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Daunt Books Children's Short Story Competition 2013
Daunt Books Children's Short Story Competition 2013
Africa
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Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh
- Price: £15.00 Add to Basket
- The first in Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy, Men at Arms follows Guy Crouchback as he enlists at the beginning of the Second World War and is sent to West Africa. Yet, Guy’s attempts to fulfil childhood dreams of heroism are thwarted at every turn, making him more of a tragic-comic figure rather than the military hero he aspires to be. Where this book falls down on plot, it is more than made up for by his excellent prose.
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Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow
- Price: £14.99 Add to Basket
- American millionaire Eugene Henderson, on a journey of self-discovery, moves to an imaginary Africa to spend some time immersed in the culture and lifestyle of a local tribe. However, his ability to bring on rain turns him, in the eyes of the tribe, into a messiah. Entertaining, readable, amusing and beautifully written, it is said to be Bellow's own favourite.
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Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
- Price: £9.99 Add to Basket
- Ngugi wa Thiong'o was exiled by the Kenyan government in 1977 for his politically-charged writings. This novel is an amusing, poetic resistance told through the imaginary African republic of Aburiria. A satire which exposes the corruption and greed of African politicians and businessmen who put personal gain before that of the nation, it is both powerful and delightful.
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A Good Man in Africa by William Boyd
- Price: £8.99 Add to Basket
- Misanthropic, over-sexed hero Morgan Leafy is the first secretary of the British High Commission in an imaginary African country. He is insecure, hopeless, laughable and highly unsuccessful. A very funny black comedy about a surburban middle manager which takes a dim view of colonial intervention in Africa.
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In a Free State by V. S. Naipaul
- Price: £8.99 Add to Basket
- This Booker Prize-winning novel is actually five entirely separate stories linked by the characters who are all travelling away from home and into a strange land. It is a book about displacement, belonging, cultural interaction and freedom. A tense, thought-provoking and profound piece of writing from this Nobel Prize-winning author.
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Philida by Andre Brink
- Price: £14.99 Add to Basket
- After bearing four children by her master's son, and faced with the prospect of being sold on to new owners, slave-woman Philida risks her whole life by lodging a complaint against him. With Muslim slave Labyn, she sets off on a journey across the great wilderness on the banks of the Gariep River, to the far north of Cape Town. Set in 1830s South Africa, amidst whispers of slave liberation, Brink’s Booker-longlisted novel is a moving story of one woman’s determination to survive.
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Granta Book of the African Short Story
- Price: £12.99 Add to Basket
- 29 short stories by some of the best new African writers, includes contributions by Helon Habila, Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie and Fatou Diome.
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The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
- Price: £6.99 Add to Basket
- A collection of semi-autobiographical short stories from Hemingway. Beautifully evocative of the African landscape and among the best examples of his work.
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Modern African Stories
- Price: £11.99 Add to Basket
- A collection of 34 short stories written over the last 15 years by the most exciting modern African writers from every corner of the continent. With a foreword by Chinua Achebe and contributions from the likes of Booker prize winner Ben Okri, this collection focuses on themes of betrayal and injustice.
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Masai Dreaming by Justin Cartwright
- Price: £9.99 Add to Basket
- Journalist Tim Curtiz travels to Kenya to unravel the story of a Jewish Masai researcher who was betrayed to the Nazis on her return home in 1945. A sensitive and evocative novel that is tenderly accurate in its portrayal of the Masai and white Kenyan communities.
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Red Strangers by Elspeth Huxley
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- This is the story of two Kikuyu brothers and how the 'red strangers', sunburnt Europeans, bring chaos and devastation to their village with their wholly incomprehensible laws and their diseases. A fascinating fictional account of the impact of colonialism in Kenya.
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The Last Gift by Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Price: £7.99 Add to Basket
- From the author of Paradise and Desertion comes this astounding meditation on family and the meaning of home. As his family gather around Abbas in hospital we are given snippets of his childhood in Zanzibar, his elopement to Birmingham with his wife Maryam and the lives of his two children.
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By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah
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- Asylum seeker Saleh Omar flees to London carrying only a small box of incense. He will come across Latif Mahmud, also living in London, who holds the keys to Saleh's troubled past. Lyrical prose in this enchanting, informative novel about love and betrayal, about being an asylum seeker in Britain and the troubles in Zanzibar.
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White Mischief by James Fox
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- An intoxicating thriller based on the unsolved murder of the Kenyan Military Secretary in 1941. James Fox, obsessed with this mystery, spent years researching the case and this novel is a fascinating expose of the debauchery and decadence of upper-class colonials living in Kenya during the war.
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The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner
- Price: £11.99 Add to Basket
- This is the story of the tragic and claustrophobic existence of two twins, Em and Lyndall, and their controlling stepmother. Powerful and intoxicating as a testament to the culture and history of the lost, colonial world of the South African veld.
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Seven Houses in France by Bernardo Atxaga
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- On the banks of the Congo in 1903, Captain Lalande Biran is driven by his wife's ambition to amass a great fortune and own seven houses in France. At the hands of his garrison, teh jungle is transformed into a wild circus of ambition and absurdity, until the arrival of an enigmatic new officer. Atxaga, one of the best known Basque writers, has created a dark comedy, which is as bizarre as it is compelling.
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The Outsider by Albert Camus
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- This existential fable is the story of Meursault, the young murderer of an Arabic man in Algiers, awaiting his trial and execution. It is not this violent act however, that perplexes and horrifies society, but his total lack of feeling: he shows absolutely no remorse for his action or grief at the death of his mother. A thought-provoking, controversial novel deserving of its cult status.
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The Plague by Albert Camus
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- A classic from Nobel prize-winner Albert Camus, this novel describes how a deadly plague is wreaking havoc among the inhabitants of the Algerian town of Oran. Each victim responds in a different way to the certainty of death: bitter rage, resentment, resignation or positive action. A clever and intriguing exploration of the meaning of life, this novel has also been read as an allegory of French resistance under Nazi occupation.
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The Famished Road by Ben Okri
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- Ben Okri's Booker prize-winning novel, The Famished Road, tells the story of Azaro, a spirit child who has chosen to stay in real world rather than return to the 'heaven' where he belongs. The real world is a small Nigerian village facing disease, hunger and violence. Refreshing and beautifully written, this wonderful novel tight rope walks the line between poetry and prose.
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A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali by Gil Courtemanche
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- Interesting, fictional approach to the Rwandan genocide. Gil Courtemanche tells the story of a white documentary film-maker who falls in love with a Tutsi woman. It is through their love affair that Courtemanche can explore the bloody genocide of 1994 and the devastating spread of AIDS. Shocking but important, if you can't face the non-fiction but you want to read about Rwandan history, then this is the book for you.
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The Constant Gardener by John le Carre
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- Fuelled by the tragic murder of his wife Tessa, a British bureaucrat begins to explore the murky world of greed and corruption in contemporary Nairobi. Both a moving, posthumous love story and nail-biting thriller.
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Ah, But Your Land is Beautiful by Alan Paton
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- Set in the 1950s, a group of men and women play out their lives against a background of intense political upheaval. Influenced by Paton's own work as a political activist and as the president of the South African Liberal Party, this vivid, fascinating novel is fiercely anti-apartheid.
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Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
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- It is 1950s South Africa and the Reverend Stephen Kumalo sets out on a journey from his rural village to trace his sister in Johannesburg. A heartbreaking, poetic lament, for Stephen's journey is more like Dante's descent into the nine circles of hell; this is an informative, tragic novel about the inequalities and violence of apartheid.
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Mating by Norman Rush
- Price: £13.99 Add to Basket
- Winner of The National Book Award, this is a love story between two American anthropologists. The unnamed female narrator journeys into the Kalahari Desert to find the brilliant Nelson Denoon who has created a solar-powered, female-dominated utopia for dispossed and abused African women. An intelligent novel that is both a Jane Austen-style love story, a comedy of manners and a clever political exploration of the equality of relationships.
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Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Price: £8.99 Add to Basket
- The poetic story of a young boy from rural Tanzania sold to a merchant to repay his father's debt. His journey across East Africa and the people he meets, from tribal chiefs to merchants, from Indian shopkeepers to German colonials, beautifully recreate the social and political background of the lost world of pre-First World War East Africa. Shortlisted for both the Booker and the Whitbread awards.
