurance of children faced with the harsh consequences of deprivation and terror.

Little Brown 2009

ISBN 9780349120645

Pbk £7.99

The Yacoubian Building

Alaa Al Aswany

Some live in squalor on its rooftop, othes inhabit the faded glory of its apartments and offices - here a womanizing aristocrat, there the secretly gay editor of Le Caire newspaper. religious fervour jostles with promiscuity; bribery and exploitation with joy and elation; modern life with ancient culture. Taha, the son of the building's doorman, has aspirations and dreams for himself and his childhood sweetheart Busayna. But when those dreams are dashed on the rocks of corruption, hope turns to bitterness with devastating consquences.

Harper Perennial 2002

ISBN 9780007243624

Pbk £7.99

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Ishmael Beah

The first-person account of a 25-year-old who fought in the war in Sierra Leone as a 12-year-old boy. He tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve in Sierra Leone, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found he was capable of truly terrible acts. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.

Fourth Estate 2007

ISBN 9780007247080

Hbk £14.99

Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart

Tim Butcher

Since the Portuguese arrived in the Congo for the first time in 1482, the Congo has been a source of inspiration but also greed, fascination and mystery for explorers.

 

Blood River tells us the journey of Tim Butcher, journalist for the Daily Telegraph, retracing the paths of the explorer Henry Morton Stanley whose own task was to find the Scottish explorer Dr Livingstone.

Starting from the Lake Tanganyika, Butcher had to face as rough a challenge as his famed predecessors because of civil war, border conflicts and corruption.

This book is immensely enjoyable. It tells us about the Congo before and after the colonisation and the broken heart of Africa, as Butcher calls it, becomes the symbolic country through which we can just start to understand Africa's slow development. How can a country so rich in diamonds, gold and copper be so poor?

Blood River is a perfect book to read in conjunction with Stanley's Through a Dark Continent as Butcher adds to his deep knowledge of history the critical analysis of a journalist.

 

Vintage 2007

ISBN 9780099494287

Pbk £7.99

Sudan Bradt Guide

Paul Clammer

Much has changed in Sudan since the first edition of this guidebook was published in 2005. Following the peace agreement that ended the civil war of 1983-2005, southern Sudan is newly accessible to adventurous travellers. Bradt's Sudan continues to be the only guidebook dedicated to this emerging destination. This new edition offers full coverage of the southern towns of Juba, Malakal, Wau and Rumbek, and provides information on recently demined driving routes. It also details the increasing hotel and restaurant options in Khartoum, and Sudan's developing wildlife tourism.

Bradt Guides 2009

(2nd Edition)

ISBN 1841622060

Pbk £15.99

North Africa: The Roman Coast

Ethel Davies

At the hight of its power, the North African arm of the Roman Empire spread from Egypt to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.  While its great rulers eventually died out, the settlements containing temples and amphitheatres built in their honour endured, spread - albeit slightly fractured by time - amid the sands of North Africa.

Tailored for cruise ship passengers, tour members and independent travellers, Ethel Davies's lively guide covers Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya and brings legendary sites like Leptis Magna, Sabratha and Timgad to life, whilst also providing all the practical details so you can eat, drink and relax after a day's exploration.

Bradt 2009

ISBN 9781841622873

Pbk £15.99

The Aye-Aye and I

Gerald Durrell

Madagascar, with ninety percent of its flora and fauna found nowehere else, is the destination for wildlife holidays.
This book recount Gerald Durrell's rescue misson to save the mysterious aye-aye, whose habitat was being destroyed by slash-and-burn agriculture.

"In the gloom it came along the branches towards me, its round, hypnotic eyes blazing, its spoon-like ears turning to and fro independently like radar dishes, its white whiskers twitching and moving like sensors; its black hands, with their thin, attenuated fingers…tapping delicately on the branches as it moved along, like those of a pianist playing a complicated piece by Chopin… I had had my first encounter with an aye-aye and I decided that this was one of the most incredible creatures I had ever been privileged to meet…"

Summerdale 1992

ISBN 9781840246315

Pbk £7.99

Black Gold of the Sun

Ekow Eshun

Growing up in London, Ekow Eshun never felt truly at home.  Born in Britain to African parents, he found himself caught between two cultures without fully belonging to either.  As he retraces the steps of his ancestors in Africa, his journey becomes an increasingly disorientating search to locate a sense of self that's not reliant on place.  He returns to the discovery of a buried family history that leads him to a shocking discovery about the true nature of the Atlantic slave trade.  In Black Gold of the Sun, Eshun has crafted a life-affirming memoir of belonging, identity and hope that announces him as one of the most important new voices of modern Britain.

Hamish Hamilton 2005

ISBN 0241141923

Hbk £17.99

Tsotsi

Athol Fugard

Tsotsi is an angry young gang leader in the South African township of Sophiatown. A man without a past, existing only to kill and steal. But, one night his life is inexorably changed when a woman he attempts to rape forces a shoebox into his arms. The box contains a baby - whose very existance begins to unlock Tsotsi's memories of his childhood, rediscovering himself and his capacity to love.

Canongate 2006 (1980)

ISBN 1841955663

Pbk £6.99

Measuring Time

Helon Habila

Mamo and LaMamo are twin brothers living in the small Nigerian village of Keti, where their domineering father controls their lives. With high hopes the twins attempt to flee from home, but only LaMamo escapes successfully and is able to live their dream of becoming a soldier who meets beautiful women. Mamo, the sickly, awkward twin, is doomed to remain in the village with his father. Gradually he comes out of his father's shadow and gains local fame as a historian, and, using Plutarch's Parallel Lives as his model, he embarks on the ambitious project of writing a "true" history of his people. But when the rains fail and famine rages, religious zealots incite the people to violence-and LaMamo returns to fight the enemy at home.

Penguin 2007

ISBN 014101007X

Pbk £7.99

The Zanzibar Chest

Aidan Hartley

 In The Zanzibar Chest, Hartley weaves together his family's history, his childhood in Africa and the dark world of the continent's horrendous wars, which he witnessed at first hand as a journalist in the 1990s.  Burnt out from a decade of horror, he retreated to his family's house in Kenya, where he discovered the Zanzibar chest his father left him.  The chest contained the diaries of his father's best friend, Peter Davey, an Englishman who died under mysterious circumstances more than fifty years earlier. Tucking the papers under his arm, Hartley embarked on a journey to southern Arabia in an effort not only to unlock the secrets of Davey's life, but of his own. At once a modern and a historic love story, The Zanzibar Chest is also an epic narrative charting the fates of men and women who interfered with, embraced and were ultimately transformed by twentieth-century Africa.

Harper Perennial 2004

ISBN 0006531210

Pbk £8.99

Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer

Tim Jeal

The biography of the most brilliant adventurer in the great age of exploration.

Henry Morton Stanley was a cruel imperialist - a bad man of Africa - who connived with King Leopold II of Belgium in horrific crimes against the people of the Congo. He also conducted the most legendary celebrity interview in history, remembered in the words 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?'

Or so we think: but as Tim Jeal brilliantly shows, none of these perceptions is quite true. The reality of Stanley's life, even by the exceptional standards of the Victorian age, is yet more extraordinary. Rejected by both parents at birth and consigned to a Welsh workhouse, he emigrated to America, fought in the Civil War - on both sides - before becoming a journalist and then an explorer.

Few people know of his dazzling trans-Africa journey, which solved virtually every one of the continent's remaining geographical puzzles. His journey down the Congo to the Atlantic is a heart-breaking epic of human endurance. It alone qualifies him as Africa's greatest explorer.

Now, abundant new documentary evidence allows Jeal to show just how misunderstood Stanley's life has been. In doing so, he also provides a timely re-examination of post-colonial guilt, new insights into African history, and a fresh understanding of the nature of exploration. Few biographies can claim so thoroughly to reappraise a reputation, or to be as moving, or as truly majestic.

Faber and Faber 2007

ISBN 9780571221035

Pbk £9.99

The Emperor

Ryszard Kapuscinki

After the deposition of Haile Selassie in 1974, which ended the ancient rule of the Abyssinian monarchy, Ryszard Kapuscinski travelled to Ethiopia and sought out surviving courtiers to tell their stories. Here, their eloquent and ironic voices depict the lavish, corrupt world they had known - from the rituals, hierarchies and intrigues at court to the vagaries of a ruler who maintained absolute power over his impoverished people. They describe his inexorable downfall as the Ethiopian military approach, strange omens appear in the sky and courtiers vanish, until only the Emperor and his valet remain in the deserted palace, awaiting their fate. Dramatic and mesmerising, "The Emperor" is one of the great works of reportage and a haunting epitaph on the last moments of a dying regime.

Penguin 1978, 2006

ISBN 9780141188034

Pbk £8.99

The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life

Ryszard Kapuscinski

Drawn to the Developing World through an impoverished wartime upbringing, Kapuscinski arrived in Ghana in 1957 and was on hand to witness the tumultuous years in which colonial Africa was dismantled, resulting in born-again countries ripe for ransacking by despots. From the glare of Accra airport which greets him on first arrival, to the Tanzanian night of the final pages, he crosses savannah, desert and city by foot, road and train, searching out the two most important, yet inconstant commodities on the continent: shade and water. Threatened by an Egyptian cobra, cursed with cerebral malaria and tuberculosis, plagued by black cockroaches the size of small turtles, Kapuscinski intermingles the immediate and the reflective in 29 satisfyingly fragmented vignettes, encompassing historical narratives and personal experience across a host of countries, including Ethiopia, Uganda, Nigeria, Sudan and Liberia.

For more books by Ryszard Kapuscinski click here

Penguin 1998

ISBN 9780140292626

Pbk £8.99

Under African Skies

Charles R. Larson (ed.)

This collection gathers together the most important twentieth-century African writers like Chinua Achebe, Bessie Head, Ben Okri, Wole Soyinka, Ken Saro-Wiwa and Ngugi wa Thiong'o.  The stories give rich testimony to their resilience, all too many having faced censorship, exile, prison and even death.  Powerful and intruiguing,  they offer an unforgettable introduction to contemporary African literature.

Canongate 1997

ISBN 1841955957

Pbk £9.99

African Psycho

Alain Mabanckou

Gregoire Nakobomayo, a petty crminal, has decided to kill his girlfriend Germaine. He's planned it for some time, but still, the act of murder required a bit of psychological and logistical preparation. Luckily he's got a mentor to call on, the infamous serial killer Angoualima. The fact that Angoualima is dead doesn't prevent Gregoire from having lengthy conversations with him.

The latest novel by one of Francophone Africa's major writers and winner of the Prix Renaudot.

"A macabre but comical take on a would-be serial killer." Vanity Fair

For more African titles click here.

Serpent's Tail 2007

ISBN 9781846686320

Pbk £9.99

Spilt Milk

Kopano Matlwa

is the story of two passionate people who share a shameful past and a tenuous present. Decades after a childhood love affair earns upright school principal Mohumagadi and disgraced preacher Father Bill expulsion from their communities, the two characters are brought back together under the most unlikely of circumstances.
Mohumagadi, headmistress of the elite Sekolo sa Ditlhora school for talented black children, takes in Father Bill as a teacher much to the dismay of her students and faculty. Thus begins a battle of wills and wits for the hearts and minds of the students living in the shadow of revolution and change.

Jacana 2010

ISBN 1770097910

Pbk £9.95

Coconut

Kopano Matlwa

An exciting young voice has emerged that reflects the idiosyncratic nature of South Africa's young democracy. Coconut is a story that deals with growing up as a black child in a white world. It is the story of black youth who grow up in white neighbourhoods, go to private schools and have white friends. As is the case with any child, all that these children want is to grow, to be loved; but most importantly, to fit in. Fitting in, however, comes at the cost of one's blackness - too white for black, and too black for white.

Jacana 2007

ISBN 1770093362

Pbk £8.99

Botswana Safari Guide: Okavango Delta, Chobe, Northern Kalahari

Chris McIntyre

A safari in northern Botswana takes the traveller to a wilderness populated almost exclusively by wildlife. Here are the predators and their prey; here, too, are the elephants, the hippos and the astonishing birdlife of the Okavango Delta. This third edition of Bradt's Botswana Safari Guide: Okavango, Kalahari, Chobe Desert provides unrivalled coverage of the region's wildlife, environment and history, as well as a thorough evaluation of when, where and how to go. Accommodation options for all budgets – from lodges to camps and hotels – are fully revised and updated.

Not yet published

Bradt Guides 2010

(Third Edition)

ISBN 1841623083

Pbk £16.99

Devil's Peak

Deon Meyer

Soldiers never find it easy returning from war. So it is with Thobela Mpayipheli, former freedom fighter, trying to settle back into the new South Africa. But at least he has his boy, an adored companion who is a link to a happier past.
Then the boy is taken from Thobela, one of a staggering number of children murdered or abused in South Africa, and Thobela knows only despair...and a cold desire for revenge. Thus is born the vigilante killer known as 'Artemis'.
The police respond by putting on the case a man who can't afford to fail. Benny Griessel is on the brink of losing everything - his job, his family, his self-respect - and this could be his last chance to drag his life back out of the gutter.

Hodder 2008

ISBN 034082266X

Pbk £6.99

Blood Safari

Deon Meyer

Lemmer is a professional bodyguard. Silent, invisible, he never gets involved.
Emma le Roux is convinced she's seen her brother on the news as a suspect in the recent killing of four poachers. But her brother is supposed to have died twenty years ago.
When le Roux hires Lemmer to watch her back while she goes looking for answers, it becomes clear someone wants to keep them in the dark. And when that someone tries to murder them both, for once in his life Lemmer steps out of the shadows.

Hodder 2009

ISBN 0340953586

Pbk £7.99

Thirteen Hours

Deon Meyer

Some would call Detective Benny Griessel a legend. Others would call him a drunk.
Either way, he has trodden on too many toes over the years ever to reach the top of the promotion ladder, and now he concentrates on staying sober and mentoring the new generation of crime fighters - mixed race, Xhosa and Zulu. But when an American backpacker disappears in Capetown, panicked politicians know who to call: Benny has just thirteen hours to save the girl, save his career - and crack open a conspiracy which threatens the whole country.
A potent, suspenseful thriller, and a brilliant portrait of life in the country that will host the 2010 World Cup.

Hodder & Stoughton 2010

ISBN 0340953594

Hbk £17.99

John Reader - Africa: A Biography of the Continent

Nick Creagh-Osborne writes:

A staggering achievement: to condense into 700 pages the story of Africa from a ball of gas before the Big Bang, over thousands of millions of years, through geological time, into archaeological time, right up to the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s, and Nelson Mandela.  Detailed and scholarly certainly, but also magnificent and accessible.  Reader asks why the early human population which migrated out of Africa grew so much faster than that which remained, and sets out to "illuminate the history of human interaction with Africa" - as if Africa itself was a character, and hence in the title the book is referred to as a biography and not as a history, which puts one in mind Conrad's description in "Heart of Darkness" of the interior of the continent containing a "stillness of life [which] did not in the least resemble a peace; it was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention".

Penguin 1998

ISBN 014026675

Pbk £15.99

Sara Wheeler - Too Close to the Sun

Nick Creagh-Osborne writes:

The life and times of Denis Finch Hatton, the man best known to posterity as Karen Blixen's lover in Out of Africa and as the original of the Robert Redford character in the film of the same name.  Finch Hatton, a man said to have all but invented the concept of charm, went out to British East Africa, latterly Kenya, in pursuit of the space and freedom in which to live and breathe and to escape from the prevailing atmosphere at home of expectation and suppression.  Late in his short life he eventually found his niche as a white hunter and guide to touring V.I.P's, most notably the future Edward VIII, and he was one of the very first to appreciate the need for the conservation and protection of game in Africa.

 

The book is especially good on the historical context and background of Finch Hatton's life: the gradual eclipse of aristocratic influence in England, the forgotten chapter of the First World War fought with dreadful suffering in East Africa, and the evolving British experience of Africa from rediscovered Eden, through the excesses of Happy Valley, to the loss of confidence in Britain's colonial mission and waning assumptions of white supremacy.  The book, like Finch Hatton's life, ends suddenly with the fatal crash of his light aircraft in which he perished in the rolling hills of Kenya .

Vintage 2006

ISBN 9780099450276

pbk £8.99

Ahmadou Kourouma - Allah is Not Obliged

Nick Creagh-Osborne writes:

In an unedifying tale of murder, violence, torture, extortion, cannibalism, anarchy and appalling cruelty young Birahima spends three years searching for his aunt in Liberia, a land which warring factions have reduced to a state of barbarism.  After the death of his mother Birahima becomes one of thousands of child-soldiers, adolescent warriors high on drugs and armed with Kalashnikovs, who kill and destroy at the behest of one warlord or another.  The child-soldiers live in camps surrounded by human skulls on stakes; they murder and rampage without mercy, compunction or moral qualms, although when one of their own number is killed they are reduced to paroxysms of grief and floods of tears.  The fate of Birahima and his friends Siponni the Viper and Johnny Thunderbolt certainly does not make for an enjoyable read but this apocalyptic tale of West Africa's descent into hell has an important and salutary message for us all.

Heinemann 2006

ISBN 9780099433927

Pbk £7.99

Laurens van der Post - Venture to the Interior

Nick Creagh-Osborne writes:

Summoned to Whitehall in 1949 van der Post is sent to explore an uncharted region of Nyasaland in what was then British Central Africa.  Two journies run in parallel in the book: one a travelogue to the interior of Africa, the other a journey to the interior of Western man.  The author sees Europe as conscious, male, masculine, and of the father, whereas he identifies Africa as intuitive, female, feminine, and motherly.  Van der Post's fascinating contention is that Western man can only be made whole again "by embracing the African within us".  The record of the expedition's journey through Africa provides the building blocks and catalysts for the journey within.

Vintage 2002

ISBN 0099428733

Pbk £7.99

Neshani Andreas - The Purple Violet of Oshaantu

Nick Creagh-Osborne writes:

There is very little Namibian fiction available in translation in this country but the "The Purple Violet" is a gem.  It is a slowly evolving story of village life in the vast, scrubby, flat lands of northern Namibia suffused with what to a European reader might be said to be "African Wisdom".  The novel gives the impression of slowly unfolding at a speed dictated by an evolving process quite independent of the author and this has an unfamiliar and intriguing feel to a Western reader more familiar with a goal oriented will-based world.

Heinemann 2001

ISBN 0435912089

Pbk £9.99

Robert Guest - The Shackled Continent: Africa's Past, Present and Future

Nick Creagh-Osborne writes:

A penetrating analysis of Africa's problems delivered in big categorical statements: "To understand why Africa is so poor, we must first ask why Africa is so unproductive". The book combines vivid journalistic reporting and first hand experiences from all over the continent, such as driving through Cameroon and being stopped at 47 road blocks along the way, with incisive economic opinions and analysis: "No country with good roads has ever suffered famine," and "Trade has far more potential to reduce poverty than aid".  Straight forward and challenging but never simplistic the book is encouraging in its eventual optimism for Africa's future.

Pan 2005

ISBN 0330419722

Pbk £7.99

Algeria: Bradt Guide

Jonathan Oakes

The first guide to focus on the renascent Algeria. After a decade of isolated but brutal civil unrest, peace is holding and tourism is emerging. From the northern coastal strip with bays reminiscent of southern Italy to the desert towns of the south, Algeria has a great deal to offer visitors.

Bradt Guides 2008

ISBN 184162232X

Pbk £15.99

Wild Romance: Africa's Most Romantic Safari Lodges

Marsel van Oosetn & Daniella Sibbing

 

Featuring lodges in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, Wild Romance describes 46 of the continents most-sought destinations combining wildlife, a dramatic setting, luxury, service, and cuisine.  Illustrated with hundreds of photographs, this is the perfect book for researching a romantic getaway with a difference.

Struik (C.) Pty.Ltd,South Africa 2009

(Illustrated)

ISBN 177007726X

Hbk £0.00

Ancient Churches of Ethiopia

David W Phillipson

Lalibela is home to some of the world's most extraordinary places of worship. David Phillipson, an expert in Ethiopian archaeology, presents a comprehensive guide to Lalibela's spectacular rock-hewn churches and the country's early Christian civilisation.  Very scholarly and very well illustrated with photographs and diagrams.

Yale University Press 2009

(Illustrated)

ISBN 0300141564

Hbk £0.00

Cairo

Andre Raymond

A tapestry of Cairo's past and present comes vividly to life in this study by one of the Arab world's premier social historians. It shows us Cairo from the glimmer of its beginnings in the Arab conquest of Egypt in 640 through its transformation into the modern centre of Middle Eastern Life today.

Harvard University Press 2000

ISBN 9780674009967

Pbk £20.99

Marrakesh: Through Writer's Eyes

Barnaby Rogerson (ed.)

An exploration of the city's mystique through the fiction, speculations and scholarship of forty travel writers who have succumbed to the enchantment of the city.
Writers include Elias Canetti, Peter Mayne, Esther Freud, Gavin Maxwell, Walter Harris, Leo Africanus, and Joseph Thomson.

Eland 2003

ISBN 9780907871996

Pbk £12.99

A Traveller's History of North Africa

Barnaby Rogerson

This concise and readable guide to the history and culture of Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Algeria, relates the history of the region from its earliest beginnings to its politics and life at the turn of the new century. North Africa is surrounded by the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and to the south, the sands of the Sahara. It has seen wave upon wave of invasion, from the Carthaginians in the 5th century BC to the French in the 20th century. The North African peoples have assimilated what suits them and remained entirely aloof to what does not. Onto this complex cultural background, Barnaby Rogerson weaves a cast of memorable characters from Dido to Hannibal and St Augustine, alongside local heroes such as the Berber queen Kahina and the horseback Muslim conqueror Oqba Ibn Nafi'.

A perfect book for travellers in the region or those who prefer to imaginative travel from their armchairs.

Gerald Duckworth & Co. 2008

ISBN 071563738X

Pbk £12.99

Congo: Democratic Republic and Republic

Sean Rorison

The first full guidebook on both Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the People's Republic of Congo (PRC) in well over a decade, the Bradt guide provides full coverage of the major cities and national parks of the two countries.

 

The Congos encompass Africa's largest area of intact rainforest. Two eastern national parks, both World Heritage Sites, protect not only the mountain gorilla but  the critically endangered eastern lowland gorilla as well. One of the last bastions in Africa for the seriously adventurous traveller, the Congos are open to serious travellers. The Bradt guide tells you how to travel both adventurously and safely.

Bradt Guides 2008

ISBN 9781841622330

Pbk £15.99

Sunset Oasis

Bahaa Taher

Set in the remote Egyptian oasis of Siwa in the late 1890s, this novel weaves together several voices to capture a society at war with itself and a marriage in trouble. At once a complex tale of love and an exploration of power, occupation and rebellion, Sunset Oasis tells of people struggling to free themselves from the grip of the past. It is a striking work by one of the Arab world's most celebrated writers.

Sceptre 2009

ISBN 034092487X

Hbk £18.99

The Lost Kingdoms of Africa

Jeffrey Tayler

This is an account of a journey through the Sahel region of the lower Sahara, which, whipped by ferocious winds and shrouded in secrets, is home to a vast Muslim population and is the southernmost outpost of Islam's dominance in Africa.  Comprising the southern Saharan regions of Chad, northern Nigeria, Niger, Mali and Senegal, this area once witnessed the emergence of Africa's wealthiest and most exotic kingdoms and empires but now, perilous and poverty-stricken, it rarely sees travellers.

Little, Brown 2005

ISBN 0316726079

Hbk £16.99

The River Between

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

The Rivers Between explores life on the Makuyu and Kameno ridges of Kenya in the early days of the white settlement.

Heinemann 1965

ISBN 9780435905484

Pbk £9.99

Matigari

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Heinemann 1987

ISBN 9780435905460

Pbk £9.99

Weep Not, Child

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Weep Not, Child is a powerful, very moving story of the Mau Mau war on the lives of ordinary men and women.

Heinemann 1964

ISBN 9780435908300

Pbk £9.99

Petals of Blood

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Petals of Blood was published in 1977 to huge controversy, leading to Ngugi's imprisonment for his portrayal of Kenya ruled by greed, corruption and brutality.  Yet his blistering criticism of the legacy of colonialism still burns with hope for the future.

Penguin 1977

ISBN 9780141187020

£12.99

Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o

A portrait of a young boy's experiences in an African nation in flux. Beginning in the late 1930s, this moving and entertaining memoir describes Ngugi's day-to-day life as the fifth child of his father's third wife in a family that included twenty-four children born to four different mothers. Against the backdrop of World War II, which affected the lives of Africans under British colonial rule in unexpected ways, Ngugi spent his childhood as the apple of his mother's eye before attending school to slake what was then considered a bizarre thirst for learning. As he grows up, the wider political and social changes occurring in Kenya at this time begin to impinge on the boy's life in both inspiring and frightening ways. Through telling the story of his grandparents and parents and of his brothers' involvement on different sides of the violent Mau Mau uprising, Ngugi wa Thiong'o takes us back to a momentous period in Kenyan history, deftly etching a bygone era, capturing the landscape, the people and their culture, and the social and political vicissitudes of life under colonialism and war.

Harvill Secker 2010

(We have a limited number of signed copies available)

ISBN 9781846553776

Hbk £12.99

I Will Marry When I Want

Ngugi wa Thong'o and wa Mirii

This is the renowned play which was developed with Kikuyu actors at the Kamiriithu Cultural Centre in Limuru.

Heinemann 1982

ISBN 9780435902469

Pbk £9.99

Magic and Warfare

Nathalie Wlodarczyk

Macmillan 2010

ISBN 9780230621022

Hbk £55.00

Trickster Travels: In Search of Leo Africanus

Natalie Zemon Davis

The man whom historians know as Leo Africanus, author of the first geography of Africa, is a celebrated but hitherto elusive figure. Al-Hasan al-Wazzan was born in Granada, and grew up on Morocco. He was captured by Christian pirates in the Mediterranean in 1518 and imprisoned by the Pope, then released, baptized and allowed a European life of scholarship as the Christian writer Giovanni Leone. In Trickster Travels the distinguished historian Natalie Zemon Davis offers a virtuoso study of the fragmentary, partial and often contradictory traces that al-Hasan al-Wazzan left behind him.

In her characteristically accessible and engaging way, Davis describes this dramatic life in rich detail, scrutinizing the evidence of al-Wazzan's movement between cultural worlds, the Islamic and Arab traditions and ideas available to him, and his adventures with Christians and Jews in a European community of learned men, powerful church leaders and among its ordinary street life.

Faber and Faber 2006

ISBN 9780571234790

Pbk £10.99

 

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