El Hadji Abdou Kader is a rich and powerful man in the emerging middle class of 1970s Senegal, who got that way through some…creative…business practices. A member of the showy “Businessman’s Group” who considers the President a close friend, he lives in post-colonial luxury: two wives, two villas, a chauffeur, etc. El Hadji decides to take a third wife, N’Gone, to the dismay of his first two wives and their children, and throws an ostentatious celebration. But things go wrong on his (third) wedding night: he has […]
Memoir of the Warm Heart of Africa
This is the eighth of my 10 African books this year, and the first by a Malawian author–I couldn’t well leave Malawi off the list since moving here was what inspired me to read more African books in the first place! Samson Kambalu was born in in 1975 into a Christian family of eight, and spent most of his childhood moving among remote villages in Malawi. Kambalu tells his story in chronological anecdotes, mostly, including early memories of being plagued by parasites, poverty, malaria, jiggers and other hazards of a […]
We Need New Names
I recently moved to Malawi, so as part of this year’s Cannonball I’m going to include at least ten books by African writers. Last year I started with Chinua Achebe’s classic Things Fall Apart and then picked up Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and then the superb Half of a Yellow Sun, which was one of my favorite books of last year–seriously, go read it immediately. We Need New Names received a lot of praise (NPR’s Great Reads of 2013, NYTimes’ Notable Books of the Year, finalist for […]