Africa Reading Challenge 2012

A friend recently made me aware of the Africa Reading Challenge for 2012. The original rules can be found listed here, but as you will find, I have twisted several of them in order to suit myself. In the first place, I will not be restricting myself to six books, as she has done. I will be reading fourteen books over the course of the year, taking my selections from North Africa, West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, South Africa, and the Island Nations. I have endeavored, where possible, to include work from the literary heavyweights of each region, as well as more contemporary work. I have also included male and female voices, fiction and non-fiction, and an anthology of short stories. Poetry, I have neglected, because I am impatient with it. I will be posting reviews of each book here.

Now presenting the list:

North Africa:

Minaret by Leila Aboulela (Sudan, Fiction)

Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih (Sudan, Fiction)

Central Africa:

King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Terrorism by Adam Hochschild (Democratic Republic of the Congo, Historical Narrative)

Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou (Republic of the Congo, Fiction)

East Africa:

Waiting: A Novel of Uganda’s Hidden War by Goretti Kyomyuhendo (Uganda, Fiction)

One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanaga Wainaina (Kenya, Memoir)

Devil on the Cross by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (Kenya, Fiction)

South Africa:

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (South Africa, Fiction)

The Bang Bang Club by Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva (South Africa, Memoir)

West Africa:

Open City by Teju Cole (Nigeria, Fiction)

Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe (Nigeria, Fiction)

The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter’s Quest by Aminatta Forna (Sierra Leone, Memoir)

The Island Nations:

The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah (Mauritius, Fiction)

Africa Complete:

The Granta Book of the African Short Story, Edited by Helon Habila

Wish me luck?