标题: 2022.06.14非洲编辑选择了五本书和一张专辑 [打印本页] 作者: shiyi18 时间: 2022-7-6 21:22 标题: 2022.06.14非洲编辑选择了五本书和一张专辑 Economist Reads | Africa
Our Africa editor chooses five books, and one album, as an introduction to the great continent
For a first taste of Africa, begin with these
Life in Nigeria. NIGERIA LAGOS People working in Jankara market, Lagos, Nigeria. Jankara is one of the biggest and busiest markets in Lagos.
Jun 14th 2022 (Updated Jun 22nd 2022)
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This article is part of our Summer reads series. Visit our collection to discover “The Economist reads” guides, guest essays and more seasonal distractions.
Speak of africa as a single entity, and many of its inhabitants will say testily that it is no such thing. Rightly so: lazy outsiders often lump together the 1.2bn people who live in Africa’s vast landmass, who speak perhaps 2,000 distinct languages and who are more culturally, politically and genetically diverse than people on any other continent. Doing justice to this richness could easily take a lifetime of reading, listening and watching. Do not despair, though, for all of life’s great passions start with but a first taste. Below is a selection of five books (and just a few songs) that serve as an introduction.
Half of a Yellow Sun. By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Knopf; 435 pages; $24.95. Fourth Estate; £18.99
Africa’s most populous country was neatly summed up in the decades before its independence in 1960 from British colonial rule by Obafemi Awolowo, a leading Nigerian politician of the era. “Nigeria,” he said, “is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression.” When European powers drew up maps dividing Africa between them, they arbitrarily paid no heed to those already living there. With a stroke of a pen they jammed together more than 250 ethnic groups and called them a country. Little wonder Nigeria often seems to be on the verge of flying apart. In 1967 it almost did when Igbos in the south-east tried to secede, sparking a brutal civil war. These days that conflict is largely forgotten by outsiders, but its legacy still shapes Nigeria. Chimamanda Adichie’s novel paints a vivid picture of a country pulled apart by the strain of ethnic and religious tensions, the first heady days of the creation of the breakaway state of Biafra and the brutal dehumanisation of the war and Biafra’s eventual submission. Our sister publication, 1843, wrote about spending time with (and shopping with) Ms Adichie.
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Zombi. By Fela Kuti.
While still immersed in Nigeria treat your ears to the sounds of Afrobeat, a mix of African rhythms, jazz, soul and funk. Its founder was Fela Kuti, who is remembered not just for his musical talent but also as an outspoken political activist whose protest songs against military rule inspired a generation. The album is named after its first song, which describes soldiers following the orders of dictators as “zombies”. It so infuriated the government that police invaded his compound in 1977, beating him badly and, reportedly, throwing his mother from a first-floor window. When he performed this album in Ghana, a riot broke out, leading to him being banned from re-entering the country. Read a review of a film about his life.
The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History. By Aida Edemariam. Harper; 314 pages; $26.99. Fourth Estate; £16.99
After exciting one sense with the sounds of Afrobeat, head over to Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous country, for a vivid evocation of the smell and taste of its spices and stews and the feel of eating injera, a deliciously spongy flatbread that does double duty as a spoon. Between such delights is the moving story of the life of the author’s grandmother that encapsulates much of Ethiopia’s history over the past century as she lived through a colonial conquest, liberation, the fall of an empire and rise of a brutal communist dictatorship. “Rather than cataloguing Ethiopia’s turbulent modern history,” we wrote in a review, the author “stitches together the fragmentary memories and experiences of a single woman.”
The Fate of Africa. By Martin Meredith. PublicAffairs; 768 pages; $23.99 and £12.99
To get a broader sense of the momentous change that swept through Africa as its states won freedom from their colonisers, turn to this majestic work. It offers a wide-angled view, taking in the most important events over roughly half a century. But it also delights the reader with glimpses into the lives and personalities of its leaders with memorable anecdotes, each of which is a nugget for the reader to casually slip into conversation at a dinner party. One, indeed, involves a dinner party. Martin Meredith recounts how Jean-Bédel Bokassa, the brutal and corrupt dictator who ruled the Central African Republic from 1965 and 1979, casually turned to a French politician at the end of a state banquet and said, “You never noticed, but you ate human flesh.”
Do Not Disturb. By Michela Wrong. PublicAffairs; 512 pages; $32. Fourth Estate; £20
Whereas Mr Meredith cast his eye over a whole continent, Michela Wrong zoomed in with laser focus: on Paul Kagame, who has called the shots in Rwanda since 1994. Many African and Western leaders have praised Mr Kagame for having built an efficient and functional state from the ashes of genocide, while quietly conceding that he is also a ruthless autocrat. It is the latter quality that Ms Wrong’s book examines in forensic detail, largely through an examination of how his regime has hounded and intimidated dissidents around the world. She centres her book on the life and death of Patrick Karegeya, a former head of Rwanda’s foreign intelligence service. Once one of Mr Kagame’s closest confidants, Karegeya fled Rwanda in 2007 and later spoke out against him, making himself a marked man. In 2013 he was strangled to death in a luxury hotel in Johannesburg, in a murder that Ms Wrong argues was linked to the Rwandan state. We reviewed her book here.
The Promise. By Damon Galgut. Europa Editions; 256 pages; $25. Chatto & Windus; £16.99
Any tour of African literature, however brief, must include a stop at the continent’s southern tip, which has produced two Nobel laureates in the field. “The Promise”, which last year won the Booker prize, Britain’s most prestigious literary award, is the wrenching story of a white South African family that steadily disintegrates in the years after the end of apartheid, or white rule. The moral decay of most members of the family reflects not just on the injustices of apartheid but also on the erosion of optimism in a country that became a beacon of hope on the continent when it achieved democracy against great odds. We reviewed it here. To avoid slumping into melancholy, this book is best read to the sounds of Hugh Masekela, a jazz trumpeter and songwriter, whose life we remembered in this obituary, and the songs of his frequent collaborator and (for a time) his wife, Miriam Makeba (whose obituary is here).
Our Africa editor argued, in a seven-chapter special report in 2020, that Africa is fast becoming too big and influential for the rest of the world to ignore.■
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Do you have your own recommendations? Send them to summer@economist.com with the subject line “Africa” and your name, city and country. We will publish a selection of reader suggestions.
