Books of 2013

January
  1. The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
  2. Periodic Table by Primo Levi
  3. The Best of Simple by Langston Hughes
  4. Speeches that Changed the World by Emma Beare (Editor)
  5. Gathering Seaweed: African Prison Writing by Jack Mapanji (Editor)
  6. Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
  7. The Ghost of Sani Abacha by Chuma Nwokolo
February
  1. Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
  2. Definition of a Miracle by Farida N. Bedwei
  3. Fathers & Daughters - An Anthology of Exploration by Ato Quayson (Editor)
  4. Dead Aid - Why Aid Makes things Worse and How there is another Way for Africa by Dambisa Moyo
  5. Interventions - A Life in War and Peace by Kofi Annan (with Nader Mousavizadeh)
March
  1. War and Peace (Volume I, Volume II, Volume III, & Volume IV) by Leo Tolstoy
  2. Smouldering Charcoal by Tiyambe Zeleza
  3. Breaking Silence - A Poetic Lifeline from Slavery to Love by James Robert Myers (Editor)
  4. The Lump in her Throat (SS) by Aba Amissah Asibon
April
  1. Antifragile - Things that Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  2. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
  3. The Government Inspector by Nikolai V. Gogol
  4. My First Coup D'etat - Memories from the Lost Decades of Africa by John Dramani Mahama
  5. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
May
  1. Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
  2. Saturday by Ian McEwan
  3. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  4. Auto Da Fe by Elias Canetti
June
  1. Infinite Riches by Ben Okri
  2. The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola
  3. Tales of Tenderness and Power by Bessie Head
  4. When Rain Clouds Gather by Bessie Head
  5. The Karamazov Brothers by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  6. The Cardinals with Meditations and Short Stories by Bessie Head
July
  1. Ama - A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade by Manu Herbstein
  2. God Dies by the Nile by Nawal El Saadawi
  3. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
August
  1. A Heart's Quest by Elikplim Akorli
  2. The Spider King's Daughter by Chibundu Onuzo
  3. Farad by Emmanuel Iduma
  4. Taboo by Mawuli Adzei
  5. Kongi's Harvest by Wole Soyinka
September
  1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
  2. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
October
  1. Indaba, My Children by Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa
  2. The Parliament of Poets by Frederick Glaysher
  3. African Roar 2013 by Emmanuel Sigauke (Editor)
  4. The Confusions of Young Torless by Robert Musil
  5. An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen
  6. Permit for Survival by Bill Marshall
  7. Persuasion by Jane Austen
  8. Women of Owu by Femi Osofisan
November
  1. True Murder by Yaba Badoe
  2. The Poor Christ of Bomba by Mongo Beti
  3. Dreams in a Time of War - a Childhood Memoir by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
  4. Allah is not Obliged by Ahmadou Kourouma
  5. Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote by Ahmadou Kourouma
  6. A Bit of Difference by Sefi Atta
  7. Animal Farm by George Orwell
  8. South African Short Stories from 1945 to Present by Denis Hirson with Martin Trump (Editors)
December
  1. Delta of Venus by Anais Nin
  2. African Short Stories by Chinua Achebe and C. L. Innes (Editors)
  3. A Cowrie of Hope by Binwell Sinyangwe
  4. No Sweetness Here by Ama Ata Aidoo
  5. That's Doctor Sinatra, You Little Bimbo! by G. B. Trudeau
  6. Dune by Frank Herbet
  7. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Popular posts from this blog

10. Unexpected Joy at Dawn: My Reading

Image
Title: Unexpected Joy At Dawn Author: Alex Agyei-Agyiri Genre: Novel Publisher: Sub-Saharan Publishers Pages: 331 Year: 2004 Country: Ghana Unexpected Joy at Dawn is a story of two siblings, Nii and Mama Orojo, during the 1983 deportation of Ghanaians from Nigeria under the Shehu Shagari government. Nii, who is a Nigerian by blood but a Ghanaian by birth, was left in Ghana by his parents as they made the tortuous journey to Nigeria when Ghana enacted the Aliens Compliance Order of 1969, which made every person living in Ghana without the required papers an alien. His name was changed to reflect the name of his adopted parents. After fourteen years of living in hardship in Ghana, which involves living in slums even though he was an Assistant Manager at a bank, taking on multiple jobs, not being able to bury a wife and being chased around by market women for purported 'fraud', he decided to go to Nigeria in search of his roots. Besides, he entertained the fears of being
Read more

69. The Clothes of Nakedness by Benjamin Kwakye, A Review

Image
Title: The Clothes of Nakedness Author: Benjamin Kwakye Publishers: Heinemann African Writers Series Genre: Fiction/Novel/Class Pages: 212 Year of First Publication: 1998 Country: Ghana For the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa Region Winners Reading Challenge Benjamin Kwakye 's novel The Clothes of Nakedness  is a compelling narrative directed at a Ghanaian audience, in particular. It reveals the economic hardships existing in our society; it also reveals the intricately woven relationships between the rich and the poor and how the 'seemingly' rich manipulate the poor to further that wealth-dom in this dual economic society where absolute riches exist side by side with abject poverty. The latter scenario is even more stark and pathetic if one knows that Nima and Kanda Estates, two neighbourhoods presented in the story, are real and not just fictional representation made concrete by Kwakye's brilliant mind. The story revolves around thr
Read more

42. The Blinkards by Kobina Sekyi

Image
Title: The Blinkards, A Comedy and The Anglo-Fanti - A Short Story Author: Kobina Sekyi Genre: Play/Short Story Pages: 256 Publishers: Heinemann/Readwide ISBN: 978-0-435-92784-4 Year of Publication: 1974 (this edition, 1997) Country: Gold Coast (Now Ghana) Setting:  This book contains two stories: The Blinkards - a play and The Anglo-Fanti - a short story . Though the stories are from two different genres, one theme threads through them: the effect of absolute cultural osmosis or better still the consequences of swallowing an alien culture without much scrutiny, as happened in occupied countries popularly referred to by the occupiers as colonies (colonies of what? Ants? Bees?) Both stories took place in Cape Coast and the setting is very significant to the story. Apart from the author being a Fanti from Cape Coast, Cape Coast was the first point of introduction to colonial rule. As a seaport city, it was the first town that was brought under colonial rule; hence ther
Read more