* indicates a book that appears in our feature "Around the World in 80+ Books"published in the April 2002 issue of National Geographic Traveler.
Africa on Six Wheels, by Betty Levitov (2007). Facing the potential dangers of civil war, wild animals, malaria, and "secret police," Levitov's biggest challenge may be calming the parents of the 13 college students that are to accompany her for a semester of "experiential education" in Africa. Levitov writes in a refreshingly down-to-earth voice, her insecurities and concern for her students plainly engaging.
The African Diaries, by Dereck and Beverly Joubert (2000). Choosing an isolated life with no electricity or running water doesn't appeal to everyone, but for the Jouberts the call of the Botswana bush was too strong to resist. In this illustrated memoir, the award-winning cinematographers' field journals give an intimate account of 20 years of watching the drama of wild southern Africa unfold.
Angry Wind: Through Muslim Black Africa by Truck, Bus, Boat, and Camel, by Jeffrey Tayler (2005). Armchair travelers beware: no swaying palms, charming cottages, or romantic sunsets here—but the writing is transporting, the commentary sharp. Tayler treks the treacherous southern region of the Sahara post-9-11 to get in touch with a part of the world few know, and discovers dogma, corruption, extreme poverty, and warm hospitality.
*Looking for Lovedu: Days and Nights in Africa, by Ann Jones (2001). At the beginning of this axle-smashing road-trip tale is a map depicting Jones's insane route from Tangier to Cape Town, which she undertook in a blue 1980 Land Rover. Her mission was to find the Lovedu people (a tribe guided by "feminine" principles), which she accomplishes in this rousing adventure story.
The Old Way: A Story of the First People,by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (2006). In the 1950s, Thomas and her parents went to live with the bushmen of Southwest Africa's Kalahari desert, learning to store water in ostrich eggs, participating in all-night "trance" dances, and studying an ancient way of life that was to shape future generations.
A Passage to Africa, by George Aligiah (2005). Aligiah's adventures in Ghana begin with his boyhood memories. As a grown man, he travels as a BBC journalist to South Africa, Liberia, Zaire, and Somalia during dark times in which he experiences an Africa under siege by racism, war, famine, and corruption. Throughout it all Aligiah maintains a cautious optimism.
*Sahara Unveiled: A Journey Across the Desert, by William Langewiesche (1996). "The desert teaches by taking away," writes journalist Langewiesche, but his 1,200-mile (1,931-kilometer) trek through Algiers, Timbuktu, and beyond produced a generous meditation on the towns and people that survive along the great desert's fringes.
*Serengeti: Natural Order on the African Plain, by Mitsuaki Iwago (1986). Iwago is a poet with the camera who captures not just light and form, but emotion. His images of animals (wildlife is his specialty) reflect a nuanced perspective on time and life cycles within this majestic ecosystem.
Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton, by Sara Wheeler (2007). A must-read for anyone familiar with Isak Dinesen's travel classic Out of Africa, this biography tracks the life of Denys Finch-Hatton—adventurer, big-game hunter, and Dinesen's lover—as he tries to conserve eastern Africa's vast expanses of rich wildlife. The White Nile(1960) and The Blue Nile(1962), by Alan Moorehead. These two classic, companion histories of the Nile in the 19th century read like novels. Moorehead is a master at scene-setting, from the slave markets of Zanzibar, where British explorers Richard Burton and John Speke set off on their Central Africa expedition in 1856, to the bird-filled northern highlands of Ethiopia, source of the Blue Nile.
Mating,by Norman Rush (1992). In this National Book Award-winning novel, a self-regarding American anthropologist falls for the (white, male) leader of a utopian village for disenfranchised women in Botswana. The village may be fictional but Rush's descriptions of the Kalahari and rural villages are frank and insightful.
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency,by Alexander McCall Smith (1998). This first novel in the successful series from the prolific African-born Smith has the bush-tea-drinking Precious Ramotswe hanging out her shingle as Botswana's finest—and only—female detective. Her initial cases involve a cheating husband, a mysterious doctor, and a missing boy who may have been snatched by witch doctors—but this is most of all a charming ode to the landscape and proud traditions of Botswana.
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Heart of Darkness,by Joseph Conrad (1902). This classic, psychologically dense novella follows river boat captain Marlow up the Congo River in his search for the elusive Mr. Kurtz.The book was inspired by Conrad's six-month stay in the Congo in 1890 and descriptions of the landscape ("The sun was fierce, the land seemed to glisten and rip with steam.") are lyrical and majestic.
The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver (1998). This page-turner of a family tale follows an evangelical Baptist minister as he uproots his family and moves to the Belgian Congo in the 1950s. Kingsolver, whose novels are usually associated with the American Southwest, here tackles with skill and authority the tangled mix of African politics, religion, and colonialism. *The Ponds of Kalambayi: An African Sojourn,by Mike Tidwell (1990). Tidwell was a wet-behind-the-ears 23-year-old fish-culture expert with the Peace Corps when he was sent to the tribal chiefdom of Kalambayi, in Zaire, to teach the benefits of fish farming. The story this "fish out of water" tells about working and living with locals is both funny and heartwarming.
Ghana
Black Gold of The Sun, by Ekow Eshun (2006). Searching for his roots, black Briton Eshun, artistic director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, travels to Ghana, the land of his parents' birth. Against a backdrop that includes cosmopolitan capital Accra, the slave forts of Elmina, and the warrior kingdom of the Asante, Eshun slowly comes to learn the truth about his ancestors' involvement in the African slave trade.
Kenya
*Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen (1937). This is the beguiling story of a Danish woman's life managing a coffee plantation in Kenya from 1914 to 1931. The book is vastly more colorful and engaging than the movie.
*West with the Night, by Beryl Markham (1942). Aviatrix Markham shares a spellbinding account of her childhood in Kenya, her experiences as a bush pilot in the 1930s, and her landmark solo flight across the Atlantic from east to west—she was the first person to accomplish this feat.
Madagascar
*The Eighth Continent: Life, Death, and Discovery in the Lost World of Madagascar, by Peter Tyson (2000). Tyson writes of an isolated island—the world's fourth largest—that is rich in flora and fauna but threatened by ecological devastation.
Mali
The Race for Timbuktu: In Search of Africa's City of Gold, by Frank T. Kryza (2006). Throughout his 11 years living in Africa, Kryza traveled much of the route that British explorer Major Alexander Gordon Laing followed to reach the fabled city of Timbuktu in 1825. Based on his research of letters and official reports, Kryza narrates the race between Laing and Hugh Clapperton to win the French Geographical Society's prize for the first expedition from any nation to return from Timbuktu.
The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca, by Tahir Shah (2006). Tahir Shah's witty memoir about moving his family to a jinn-infested fixer-upper in Casablanca is A Year in Provence with a dose of Eastern superstition, Arab bureaucracy, Mediterranean sun—and a gaggle of gangsters and thieves.
Glory in a Camel's Eye: Trekking Through the Moroccan Sahara, by Jeffrey Tayler (2003). Peripatetic writer Jeffrey Tayler sets off on a 300-mile journey through Morocco's scorched Dra Valley on mule, camel, and foot, to get a rare glimpse of Bedouin customs and worldviews. He offers insightful commentary on daily life, from poverty to prayer to politics.
In Arabian Nights,by Tahir Shah (2008). Inspired by The Thousand and One Nights—also known as the Arabian Nights—Shah interweaves descriptions of his adventures in his adopted Casablanca and around the country as he pursues a time-honored Berber quest: to find the story in his heart. *Lords of the Atlas: The Rise and Fall of the House of Glaoua 1893-1956, by Gavin Maxwell (1961). Set against the background of Marrakech and the castles of the High Atlas, this is the story of a legendary tribal warlord (the barbaric and ostentatious son of a concubine) and his ascent to power in Morocco at the end of the 19th century.
The Spider's House,by Paul Bowles (1955). Set in Fez, this subtle novel follows two main characters—a pious Arab teenager who is the son of a local healer and a passionate American expat writer—during Morocco's 1954 national uprising. Bowles's familiarity with Morocco (he lived in Tangier from 1947 until his death in 1999) manifests in his rich details of Fessian alleys, cafés, and ordinary homes, and his insights into traditional culture and the country's troubled colonial legacy.
Niger
*Nomads of Niger, photographs by Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher, text by Marion van Offelen (1993). Beckwith spent 18 months traveling through sub-Saharan bushland, shooting these astoundingly beautiful images of the Fulani, nomadic herders who have been here for centuries. The book is simple by design but profound in aesthetics and implication.
Rwanda
Gorillas in the Mist, by Dian Fossey (1983). In 1967, the now legendary Dian Fossey went to Rwanda to study the endangered mountain gorillas who live in the Virunga mountains. This impassioned memoir—published two years before her 1985 murder—chronicles the experience, her relationship with the animals, and the heated battle she fought with poachers to save them.
Sierra Leone
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier,by Ishmael Beah (2007). This compelling memoir chronicles one child's journey through the chaos of the civil war in Sierra Leone. Recruited by the army at age 13 to be a child soldier, Beah takes part in atrocities and must learn to accept and forgive himself after UNICEF brings him to a rehabilitation center. In recounting his story, Beah takes readers across the landscape of Sierra Leone, engaging them with the culture and people of a country often remembered only for its brutal civil war.
South Africa
Age of Iron, by J.M. Coetzee (1990). A tramp moves onto the land of a dying white woman in 1980s Cape Town, forcing her to examine life and liberty in South Africa.
Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, by Nelson Mandela (1995). One of history's most remarkable leaders recounts his life story and the story of his land and people. Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years for his efforts to end apartheid; upon his release in 1990 he became South Africa's first democratically elected president.
My Mother's Lovers,by Christopher Hope (2007). In Hope's extraordinary novel, narrator Alex Healey tries to get out of South Africa—but he can't get South Africa out of himself, any more than he can refuse the last request of his mother, a large-living aviatrix and huntress who roamed the continent from Cape Town to Cairo.
The Reader's Companion to South Africa, edited by Alan Ryan (1999). "If you came to a herd of elephant, you stopped, turned off the engine, and waited until the last beast had gone by," writes Alan Moorhead about Kruger National Park in this evocative anthology, with 19 tales from Michael Palin, Mark Twain, P.J. O'Rourke, and other writers.
