Tag Archives: Africa
*** Tinderbox by Craig Timberg and Daniel Halperin
Tinderbox: How the West Sparked the AIDS Epidemic and How the World Can Finally Overcome It unfolds a thoughtful story of how the AIDS epidemic in Africa benefited at critical times from societal features, from how it moved from chimps … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
** Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller
Having loved Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, the author’s memoir of growing up white in what was then called Rhodesia, I was looking forward to Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, which focuses on her mother. This … Continue reading
Filed under True story
*** The Boy who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is the true story of a teenager growing up in rural Malawi, unable to go to school because his family cannot pay the required fees, starving because of drought and a bad harvest, who … Continue reading
Filed under True story
Say you are One of Them by Uwem Akpan
I thought that Oprah’s Book Club selections were supposed to be uplifting. This one is not. Say You’re One of Them is a collection of stories about African children that include starvation, selling of children, religious persecutions, throat cutting, and … Continue reading
Filed under New fiction
Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo
The author of Dead Aid, a Zambian-born woman with several advanced degrees in economics,starkly stakes that traditional, government-to-government aid, simply serves to line the pockets of corrupt leaders and chokes the economies of the receiving countries. She makes a very … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder
Installment #3 in the Sad Book Series: Strength in What Remains tells the story of a Burundi man (Burundian?) who flees his country after brutal ethnic violence erupts and arrives in New York City with $200, no English, but plenty … Continue reading
Filed under True story
Onitsha by Jean-Marie Le Clezio
Onitsha is the story of a boy raised by his mother in France and Italy who travels to Nigeria with his mother to finally meet his English father, who works as a bureaucrat for a British company but longs to … Continue reading
Filed under New fiction
This Child will be Great by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
This Child Will Be Great is the memoir of the current president of Liberia, elected after years of chaos and corruption presided over by a series of president-dictators with the brutal, depressingly familiar manners of dictators the world over (including … Continue reading
Filed under True story
The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton
An idealistic New York librarian lands in Kenya wanting to bring literacy to the people. It will be from a camel since reaching the desert nomads cannot be done in any other way, hence the title, The Camel Bookmobile. She … Continue reading
Filed under New fiction
A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson
A Guide to the Birds of East Africa is not a bird book, although you can learn a lot about marabous and hadadas via the story and the drawings that herald each chapter. But there is a bird counting contest (see … Continue reading
Filed under New fiction
