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The 2013 Winners are In!



Daunt Books Children's Short Story Competition 2013

Africa

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

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  Setting the Desert On Fire by James Barr

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  An excellent revisionist account of the war in the Middle East between 1916 and 1918. James Barr debunks many of the myths surrounding T. E. Lawrence and provides us with a serious, considered, yet gripping history of this moment in Arab and Western relations.

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  The Travels of Ibn Battuta by Ibn Battuta

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  Ibn Battuta was a 14th century scholar and traveller who set out on a pilgrimage to Mecca from his native Tangiers. Over the next 27 years, this contemporary of Marco Polo, would visit every Islamic country and these are his fascinating accounts of the Muslim world of Northern Africa and the Middle East.

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  A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

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  The true story of Ishmael Beah's traumatic childhood as a child soldier in Sierra Leone. With simplicity and great power, Beah describes the details behind one of the most horrific evils of modern society: how ordinary children are turned into killers. A book that is both heartbreaking and yet remarkably hopeful.

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  Cairo: A Cultural and Literary History by Andrew Beattie

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  This fantastic series offers rich cultural and historical accounts of the world's great cities. Here Andrew Beattie explores the history of this ancient, teeming city, and the fascination it has exerted over the writers, artists and composers who have made it their home.

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  Tick Bite Fever by David Bennun

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  A charming and evocative memoir of David Bennun's childhood in Kenya full of wit and warmth.

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  Out of Africa by Karen Blixen

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  Written under a pseudonym, this is the astounding story of Isak Denison's time running a coffee plantation in Kenya in 1920s: powerful, incredibly moving and beautifully written. Ernest Hemingway said it should have been her who won the Nobel Prize instead of him in 1954.

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  Where Soldiers Fear to Tread by John Burnett

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  This is an account of John Burnett's devastating experiences working as a UN relief worker in Somalia. An occasionally harrowing, but genuinely important, book about the loss of innocence and the controversial affects of western aid.

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  Chasing the Devil by Tim Butcher

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  Following the route taken by Graham Greene in Journey Without Maps, Butcher describes his 350 mile trek across Sierra Leone and Liberia. Thrilling, intrepid and remarkably hardcore travel exploits from the author of Blood River.

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  The Trouble with Africa by Robert Calderisi

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  A provocative book which explores why such natural resource-rich countries such as the Congo are in still struggling with violence and poverty. Having worked in aid and the World Bank for over 30 years, Calderisi balances his passion and knowledge of the continent with a brave and punchy line of questioning.

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  The Voices of Marrakesh by Elias Canetti

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  A series of short sketches from the Nobel Prize winning author Elias Canetti in a smart new edition by Penguin. Powerful and evocative, these are acute observations on the culture, language and people of Marrakesh.

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  For Bread Alone by Mohamed Choukri

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  The acclaimed autobiography of North African writer Mohamed Choukri details with grim reality a childhood of poverty and violence and teenage descent into alcohol and drug abuse. Yet, following a stint in a Moroccan gaol, due to his involvement in the 1952 independence riots, Choukri discovered a passion for literature. Censored until 2000 in Morocco, this is an honest story of determination, courage and self-discovery.

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  Africa: Crude Continent by Duncan Clarke

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  A history of Africa through its relationship with oil. Informative, comprehensive and an original lens through which to view the economic and political history of this continent.

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  Zulu by Saul David

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  Gripping and occasionally horrifying reappraisal of the Zulu War of 1879.

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  Africa by Richard Dowden

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  Richard Dowden is Director of the Royal African Society and his book is a rarely optimistic vision that flies in the face of a Western image of the malnutrition, bloated bellies of an Oxfam advertisement. He explores the economic and political situation of every country below the Sahara and identifies the beginning of a new age of hope, fuelled by Chinese investment and a growing middle class.

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  Oblivion Seekers by Isabelle Eberhardt

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  A selection of the fascinating Isabelle Eberhardt's best writings on Africa, with a preface by Paul Bowles.

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  Black Gold of the Sun by Ekow Eshun

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  Prompted by his own search for identity, the artistic director of the ICA travels across Ghana researching the country's history as well as tracing his roots.

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  The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

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  Written during the Algerian struggle for independence this is Frantz Fanon's angry, political exploration of the psychological effects on colonialism. Sartre saw it primarily as a call to violence, but other critics have argued this is a simplification and that it is a discourse on language, class, race and mental health. Powerful and fascinating, it is considered to be a handbook on decolonisation.

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  Jock of the Bushveld by J Percy FitzPatrick

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  These are the classic tales of one man and his dog hunting, travelling and working together in the South African bush in the late nineteenth century. FitzPatrick originally created these tales as bedtime stories for his children and Rudyard Kipling eventually persuaded him to publish them to massive acclaim.

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  The Devil that Danced on the Water by Aminatta Forna

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  Aminatta Forna's elegant biography about growing up in Sierra Leone, the daughter of a surgeon turned politician and a Scottish mother.

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  Lucie Duff Gordon: A Passage to Egypt by Katherine Frank

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  A faithful biography of the charismatic, eccentric Victorian Lucie Duff Gordon who exchanged a bohemian life in London for an equally unconventional existence in Egypt when she was diagnosed with TB. Katherine Frank has used the letters which Lucie wrote home to her husband and children to paint this riveting portrait of an extraordinary woman.

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  I Dreamed of Africa by Kuki Gallmann

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  A gripping and, at times, heartbreaking account of Kukki Gallman's life in Kenya after she moved there with her family in the 1970s.

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  Travels with Myself and Another by Martha Gellhorn

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  Martha Gellhorn, American war correspondent and third wife of Ernest Hemingway (the 'another' of the title), brings together her favourite travelling 'horror stories' in this amusing, adventurous, extraordinary collection. All told with her usual dry, rather English, witty turn of phrase.

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  In An Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh

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  By the celebrated author of The Glass Palace, this is a work of non-fiction based on the time Amitav Ghosh spent living in a village in rural Egypt. Part absorbing traveller's tales recounting his time in the village, the colourful characters he meets and their relationship with a modernising Egypt, part exploratative history.

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  The Fear by Peter Godwin

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  The accomplished author of When a Crocodile Eats the Sun describes the days after Robert Mugabe lost the elections in 2008. Having grown up in the country and now an experienced journalist, Godwin expertly reconstructs this terrifying time, known simply as The Fear, by meeting the people and travelling across a truly ravaged landscape.

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  When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin

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  Supremely popular autobiography by the young, white Zimbabwean journalist Peter Godwin. Now living in New York, Godwin returns to visit his family after his father becomes seriously ill. He is shocked by the violence and growing racial hatred in a country that was once the poster-country for post-colonial Africa.