{"title":"Africa List Ser","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"land-like-you-book-tobie-nathan-9781803091969","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 \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49745197596945,"sku":"NGR9781803091969","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51054616215825,"sku":"NIN9781803091969","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1803091967.jpg?v=1751442848"},{"product_id":"language-of-languages-book-ngugi-thiongo-9781803090719","title":"The Language of Languages","description":"With clear, conversational prose, this is the first book dedicated entirely to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s writings on translation.  Through his many critically acclaimed novels, stories, essays, plays, and memoirs, Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has been at the forefront of world literature for decades. He has also been, in his own words, “a language warrior,” fighting for indigenous African languages to find their rightful place in the literary world. Having begun his writing career in English, Ngũgĩ shifted to writing in his native language Gikũyũ in 1977, a stance both creatively and politically significant. For decades now, Ngũgĩ has been translating his Gikũyũ works into English himself, and he has used many platforms to champion the practice and cause of literary translations, which he calls “the language of languages.”   This volume brings together for the first time Ngũgĩ’s essays and lectures about translation, written and delivered over the past two decades. Here we find Ngũgĩ discussing translation as a conversation between cultures, proposing that dialogue among African languages is the way to unify African peoples, reflecting on the complexities of auto-translation or translating one’s own work, exploring the essential task translation performed in the history of the propagation of thought, and pleading for the hierarchy of languages to be torn down. He also shares his many experiences of writing across languages, including his story The Upright Revolution, which has been translated into more than a hundred languages around the globe and is the most widely translated text written by an African author.   At a time when dialogues between cultures and peoples are more essential than ever, The Language of Languages makes an outspoken case for the value of literature without borders.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49746669076753,"sku":"NGR9781803090719","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51795513475345,"sku":"NIN9781803090719","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1803090715.jpg?v=1751122541"},{"product_id":"words-a-collation-book-william-kentridge-9781803092171","title":"Words  A Collation","description":"An exploration of phrases and excerpts that inspire a major contemporary artist.     Over the past several years, renowned South African artist William Kentridge has made a collection of particular phrases and sentences that have called out to him from the pages of whatever he has been reading. And these phrases, which he has written into a studio notebook titled Words, have been put to work in many of his artistic projects. Kentridge has often begun a project by paging through the notebook, waiting for a phrase to claim its place in the new work. The text excerpts come from many sources: Aimé Césaire, Yehuda Amichai, Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Setswana proverbs, the Book of Ecclesiastes, Tristan Tzara’s Dada Manifesto, and a range of eastern European poets. This volume presents a selection made from the notebook, with phrases arranged neither randomly nor with a clear agenda but finding a space in between. Cleverly designed by the artist and beautifully produced, Words is a thought-provoking collection that provides a window to the mind of a contemporary creative genius.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49750329065745,"sku":"NGR9781803092171","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51052116738321,"sku":"NIN9781803092171","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":52885693202705,"sku":"CIN1803092173LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1803092173.jpg?v=1751154036"},{"product_id":"continent-of-everything-and-practically-nothing-book-sami-tchak-9781803096322","title":"The Continent of Everything and Practically Nothing","description":"A Togolese novel that delivers a rich, intimate portrait of a scholar whose life is inextricably bound to Africa.  For the French ethnologist Maurice Boyer, Africa isn't just a place; it’s a mirage, an enigma, a mirror reflecting his desires and doubts. The fieldwork he undertook in Tèdi, Togo, where he lived for years among the Tem people and tried to understand their customs and rituals, has left him with questions that have lingered: Who was a friend and who was a foe? Which stories were true and which were illusions? As decades pass and the roles of Aurélie, his wife, and Safi, his former student, begin to shift, Boyer finds himself wrestling not only with his own choices but with the legacy of knowledge itself.  Through the lens of this profound postcolonial quest, Sami Tchak explores Africa’s rich, complex reality through this intimate story of a scholar reconsidering his own understanding of culture, ethnology, and history. The Continent of Everything and Practically Nothing asks whether assembling more data can truly capture the complexity of a continent, and explores how academic ambition, history, and emotion shape how we understand the world, and how we live in it.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52821312012561,"sku":"NGR9781803096322","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781803096322.jpg?v=1767868830"},{"product_id":"what-is-africa-to-me-book-maryse-cond-9781803096971","title":"What Is Africa to Me?","description":"In this biography, literary giant Maryse Condé recounts her early adult years in Guinea, Ghana, and Sénégal, set against the backdrop of their struggles for independence.  Maryse Condé is one of the best-known and most beloved French Caribbean literary voices. The author of more than twenty novels, she was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2015 and has long been recognized as a giant of Black feminist literature. While Condé has previously published an autobiography of her childhood, What Is Africa to Me? tells for the first time the story of her early adult years in Africa—years formative not only for her, but also for African colonies appealing for their own independence.  What Is Africa to Me? traces the late 1950s to 1968, chronicling Condé’s life in Sékou Touré’s Guinea to her time in Kwame N’Krumah’s Ghana, where she rubbed shoulders with Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Julius Nyerere, and Maya Angelou. Accusations of subversive activity resulted in Condé’s deportation from Ghana. Settling down in Sénégal, Condé ended her African years with close friends in Dakar, including filmmakers, activists, and Haitian exiles, before putting down more permanent roots in Paris.  Condé’s story is more than one of political upheaval, however; it is also the story of a mother raising four children as she battles steep obstacles, of a Guadeloupean seeking her identity in Africa, and of a young woman searching for her freedom and vocation as a writer. What Is Africa to Me? is a searing portrait of a literary genius—it should not be missed.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53389093241105,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":53389093667089,"sku":"NGR9781803096971","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}]}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/africa-list-ser-book-series.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}