{"title":"The Africa List","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into captivating stories from across the African continent with The Africa List series. Discover vibrant voices, rich cultures, and unforgettable narratives that celebrate the diversity of African literature.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"upright-revolution-book-ngugi-wa-thiong-o-9780857426475","title":"The Upright Revolution","description":"Science has given us several explanations for how humans evolved from walking on four limbs to two feet. None, however, is as riveting as what master storyteller Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o offers in The Upright Revolution. Blending myth and folklore with an acute insight into the human psyche and politics, Wa Thiong’o conjures up a fantastic fable about how and why humans began to walk upright. It is a story that will appeal to children and adults alike, containing a clear and important message: “Life is connected.”     Originally written in Gikuyu, this short story has been translated into sixty-three languages—forty-seven of them African—making it the most translated story in the history of African literature. This new collector’s edition of The Upright Revolution is richly illustrated in full color with Sunandini Banerjee’s marvellous digital collages, which open up new vistas of imagination and add unique dimensions to the story.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49572972396817,"sku":"GOR011026323","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49731911942417,"sku":"NGR9780857426475","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0857426478.jpg?v=1751330383"},{"product_id":"land-like-you-book-tobie-nathan-9780857427885","title":"A Land Like You","description":"A riveting and revealing tale of an Egypt caught between tradition and modernity, multiculturalism and nationalism, oppression and freedom.   Cairo 1925, Haret al-Yahud, the old Jewish Quarter. Esther, a beautiful young woman believed to be possessed by demons, longs to give birth after seven blissful years of marriage. Her husband, blind since childhood, does not object when, in her effort to conceive, she participates in Muslim zar rituals. Zohar, the novel’s narrator, comes into the world, but because his mother’s breasts are dry, he is nursed by a Muslim peasant—also believed to be possessed—who has just given birth to a girl, Masreya. Suckled at the same breasts and united by a rabbi’s amulet, the milk-twins will be consumed by a passionate, earth-shaking love.      Part fantastical fable, part realistic history, A Land Like You draws on ethno-psychiatrist Tobie Nathan’s deep knowledge of North African folk beliefs to create a glittering tapestry in which spirit possession and religious mysticism exist side by side with sober facts about the British occupation of Egypt and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Free Officers’ Movement. Historical figures such as Gamel Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat, and King Farouk mingle with Nathan’s fictional characters in this engaging story.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49604039213329,"sku":"GOR012044547","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49736833564945,"sku":"NGR9780857427885","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50364962898193,"sku":"CIN0857427881G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52764331901201,"sku":"CIN0857427881VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0857427881.jpg?v=1751431189"},{"product_id":"modern-sovereign-book-joseph-tonda-9780857426888","title":"Modern Sovereign","description":"The “Modern Sovereign,” a notion indebted both to Hobbes’s Leviathan and Marx’s conception of capital, refers to the power that governed the African multitudes from the earliest colonial days to the post-colonial era. It is an internalized power, responsible for the multiform violence exerted on bodies and imaginations. Joseph Tonda contends that in Central Africa—and particularly in Gabon and the Congo—the body is at the heart of political, religious, sexual, economic, and ritual power. This, he argues, is confirmed by the strong link between corporeal and political matters, and by the ostentatious display of bodies in African life. The body of power asserts itself as both matter and spirit, and it incorporates the seductive force of money, commodities, sex, and knowledge. Tonda’s incisive analysis reveals how this sovereign power is a social relation, historically constituted by the violence of the African cultural Imaginary and the realities of State, Market, and Church. It is to be understood, he asserts, through a generalized theory economic, political, and religious fetishism. By introducing this crucial critical voice from contemporary Africa into the English language, The Modern Sovereign makes a significant contribution to field of anthropology, political science, and African studies.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49730780004625,"sku":"NGR9780857426888","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0857426885.jpg?v=1751441137"},{"product_id":"culture-and-liberation-book-alex-la-guma-9780857427892","title":"Culture and Liberation","description":"One of South Africa’s best-known writers during the apartheid era, Alex La Guma was a lifelong activist and a member of the South African Communist Party and the African National Congress. Persecuted and imprisoned by the South African regime in the 1950s and 60s, La Guma went into exile in the United Kingdom with his wife and children in 1966, eventually serving as the ANC’s diplomatic representative for Latin America and the Caribbean in Cuba. Culture and Liberation captures a different dimension of his long writing career by collecting his political journalism, literary criticism, and other short pieces published while he was in exile.     This volume spans La Guma’s political and literary life in exile through accounts of his travels to Algeria, Lebanon, Vietnam, Soviet Central Asia, and elsewhere, along with his critical assessments of Paul Robeson, Nadine Gordimer, Maxim Gorky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Pablo Neruda, among other writers. The first dedicated collection of La Guma’s exile writing, Culture and Liberation restores an overlooked dimension of his life and work, while opening a window on a wider world of cultural and political struggles in Africa, Asia, and Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49737708503313,"sku":"NGR9780857427892","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/085742789X.jpg?v=1751107785"},{"product_id":"shadow-of-things-to-come-book-kossi-efoui-9780857428738","title":"Shadow of Things to Come","description":"Now in paperback, The Shadow of Things to Come and its catastrophic and carnivalesque dreamscape speak out against political rhetoric and the destruction of meaning by government.   In an unnamed African nation, the people are subject to a state of perpetual warfare and to an Orwellian abuse of language that strips from language its meaning and renders life senseless. And in a bare room lit only by moonlight, a young man hides, waiting for the mysterious crocodile-men to come and help him escape from the violent tyranny of the state. While he waits, he tells his story.  This is Kossi Efoui’s catastrophic and carnivalesque dreamscape, the dark setting of The Shadow of Things to Come. Here, men and women are taken in the night, spirited away from their families, and sent to plantation penal colonies to be worked to the edge of madness. When they return, they are empty shells, their lost time referred to as the “Time of Annexation.” But though his parents were taken, our protagonist survived, first in the care of a quirky benefactress named Mama Maize, then under the wing of the state itself, as a student at one of its elite schools. When he meets a bookseller named Axis Kemal, however, he has found a surrogate father, an eccentric and wise man who can bring him out of the meaningless confusion and tell him the truth about the society he lives in.  Through his characters, Efoui speaks out against atrocity and the abuse of power, but more, he writes against political rhetoric and the destruction of meaning by government. This novel is a love letter to language and, in Chris Turner’s dazzling translation, it becomes a stunning introduction for English-language readers to an exciting new talent.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49742213841169,"sku":"NGR9780857428738","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/085742873X.jpg?v=1750947259"},{"product_id":"seasons-in-hippoland-book-wanjiku-wa-ngugi-9780857428943","title":"Seasons in Hippoland","description":"Victoriana is a country ruled by an Emperor-for-Life who is dying from an illness not officially acknowledged in a land where truth and facts are decided by the Emperor. The elite goes along with the charade. Their children are conditioned to conform. It is a land of truthful lies, where reality has uncertain meaning.     Mumbi, a rebellious child from the capital of Westville, and her brother are sent to live in rural Hippoland. But what was meant to be a punishment turns out to be a glorious discovery of the magic of the land, best captured in the stories their eccentric aunt Sara tells them. Most captivating to the children is the tale of a porcelain bowl supposed to possess healing powers. Returning to Westville as an adult, Mumbi spreads the story throughout the city and to the entire country. Exhausted by years of endless bleak lies, the people are fascinated by the mystery of the porcelain bowl. When word of its healing powers reaches the Emperor himself, he commands Mumbi to find it for him-with dramatic consequences for everyone in Victoriana.     Captivating and enchanting, Seasons in Hippoland plays with the tradition of magic realism. Every image in this novel is a story, and every story is a call for resistance to anyone who tries to confine our imagination or corrupt our humanity.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49742565835025,"sku":"NGR9780857428943","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50364981510417,"sku":"CIN0857428942G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51141456298257,"sku":"NIN9780857428943","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0857428942.jpg?v=1751363093"},{"product_id":"solio-book-samira-negrouche-9781803093383","title":"Solio","description":"Poetry that serves as an evocative portrayal of diverse landscapes and cultures.     In these otherworldly poetry sequences, Samira Negrouche reminds us that “all life is movement,” where “time passes through me \/ beings pass through me \/ they are me \/ I am them.” The “I” is representative of one voice, three voices, all voices, all rooted in movement as their bodies brush past one another, brush against thresholds of time and space. Everything is in flux—including the dream-like landscapes at the borders of borders—as the poet seeks to recover parts of self and memory, on both a personal and universal level. In these poems, history-laden locales such as Algiers, Timbuktu, N’Djamena, Cotonou, Zanzibar, Cape Town, and Gorée are evoked. Even the language, expertly and sensitively translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson, refuses to be pinned down, as it loops back on itself. At times contradictory, at times fractured in meaning, syntax, and diction, the playful language is riddled with “restless” verbs. In the end, the “I” takes on prophetic overtones, instilling hope for the future.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49753540690193,"sku":"NGR9781803093383","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51420202434833,"sku":"NIN9781803093383","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1803093382.jpg?v=1751427868"},{"product_id":"of-morsels-and-marvels-book-maryse-conde-9780857426932","title":"Of Morsels and Marvels","description":"For many, cooking is simply the mechanical act of reproducing standard recipes. To Maryse Condé, however, cooking implies creativity and personal invention, on par with the complexity of writing a story. A cook, she explains, uses spices and flavors the same way an author chooses the music and meaning of words.   In Of Morsels and Marvels, Condé takes us on a literary journey around places she has travelled to in India, Indonesia, and South Africa. She highlights the tastes and culinary traditions that are fascinating examples of a living museum. Such places, Condé explains, provide important insights into lesser-known aspects of contemporary life. One anecdote illustrates what becomes of the standard Antillean dishes of fish stew and goat curry by two Antilleans who own a restaurant in Sydney, Australia. Cuisine changes not only according to the individual cook but also adapts to foreign skies under which it is created. The author also recounts personal memories of her lifelong relationship with cooking, such as when Adélia, her family's servant, wrongly blames little Maryse for mixing raisins with fish and using her imagination in the kitchen.   Blending travel with gastronomy, this enchanting volume from the winner of the 2018 Alternative Nobel Prize will delight all who marvel at the wonders of the kitchen or seek to taste the world.   1st Edition, Original French edition: Mets et merveilles (JC Latt's, 2015). 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An extraordinary book about both the nature of novels and the process of writing, \"The Loss Library\" will appeal to anyone seeking to understand the almost magical and mythical experience of breathing life into a new work of fiction.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50155767005457,"sku":"CIN0857420127G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0857420127.jpg?v=1750915606"},{"product_id":"loss-library-and-other-unfinished-stories-book-ivan-vladislavic-9780857425881","title":"The Loss Library and Other Unfinished Stories","description":"“Not writing is always a relief and sometimes a pleasure. Writing about what cannot be written, by contrast, is the devil’s own job.”  In this unusual text, a blend of essay, fiction, and literary genealogy, South African novelist Ivan Vladislavic explores the problems and potentials of the fictions he could not bring himself to write. Drawing from his notebooks of the past twenty years, Vladislavic records here a range of ideas for stories—unsettled accounts, he calls them, or case studies of failure—and examines where they came from and why they eluded him. In the process, he reveals some of the principles that matter to him as a writer, and pays tribute to the writers— such as Walser, Perec, Sterne, and DeLillo—who have been important to him as both a reader and an author. At the heart of the text, like a brightly lit room in a field of debris, stands Vladislavic’s Loss Library itself, the shelves laden with books that have never been written. On the page, Vladislavic tells us, every loss may yet be recovered. An extraordinary book about both the nature of novels and the process of writing, The Loss Library will appeal to anyone seeking to understand the almost magical and mythical experience of breathing life into a new work of fiction. Praise for Vladislavic “In the tradition of Elias Canetti, a tour de force of the imagination.”—André Brink “The prose is stunning. 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And Don soon finds that his new assignment has unexpected complications that Tumi simply does not understand.  In Black Diamond, Mda tackles every conceivable South African stereotype, skillfully turning them upside down and exposing their ironies - often hilariously. A clever, quirky novel, in which Mda captures the essence of contemporary life in a fast-changing urban world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50406647005457,"sku":"CIN0857422227VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/B00Q7VK8KI.jpg?v=1751396867"},{"product_id":"that-which-is-not-drawn-book-william-kentridge-9780857424457","title":"That Which Is Not Drawn","description":"For more than three decades, artist William Kentridge has explored in his work the nature of subjectivity, the possibilities of revolution, the Enlightenment's legacy in Africa, and the nature of time itself. 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It's not just a report of something you know.\" And here, in this engaging dialogue, we at last have a guide to the continually exciting, continually changing work of one of our greatest living artists.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50496130711825,"sku":"GOR011770455","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50889624715537,"sku":"NGR9780857424457","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52650327441681,"sku":"CIN0857424459VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0857424459.jpg?v=1751430065"},{"product_id":"what-is-africa-to-me-book-maryse-conde-9780857423764","title":"What Is Africa to Me?","description":"Maryse Conde is one of the best-known and most beloved French Caribbean literary voices. 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Mabanckou’s yearning for the land of his ancestors is even more poignant because he has been declared persona non grata in his homeland, now called Congo-Brazzaville, due to his biting criticism of the country’s regime. 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