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Daunt Books Children's Short Story Competition 2013

Africa

• North Africa
• West Africa
• East Africa
• Central Africa
• Southern Africa

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  Red Nile by Robert Twigger

  Price: £25.00    Add to Basket

  Robert Twigger, adventurer, travel writer, egyptologist and more, distils thousands of years of history of the worlds most famous river into a remarkable book. Fascinating, illuminating, terrifying and edifying by turn, Twigger provides us with an authoritative account of the Nile that is at once hugely atmospheric, definitive and incredibly violent.

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  What is the What by Dave Eggers

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  This is the biography of Valentino Achek Deng, a Sudanese lost boy, told to and written by the excellent Dave Eggers. Deng was one of thousands of children forced to flee the Civil War in Sudan and trek hundreds of miles to Kenyan refugee camps avoiding wild animals, the armed Janjaweed and military air strikes. Beautifully told, utterly shocking and absolutely necessary reading. Highly recommended.

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  The Fight by Norman Mailer

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  Norman Mailer's fascinating account of the Rumble in the Jungle, the infamous boxing match between the serene George Foreman and the charismatic Mohamed Ali. Turns sports writing into an art form.

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  House of Stone by Christina Lamb

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  This is the story of Nigel Hough, a white Zimbabwean farmer, forced to surrender his land to an angry mob. Hough is heartbroken at the betrayal of his old Zimbabwean nanny Aqui, who stands at the head of the mob demanding his removal. Based on interviews with Hough, Aqui, and many others, Christina Lamb sensitively and intelligently explores the conflict in Zimbabwe and the potential for hope.

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  The Chains of Heaven by Philip Marsden

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  The best modern account of travels in Ethiopia, well written and particularly good at weaving in the history. Marsden really knows the country; his first book told of his travels here in the Menghistu years and his latest, The Barefoot Emperor, is a highly recommended history of the Emperor Tewodros and his stand at Mekdala.

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  Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper

  Price: £25.00    Add to Basket

  Drawing on years of interviews and conversations with Leigh Fermor and his closest friends, this beautifully crafted biography portrays a man of extraordinary gifts - widely considered to be the greatest travel writer of our time.

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  The Harmless People by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

  Price: £12.99    Add to Basket

  The Harmless People is a fascinating anthropological study by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas who, in the 1950s, was one of the first white people to spend time with the Kalahari bushmen. Thomas made later trips during the 1980s to update her work and to watch with horror the costs of inevitable industrialisation.

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  A History of Ethiopia by Harold G. Marcus

  Price: £19.95    Add to Basket

  Good, concise single volume history by a respected historian. Paul Henze's Layers of Time is more fun, but more than a few have contested that this is the better of the two.

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  The Physics of Blown Sand & Desert by R.A. Bagnold

  Price: £14.95    Add to Basket

  Bagnold's great Libyan Sands is inexplicably out of print at the moment but may we point those interested in the desert to this esoteric gem.

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  Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town by Paul Theroux

  Price: £10.99    Add to Basket

  "Feeling that the place was so large it contained many untold tales and some hope and comedy and sweetness, too...I aimed to wander the antique hinterland." In characteristically evocative prose Theroux recounts his epic African journey, revelling in the contradictions, the highs and lows, "delayed, shot at, howled at, robbed", ultimately coming to terms with his subject as "a delight and a revelation". This quite brilliant piece of travel writing comes highly recommended.

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  Journey Without Maps by Graham Greene

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  In 1936, the master of English fiction Graham Greene undertook a journey into the little explored West African republic of Liberia. Greene was young, inexperienced and heading into a territory that was simply marked, on one US Government map of the time, with the word "cannibals". Less of an adventure story, more of a serious traveller's history exploring issues of colonialism and politics.

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  Blood River by Tim Butcher

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  In 2000, Tim Butcher decided to follow Stanley's famous expedition up the Congo despite being told that the plan was suicidal. His traveller's tales are remarkable, entertaining and extraordinary. Yet the real power comes from what he learns of the Congo: its turbulent past, its violent present and its hopes for the future. Fascinating history of a country combined with thrilling tales of adventure.

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  Britain's Gulag by Caroline Elkins

  Price: £10.99    Add to Basket

  Readable account of the Mau Mau uprisings in Kenya during the 1950s and their attempts to throw off the mantle of British rule. At the height of the violence, Britain held over 70,000 Africans in detention camps and Elkins has included letters from many of these detainees. Educational, shocking and a good accompaniment to David Anderson's Histories of the Hanged and Adam Foulds' Broken Word.

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  A Walk with a White Bushman by Laurens van der Post

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  Begun as a radio programme and then later transcribed, this is jean-marc Pottiez in conversation with Sir Laurens van der Post. Academic and intriguing Van der Post talks about his childhood in Africa, his life in England and his involvement with the League of Nations.

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  The Scramble for Africa by Thomas Pakenham

  Price: £15.99    Add to Basket

  An informative and reliably comprehensive historical narrative on how five European powers all but carved up the continent of Africa in the thirty years between 1880 and 1910. Despite its length, the pace is quick and the tone is gripping as it weaves its way through Africa's bloody colonial beginnings.

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  Napoleon in Egypt by Paul Strathern

  Price: £11.99    Add to Basket

  In 1798, aged just 28, Napoleon attacked Egypt with 335 ships and 40,000 men intending to follow the footsteps of Alexander the Great. His plan failed; yet the findings of the 150 scientists, mathematicians, artists and writers he took with him would form the beginnings of Egyptology. A fascinating and readable historical account of Napoleon's Egyptian odyssey.

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  African History A Very Short Introduction by John Parker & Richard Rathbone

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  Concise introduction from OUP covering the fundamentals: culture, slavery, religion, colonialism and the importance of history in understanding contemporary Africa. Also points you in the right direction for further reading.

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  Shake Hands with the Devil by Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire

  Price: £10.99    Add to Basket

  Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire was the force commander of the UN mission sent to Rwanda in May 1994. Without the men or the freedom to stop the Hutu forces, he watched as full scale genocide erupted in front of his eyes. He left Rwanda horrified and suicidal, knowing that he had needed just 4,000 troops to have contained the bloodshed. This is his angry, disillusioned and emotional account of his time there.

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  The Lost World of the Kalahari by Laurens van der Post

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  Laurens van der Post journeys to the heart of the Kalahari to meet the San Bushmen, the last remaining survivors from Stone Age Africa, exploring the reasons for their remarkable survival and their fascinating heritage. This is travel writing at its best, from its beautifully written description of the desolate landscape, to van der Post's palpable excitement at meeting these extraordinary people.

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  Heaven's Command by Jan Morris

  Price: £12.99    Add to Basket

  The first volume of The Pax Britannica Trilogy about the rise and fall of the Victorian Empire. Beginning in 1837 at Queen Victoria's accession to the throne, Jan Morris explores the history of this vast empire, while weaving in anecdotes of the daily life of a range of civil servants from the dedicated paternalists to the corrupt self-servers. Excellent and engaging introduction to the subject.

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  Ever the Diplomat by Sherard Cowper-Coles

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  Sherard Cowper-Coles last book, Cables from Kabul showed us a very different Afghan front line, that of the diplomats whose job it was to negotiate and explain Britain to the Afghans and Afghanistan to the Britons. Now, in Ever the Diplomat, Cowper-Coles takes us behind the doors of the Foreign Office to experience just what our diplomatic corps does to maintain and manage British interests around the world. From writing speeches for Thatcher to hiding an embarrassing bobble hat from Robin Cook, we are taken on a often humorous, always insightful journey through Whitehall and abroad, as the mandarins of the FCO respond to an ever shifting world.

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  Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  A lucid and very powerful autobiography. Ali describes her journey from Somalia to the US, exploring the global rise of radicalised Muslim groups and her own relationship with Islam.

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  The Caged Virgin by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia and brought up as a Muslim. Appalled by the treatment of women in her country she fled to the Netherlands. This is her indignant, impassioned and deeply courageous cry to free women from oppression. Powerful and fascinating.

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  Lawrence: The Uncrowned King of Arabia by Michael Asher

  Price: £12.99    Add to Basket

  Certainly the best biography of T. E. Lawrence currently in print. Written by desert explorer Michael Asher, it is reliable, well-researched and enjoyable.

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  Libyan sands by r.a. bagnold

  Price: £12.99    Add to Basket

  A 'classic work of 20th-century Saharan exploration', this is an thrilling and awe-inspiring account of the journeys carried out in the Western Desert by a group of intrepid British officers, in nothing more substantial than a convoy of Model T Fords.