1. From School Library Journal YA Those needing graphic confirmation of the harrowing experience of growing up poor and black in apartheid South Africa will find it in Mathabane's autobiography. His earliest memories were those of violent midnight visits from the dreaded black police, looking for those without the crucial pass book. His parents lived illegally in Alexandra; his father went to jail for a year because he had no job. Daily life was a struggle for food, shelter, and existence. The fact that he was at the top of every class, plus his newly discovered ability in tennis, gained him local recognition. American tennis star Steve Smith was instrumental in pushing for his journey to America, where he attended college and where he is now a writer on his homeland. Mathabane writes with compelling energy, and the details of his struggle will grip readers with immediate intensity. His story, while only one side, is a microcosm of the black African's fight for independence. Diana C. Hirsch, PGCMLS, Md. Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

2. From Kirkus Reviews Ideals must be back, for Courtenay's first novel is a fast- paced book with an old-fashioned, clean-cut hero, easily identifiable villains, no sex, and saintlike sidekicks. All done in sturdy, workmanlike prose. Set in South Africa in the 1940's, the novel resembles those enormously popular books on southern Africa written by John Buchan and H. Rider Haggard. Courtenay's Peekay, like those earlier heroes, inspires devotion from a disparate band of followers, which includes a witch doctor, a German professor, a barmaid, Gert the Afrikaans policeman, Morrie the Jewish refugee, and his Oxbridge headmaster. Courtenay lovingly evokes an African landscape of small town and bush as he describes the journey of Peekay--from a horrendously cruel boarding school to a triumphant vindication as a young man in the copper mines of what is now Zambia. At his first school, Peekay, as the only English child in an otherwise Afrikaans school, is held accountable for all the wrongs inflicted by the British. But a fortuitous meeting with an amateur boxer, "Kid Louis" Groenewald, supplies the young Peekay with the means and the drive to fight back. Peekay learns to box (boxing fans will particularly appreciate the vividly described fights) and thereafter is forever serving justice and earning Brownie points. His first teachers are the tough Afrikaner jailers of his hometown prison and a black prisoner. Later, at a prep school in Johannesburg, while the victorious Afrikaner Nationalists introduce apartheid, he is taught by the best trainer in Africa. As well as being a scholar and everybody's favorite young man, Peekay also earns a reputation among the blacks as a great chief--"The Tadpole Angel"--who is destined to save them, but not in this book. Peekay is just too noble, and his political views, perhaps reflecting those of his times, are paternal to say the least. But, nevertheless, this is a somewhat endearing, if uncritical, celebration of virtue and positive thinking. Despite the lack of shading and the chipper philosophy, then, a surprisingly refreshing debut. (Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 1989)

3. From BookList: /*Starred Review*/ "My son killed your daughter." The young white American Fulbright scholar Amy Biehl was murdered by a mob of black teenagers in 1993 on the eve of South Africa's first democratic elections. In this groundbreaking novel, the mother of one of the killers speaks to the mother of the victim in sorrow and anguish for them both. The story is set in the township Guguletu, near Cape Town, immediately after the murder. Mandisa is sent home early from her job as a domestic worker in a white suburb because there is trouble in the township streets. The children are rioting. They killed a white girl. The police vans are near Mandisa's home. Where is her son? Why hasn't he come home? Where is he? Why are the police smashing down her home? As the present tension rises unbearably, she remembers the past: her son's bitter childhood, her own youth and smashed hopes, her family's forced removal from their home to the Guguletu slum, the apartheid cruelty that made her son a monster who could kill. With other children, he heard the call to boycott school, to make the country ungovernable, and he heard the slogan, "One settler, one bullet." His mother's eloquent voice fuses her own terror about her son with her compassion for the bereaved mother and her fury at what the apartheid monster has wrought. This is a gripping story of suspense and heartbreak. This great novel, rooted in South African history, dramatizes what life is like for one woman and her child in the worst of times. ((Reviewed September 15, 1999)) -- Hazel Rochman

4. From Library Journal: Sixty-seven-year-old Milla lies on her deathbed, reliving more than 40 years spent on the family farm outside of Swellendam in South Africa. Ravaged by ALS, she can communicate only by blinking her eyes. Milla's black maid, Agaat, is her sole caretaker. The two share a more significant bond than that between Milla and Jak, her brutish, self-centered husband. It even surpasses Milla's connection to her son, Jakkie. Agaat reveals their complex past, a past further complicated because Agaat becomes Jakkie's nanny and principal companion despite her displacement as Milla's "adopted" daughter once Jakkie is born. Agaat cares for Milla, yet the caretaking duties reveal her frustration and fatigue, and the disease's progression has significantly altered their relationship's balance of power. Van Niekerk skillfully leads readers through the decades of Milla's life, remarkably combining second-person reminiscences with Milla's first-person diary entries. Ultimately, their story is a powerful allegory of the story of modern South Africa. VERDICT Winner of the Sunday Times (South Africa) Fiction Prize in 2007, this follow-up to Van Niekerk's acclaimed first novel, Triomf, is not comfortable or easy to digest but is essential for collections covering contemporary world fiction because of its exquisite and provocative writing and moving story.—Faye A. Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis, OR --Faye A. Chadwell (Reviewed May 1, 2010) (Library Journal, vol 135, issue 8, p72)

5. From Publishers Weekly: /* Starred Review */ When the Igbo people of eastern Nigeria seceded in 1967 to form the independent nation of Biafra, a bloody, crippling three-year civil war followed. That period in African history is captured with haunting intimacy in this artful page-turner from Nigerian novelist Adichie (Purple Hibiscus ). Adichie tells her profoundly gripping story primarily through the eyes and lives of Ugwu, a 13-year-old peasant houseboy who survives conscription into the raggedy Biafran army, and twin sisters Olanna and Kainene, who are from a wealthy and well-connected family. Tumultuous politics power the plot, and several sections are harrowing, particularly passages depicting the savage butchering of Olanna and Kainene's relatives. But this dramatic, intelligent epic has its lush and sultry side as well: rebellious Olanna is the mistress of Odenigbo, a university professor brimming with anticolonial zeal; business-minded Kainene takes as her lover fair-haired, blue-eyed Richard, a British expatriate come to Nigeria to write abook about Igbo-Ukwu art—and whose relationship with Kainene nearly ruptures when he spends one drunken night with Olanna. This is a transcendent novel of many descriptive triumphs, most notably its depiction of the impact of war's brutalities on peasants and intellectuals alike. It's a searing history lesson in fictional form, intensely evocative and immensely absorbing. (Sept. 15) --Staff (Reviewed June 26, 2006) (Publishers Weekly, vol 253, issue 26, p26)

6. From Library Journal: Poet Abani (Kalakuta Republic ) sets his vivid coming-of- age novel in crumbling, postcolonial Nigeria. In this setting, wealthy foreign tourists are an endangered species, so "Elvis" Oke needs to find a new line of work. An intelligent and bookish young man who impersonates Elvis Presley in front of Lagos's decaying Hilton Hotel, he doesn't have many options aside from smuggling illegal body parts to the European transplant market. Abani chronicles this rapid decline of Nigerian culture in general and the Oke family in particular, jumping back and forth from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. Each chapter is prefaced with an excerpt from a tattered notebook that once belonged to Elvis's mother, filled with traditional Nigerian recipes and herbal preparations. A former political prisoner in Nigeria, Abani contrasts the contemplative world of the notebook with chaotic street scenes showing the triumph of Western music, film, and fashion over traditional culture. (At least the sidewalk vendors still sell Nigerian food.) A fresh take on postcolonialism; Abani even manages to pull off the tired novel-as- cookbook concept, equating cuisine with nationalism. Recommended for larger fiction collections.—Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles --Edward B. St. John (Reviewed January 15, 2004) (Library Journal, vol 129, issue 1, p151)

7. From Publishers Weekly: A violent incident on a Nigerian beach has tragic echoes in posh London in Cleave’s beautifully staged if haphazardly plotted debut novel. British couple Andrew O’Rourke and his wife, Sarah, are on vacation when they come across two sisters, LittleBee and Nkiruka, on the run from the killers who have massacred everyone else in their village—in the pay, it turns out, of an oil company seeking the land. Soon the killers arrive and propose a not-quite-credible deal: they will trade the girls if Andrew and Sarah each cut off a finger. Andrew can’t do it, but Sarah does, and the killers drag the girls away. So two years later, when LittleBee shows up at Sarah’s house on the day of the funeral for Andrew, who has killed himself, it seems almost miraculous. Later, however, it’s revealed that LittleBee has been hiding around the O’Rourke place, and that Andrew seeing her set off his suicide. Sarah nevertheless determines to help LittleBee get refugee status. Cleave has a sharp cinematic eye, but the plot is undermined by weak motivations and coincidences. (Feb.) --Staff (Reviewed November 10, 2008) (Publishers Weekly, vol 255, issue 45, p30)

8. From School Library Journal: Adult/High School –Kambili, 15, and her older brother, Jaja, live under a brutal dictatorship in their native Nigeria and also in their home. Their father beats them and their mother for the slightest perceived offense. Papa is also a fanatic Christian who gives freely of his immense wealth and is admired by all. The children's world changes when they are allowed to visit their Aunty Ifeoma, who teaches in a university town nearby and lives a relaxed life on little money. Her children talk back, have messy rooms, and help cook wonderful food. And their beloved grandfather, Papa-Nnukwu, favors the old gods. Kambili meets Father Amadi, a liberal priest, and falls in love with him. Upon Nnukwu's death, Papa arrives to take them home, but Jaja now questions his authority, and when Papa finds Kambili with a picture of her heathen grandfather, he kicks and beats her so severely that she is hospitalized. Mama poisons Papa's food, but Jaja confesses to the murder and is imprisoned. The Nigerian government falls; Aunty Ifeoma loses her job and leaves with her children for America; and Father Amadi leaves for his next assignment. Yet there is hope that after three years in prison, Jaja will be released, and Mama finally smiles. Aunty Ifeoma and their cousins have brought joy and laughter to Kambili and Jaja, and that cannot be taken away. This is a harsh story, almost unbearable at first, but beautifully written.–Molly Connally, Chantilly Regional Library, VA --Molly Connally (Reviewed December 1, 2003) (School Library Journal, vol 49, issue 12, p176)

9. From BookList: /* Starred Review */ To the women in the hair-braiding salon, Ifemelu seems to have everything a Nigerian immigrant in America could desire, but the culture shock, hardships, and racism she’s endured have left her feeling like she has “cement in her soul.” Smart, irreverent, and outspoken, she reluctantly left Nigeria on a college scholarship. Her aunty Uju, the pampered mistress of a general in Lagos, is now struggling on her own in the U.S., trying to secure her medical license. Ifemelu’s discouraging job search brings on desperation and depression until a babysitting gig leads to a cashmere-and-champagne romance with a wealthy white man. Astonished at the labyrinthine racial strictures she’s confronted with, Ifemelu, defining herself as a “Non-American Black,” launches an audacious, provocative, and instantly popular blog in which she explores what she calls Racial Disorder Syndrome. Meanwhile, her abandoned true love, Obinze, is suffering his own cold miseries as an unwanted African in London. MacArthur fellow Adichie (The Thing around Your Neck, 2009) is a word-by-word virtuoso with a sure grasp of social conundrums in Nigeria, East Coast America, and England; an omnivorous eye for resonant detail; a gift for authentic characters; pyrotechnic wit; and deep humanitarianism. Americanah is a courageous, world-class novel about independence, integrity, community, and love and what it takes to become a “full human being.” -- Seaman, Donna (Reviewed 04-01-2013) (Booklist, vol 109, number 15, p18)

10. From BookList: /*Starred Review*/ In Atlanta, too-trusting Valentino Achak Deng opens his door to strangers and is beaten and robbed at gunpoint. Lying on the floor, tied up with telephone cord, he begins silently to tell his life story to one of his captors. Through the rest of his miserable ordeal, he continues these internal monologues: to the indifferent police officer who answers his 911 call; to the jaded functionary at the hospital emergency room; to the affluent patrons at the health club where he works. Deng is a Sudanese Lost Boy, and his story is one of unimaginable suffering. Forced to flee his village by the murahaleen (Muslim militias armed by the government in Khartoum), he survives marathon walks, starvation, disease, soldiers, bandits, land mines, lions, and refugee camps before winning the right to immigrate to the U.S.- -a move he sees as nothing short of salvation. Deng is a real person, and this story, told in his voice, is mostly true. Readers may weigh Eggers' right to tell the story or wonder what parts have been changed, but here a novel isthe best solution to the problems of memoir. Reworking this powerful tale with both deep feeling and subtlety, Eggers finds humanity and even humor, creating something much greater than a litany of woes or a script for political outrage. WhatIstheWhat does what a novel does best, which is to make us understand the deeper truths of another human being's experience. -- Keir Graff (Reviewed 11-15-2006) (Booklist, vol 103, number 6, p5)

11. From Library Journal: It's been five years since Kingsolver's last novel (Pigs in Heaven, LJ 6/15/93), and she has used her time well. This intense family drama is set in an Africa on the verge of independence and upheaval. In 1959, evangelical preacher Nathan Price moves his wife and four daughters from Georgia to a village in the Belgian Congo, later Zaire. Their dysfunction and cultural arrogance proves disastrous as the family is nearly destroyed by war, Nathan's tyranny, and Africa itself. Told in the voices of the mother and daughters, the novel spans 30 years as the women seek to understand each other and the continent that tore them apart. Kingsolver has a keen understanding of the inevitable, often violent clashes between white and indigenous cultures, yet she lets the women tell their own stories without being judgmental. An excellent novel that was worth the wait and will win the author new fans. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/98.]--Ellen Flexman, Indianapolis-Marion Cty. P.L.

12. From Kirkus: Journalist-memoirist Hochschild (Finding the Trapdoor, 1997, etc.) recounts the crimes against humanity of Belgium's King Leopold II, whose brutal imperialist regime sparked the creation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and the first major human-rights protest movement of this century. Hell-bent on building grandiose state monuments and palaces and on swelling royal coffers, Leopold sought to carve out of central Africa a fiefdom 76 times the size of Belgium. Cagily inveighing against local slave traders and inviting Christian missionaries to spread the Gospel, he transformed a philanthropic organization temporarily under his aegis into the Congo, his own personal colony. He plundered the Congo's bounty of rubber, instituted forced labor, and reduced the population by half (an estimated 10 million deaths from 1880 to 1920). To achieve compliance with rubber-gathering quotas, soldiers in the Force Publique, Leopold's colonial army, committed mass murder, cut off hands, severed heads, took hostages, and burnt villages. His misrule remained undetected for more than a decade because he won US recognition of his claim to the Congo, used explorer Henry Morton Stanley to swindle chiefs out of land, and concealed the colony's budget. If Hochschild depicts Leopold not as a Hitleresque madman but as a liberal bogeyman ready to sacrifice all for the bottom line, he profiles the monarch's opponents in all their complicated humanity.

13. From Library Journal: /* Starred Review */ Have you ever wondered how children become enlisted as soldiers, and men become desensitized to slaughter? Iweala's aptly titled debut takes us into the belly of the beast from the perspective of the school-aged Agu. Separated from his family when a civil war erupts, he is taken captive and adopted as a soldier by a band of lawless men and boys. It could be anywhere and anytime in Africa, when desperation, fear, and hatred fuel bloodshed and inhumanity. Agu is cajoled into his first killing, with his commandant telling him it is like falling in love: "You are just having to doing it, he is saying." The soldiers are told to view their enemies as dogs or goats, as meat. With hunger and confusion propelling him, Agu gets a taste for killing—a taste that galls him in the moments when he lets his guard down. The terror that Agu witnesses and engages in is told in his simple, declarative voice that makes the violence all the more senseless and immediate. This slim, harrowing account of the intoxication of violence and how quickly it can escalate is a cautionary tale that offers no easy answers or explanations. Recommended for public and YA libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 7/05; see also "Fall Editors' Picks," p. 40–44.]—Misha Stone, Seattle P.L. --Misha Stone (Reviewed September 1, 2005) (Library Journal, vol 130, issue 14, p131)

14. From Publishers Weekly: /* Starred Review */ This absorbing account by a young man who, as a boy of 12, gets swept up in Sierra Leone's civil war goes beyond even the best journalistic efforts in revealing the life and mind of a child abducted into the horrors of warfare. Beah's harrowing journey transforms him overnight from a child enthralled by American hip- hop music and dance to an internal refugee bereft of family, wandering from village to village in a country grown deeply divided by the indiscriminate atrocities of unruly, sociopathic rebel and army forces. Beah then finds himself in the army—in a drug-filled life of casual mass slaughter that lasts until he is 15, when he's brought to a rehabilitation center sponsored by UNICEF and partnering NGOs. The process marks out Beah as a gifted spokesman for the center's work after his "repatriation" to civilian life in the capital, where he lives with his family and a distant uncle. When the war finally engulfs the capital, it sends 17-year-old Beah fleeing again, this time to the U.S., where he now lives. (Beah graduated from Oberlin College in 2004.) Told in clear, accessible language by a young writer with a gifted literary voice, this memoir seems destined to become a classic firsthand account of war and the ongoing plight of child soldiers in conflicts worldwide. (Feb.) --Staff (Reviewed December 18, 2006) (Publishers Weekly, vol 253, issue 50, p55)

15. From Library Journal Because Lessing grew up in Zimbabwe, she has drawn upon her African experiences in many of her writings, including Going Home (1957. o.p.), the story of her return to a land still ruled by a white minority. This time, she returns to an independent Zimbabwe in 1982 to be greeted by The Monologue: white complaints about black ineptitude. Subsequent trips in 1988 and 1989 focus on black frustration with the slowness of change ("Why can't Mugabe chief of state do anything about... ?") as well as with corruption. A 1992 update ends the book on a somber note: economic decline, drought, and AIDS. This is quite a fascinating look at life in Zimbabwe from someone who has an intimate knowledge of the country. Af rican Laughter is highly recommended. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/92. - Paul H. Thomas, Hoover Inst. Lib., Stanford, Cal. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

16. From Booklist starred (September 15, 2007 (Vol. 104, No. 2)) “When I was nineteen, after two years in a job that was going nowhere, I bought a ticket and set off for Africa.” Sydney native Allison then found himself penniless and gladly took an offer to tend the bar at a game camp in southern Africa. While carrying the beer for a firelight dinner in the bush, he was charged by two lions—and didn’t run. “Only food runs,” as he’d been told, and the pride he felt when the lions left him alone was his first intimation that he was on the right career path. After learning to drive a Land Rover (and causing the renaming of One Tree Plain to No Tree Plain), fighting a war against an invasion of mice (and mistaking a rustling elephant for just more mice), and keeping monkeys away from his tent with a stuffed toy leopard, he became an experienced guide. He deals with bird nerds (and discovers that he too is a birder), the recalcitrant Land Rovers (including two he drowned), the fact of his race (the other guides were all local men), and finally the tourists—several members of the British royal family (with whom the guides played strip poker), the California “difficult” Torture Twins, the Ya-Ya Germans, and finally his friend, Nick, whose aplomb he managed to shake with a visit to feeding cheetahs. Allison’s infectious enthusiasm for both the African bush and his job showing its wonders to tourists is readily apparent, making for a fast and very entertaining read.

17. From Publishers Weekly: /* Starred Review */ American readers will have their imaginations challenged by 14-year-old Kamkwamba's description of life in Malawi, a famine-stricken, land- locked nation in southern Africa: math is taught in school with the aid of bottle tops ("three Coca-Cola plus ten Carlsberg equal thirteen"), people are slaughtered by enemy warriors "disguised... as green grass" and a ferocious black rhino; and everyday trading is "replaced by the business of survival" after famine hits the country. After starving for five months on his family's small farm, the corn harvest slowly brings Kamkwamba back to life. Witnessing his family's struggle, Kamkwamba's supercharged curiosity leads him to pursue the improbable dream of using "electric wind"(they have no word for windmills) to harness energy for the farm. Kamkwamba's efforts were of course derided; salvaging a motley collection of materials, from his father's broken bike to his mother's clothes line, he was often greeted to the tune of "Ah, look, the madman has come with his garbage." This exquisite tale strips life down to its barest essentials, and once there finds reason for hopes and dreams, and is especially resonant for Americans given the economy and increasingly heated debates over health care and energy policy. PW Oct. 2009

18. From BookList: In plain words, as hard as stones, this small, riveting book connects the anguish in one family with the struggle of a country to come to terms with its savage past. Teenager Berry doesn't want to leave her boyfriend and her mother in Washington, D.C., and go to South Africa on a 10-day tourist trip with her take-charge, divorced dad. They see Johannesburg and the wild game reserve, Robben Island (where Mandela was imprisoned) and the Cape; but theirs is more than a sightseeing tour. Berry's beloved older sister, Laura, was murdered a year before near the church school where she was volunteering, and Dad wants Berry with him for the unveiling of a memorial to Laura. The idea is that being together will help them cope with their loss and reconcile them (Dad left home for another woman, other women). The hearings of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) are going on, where apartheid perpetrators come forward to confess their crimes, including murder and torture, in return for amnesty. Coman makes no slick parallels between the political reconciliation and Berry's personal struggle with her father, except, perhaps, to show that both are difficult, incomplete. She gets exactly right the continuing racism and "apartness" that exists between white wealth and black poverty. Far from the glossy tourist-in-primitive-Africa panoramas, this story says what is. There are many parallels with the true case of Amy Biehl, the California Fulbright scholar murdered near Cape Town. Readers moved by this book might want to view the searing video Long Night's Journey into Day about the TRC, which recently received a starred review in the Media section of the October 15 issue. (Reviewed November 1, 2000) -- Hazel Rochman

19. From School Library Journal: /* Starred Review */ — TheGoodBraider follows Viola on a journey from her home in ravaged Sudan to Cairo and finally to the folds of a Sudanese community in Maine. Viola's story, told in free verse, is difficult to read without a constant lurking sense of both dread and hope. In the opening scene she gazes at the curve of the back of a boy walking the street in front of her, only to view his senseless execution moments later. This tension never completely dissipates, though it takes on different forms throughout her story; by the end it is replaced not by the fear of execution or of the lecherous soldier who forces her to trade herself for her family's safety, but by the tension of walking the line between her mother's cultural expectations and the realities of her new country. Yet while Farish so lyrically and poignantly captures Viola's wrenching experience leaving her home, navigating the waiting game of refugee life, and acculturating into the United States, she's equally successful in teasing out sweet moments of friendship and universal teenage experiences. Viola's memorable, affecting voice will go far to help students step outside of their own experience and walk a mile in another's shoes.—Jill Heritage Maza, Montclair Kimberley Academy, Montclair, NJ --Jill Heritage Maza (Reviewed September 1, 2012) (School Library Journal, vol 58, issue 9, p144)

20. From Booklist In 1989, the year that Mandela was released from prison, a Zulu baby named Nkosi was born HIV-positive to a teen single mother dying of AIDS. Wooten, ABC News senior correspondent, tells Nkosi's family story of hope and heartbreak in a clear dramatic narrative that personalizes the apartheid politics as well as the present devastating statistics and the struggle against prejudice. At age 2, the sick little boy was taken in by a loving white family, and with the support of his activist foster mother, Gail, he became a famous public figure in the battle against discrimination. He won the legal right to attend school. At 11, shortly before he died, he gave an electrifying speech to an international audience. Wooten gets close to the dying child and his white family, and he writes passionately about Gail's fight and about President Mbeki's absurd denial that has enraged the health profession. Most haunting is the breakup of black family life stretching back across generations, the desperation of the teen who gets AIDS and gives it to her son. Hazel Rochman

21. From Publishers Weekly: /* Starred Review */ With an anthropologist's eye and a novelist's pen, Pulitzer Prize–winning Kidder (Mountains Beyond Mountains ) recounts the story of Deo, the Burundian former medical student turned American émigré at the center of this strikingly vivid story. Told in flashbacks from Deo's 2006 return visit to Burundi to mid-1990s New York and the Burundi of childhood memory and young adulthood—as the Rwandan genocide spilled across the border following the same inflamed ethnic divisions—then picking up in 2003, when author and subject first meet, Deo's experience is conveyed with a remarkable depth of vision and feeling. Kidder renders his subject with deep yet unfussy fidelity and the conflict with detail and nuance. While the book might recall Dave Eggers's novelized version of a real- life Sudanese refugee's experience inWhat Is the What, reading this book hardly covers old ground, but enables one to walk in the footsteps of its singular subject and see worlds new and old afresh. This profoundly gripping, hopeful and crucial testament is a work of the utmost skill, sympathy and moral clarity. (Aug.) --Staff (Reviewed May 11, 2009) (Publishers Weekly, vol 256, issue 19, p40)

22. From Publishers Weekly: /* Starred Review */ In Habila's stirring third novel (after Measuring Time), a pair of Nigerian reporters are dispatched to find the kidnapped wife of a British oil executive. Young Rufus and his disgraced mentor, Zaq, track the wife's captors—guerrilla forces fighting against the petroleum industry and its government allies—through the lush Nigerian delta, wandering along oil-slicked rivers, villages destroyed by war, and communities evicted by a land-hungry oil company. Rufus, whose own family has been shattered by the oil industry's machinations, bears witness to pointless cruelties inflicted by both sides of the conflict and the suffering of a population uprooted and set adrift on a desecrated landscape. The novel is a cinematic adventure and a remarkably tense race against the clock set in a haunting world of mangroves, floating villages, and jungle shrines—but it is also a brooding political tragedy in the Graham Greene tradition, one that illustrates the environmental and human costs of resource extraction in corrupt, postcolonial Africa. The delta and its people are rendered with insight and sensitivity, but also an unsparing sense of irony; indeed, it's a credit to Habila's storytelling that his mournful vision of the world never eclipses its fragile beauty, or its humanity. (May) --Staff (Reviewed March 7, 2011) (Publishers Weekly, vol 258, issue 10, p)

23. From School Library Journal: As a child, Slaughter was raped repeatedly by her father, beginning when she was six years old. Born in India about the time of independence, she and her family soon traveled back to England along with the rest of the British colonialists, where her father determined he could not live without the incipient power held by minor bureaucrats in colonial service to the Queen. In short order, Slaughter, her older sister, and her mother were following him to Africa, to the Kalahari Desert and the British protectorate known today as Botswana. Her mother's recurring depressions, worsened by the birth of a third daughter, and her father's frustration and anger with the approaching end of British colonialism and his own mental illness, led to the incest and eventual violence between him and his daughter. Slaughter's style is lyrical and haunting. In beautifully painted prose, she conveys her great love for the magnificence of Africa. Readers are shown how she sought solace from her environment in an effort to blot out the pain of her father's betrayal and her mother's refusal to acknowledge the abuse. As if piecing together a jigsaw puzzle, readers come to understand the author's actions. Handled with dignity, the story tells of survival and strength in the 1950s but it is relevant today.–Carol DeAngelo, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA --Carol DeAngelo (Reviewed November 1, 2002) (School Library Journal, vol 48, issue 11, p198)

24. From School Library Journal: /* Starred Review */ –This autobiographical account by a member of a nomadic subgroup within the Maasai people in northern Kenya provides a unique and insightful picture of life in a culture in which cattle are the measure of wealth. Lekuton is at his most lyrical when telling of his and his family's relationships with their cattle. While he paints a picture of a supportive family and community, his is by no means an idyllic life. From the age of five, he watched the cows all day, awake to possible danger while playing make- believe games. However, his life as a nomad changed forever when, at age six, he became the designated child of his family who was obligated by law to go to school. In spite of an enduring love and respect for his family and their way of life, school exerted a pull so strong on Lekuton that he went from the mission school to an elite high school to college in the United States, and now teaches history at a private school in Virginia. The account of these years is filled with colorful anecdotes and tales of physical endurance. While readers may notice an almost complete absence of girls in the narrative, Lekuton's story touches a universal chord, and shows readers the beauty of another culture from the inside. Simple and direct enough for reluctant readers, and written in a conversational and occasionally wryly humorous style, this book will be enjoyed by a wide range of readers and should spark much discussion. A few excellent-quality photos enhance the presentation.–Sue Giffard, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, New York City --Sue Giffard (Reviewed October 1, 2003) (School Library Journal, vol 49, issue 10, p194)

25. From Library Journal: This is a fine new collection of 12 short stories by the young Nigerian author of Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun. The stories are set both in the United States and in Nigeria, where things continue to fall apart. A privileged college student gets involved in gang violence; innocent women flee from a bloody riot; some characters are visited by ghosts, while others are haunted by the memory of war. Yet as one character puts it, an easier life in the United States is cushioned by so much convenience that it feels sterile. Relations between the races are awkward at best. The title story probes the emotional gulf between a young immigrant woman and her well-off white American boyfriend. The closing story, "The Headstrong Historian," is a miniature portrait of the colonial legacy in Nigeria. Adichie, a brilliant writer whose characters stay with you for a long time, deserves to be more widely known. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/09.]—Leslie Patterson, Brown Univ. Lib., Providence, RI -- Leslie Patterson (Reviewed April 15, 2009) (Library Journal, vol 134, issue 7, p88)

26. From Kirkus: From the South African–born Mathabane (Kaffir Boy, 1986; African Women, 1994, etc.) comes this unsparingly graphic account of his sister's growing up in the last days of apartheid—when violence turned black townships into killing fields and schooling ceased as young Comrades insisted on liberation before education. The story told by Miriam, now studying in the US, is a searing indictment of the violence to women engendered both by apartheid and by traditional African attitudes. Both quashed human potential and aspirations, and good daughters and students like Miriam were as penalized as their more recalcitrant sisters. Born in 1969 and raised in Alexandria, a sprawling black township to the north of Johannesburg, Miriam offers vivid details of township life: the food eaten (a whole chicken was an undreamed-of luxury), the small houses (spotless despite the number of people living in them), and the ubiquitous scrawny dogs picking over the uncollected trash. She describes growing up as the middle daughter in a family made dysfunctional by circumstance. Her illiterate father, unable to find better-paying jobs, is often unemployed, drinks, gambles away their food money, and beats the children; her mother, a devout Christian, lacks the proper documentation and also has employment problems; and her elder brother steals Miriam's savings. The black schools are poorly equipped, the teachers are sadistic, and Miriam (who wants to become a nurse) soon finds her ambition thwarted by the times and by custom. A teenager in the 1980s, when anti-government violence made life in townships dangerous, she has to stay home when the schools are forced to close. Then, in a society where black men traditionally are free to do as they please (to take 13-year-old girls for wives, for example, as one of her uncle does), she is raped by her boyfriend and finds herself pregnant. But brother Mark, who has used his tennis talents as a passport to the US and success, will change Miriam's life. A moving story of a survivor, but Miriam herself often seems more a reporter recalling an eventful past than a reflective memoirist. (Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2000)

27. From BookList: Gr. 8-12 Like his Printz Honor Book, Chanda's Secret (2004), Stratton's sequel, set in a fictional African country, revolves around Chanda Kabele, orphaned by AIDS. In this book, Chanda, who tells the story in an immediate, first-person, present-tense narrative, is caring for her younger brother, Soly, and sister, Iris. Horrors of the civil war are all around them, and Iris and Soly are kidnapped by rebels and turned into brutal soldiers. The realistic description of Chanda's tracking the children through the bush to rescue them is intriguing, and readers will appreciate the girl's feelings as she wonders if her siblings can ever recover from what they have seen, what they have done. Familiarity with the previous book isn't necessary; this one starts off with detailed references to the past—too many, in fact. But the characters are drawn without sentimentality, and the story is a moving portrayal of betrayal and love. The army's brutality and the traumas of the child soldiers are graphic and disturbing; there's nothing easy and comfortable here. -- Rochman, Hazel (Reviewed 12-01-2007) (Booklist, vol 104, number 7, p34)

28. From Publishers Weekly: Tambu, an adolescent living in colonial Rhodesia of the '60s, seizes the opportunity to leave her rural community to study at the missionary school run by her wealthy, British-educated uncle. With an uncanny and often critical self-awareness, Tambu narrates this skillful first novel by a Zimbabwe native. Like many heroes of the bildungsroman, Tambu, in addition to excelling at her curriculum, slowly reaches some painful conclusions--about her family, her proscribed role as a woman, and the inherent evils of colonization. Tambu often thinks of her mother, "who suffered from being female and poor and uneducated and black so stoically." Yet, she and her cousin, Nyasha, move increasingly farther away from their cultural heritage. At a funeral in her native village, Tambu admires the mourning of the women, "shrill, sharp, shiny, needles of sound piercing cleanly and deeply to let the anguish in, not out." In many ways, this novel becomes Tambu's keening--a resonant, eloquent tribute to the women in her life, and to their losses. (Mar.)