In our regular Book Digest segment, we bring books from some guests of the forthcoming Macondo Literary Festival. We focus on books from Chigozie Obioma, Johary Ravaloson, Hamza Koudri, and Shubnum Khan.
The Road to the Country by Chigozie Obioma
Publisher: Hogarth
Date: June 4, 2024
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Penguin Random House
Chigozie Obioma
Chigozie Obioma was born in Akure, Nigeria. His two previous novels, The Fishermen and An Orchestra of Minorities, were both finalist for the Booker Prize. His novels have won the inaugural FT/OppenheimerFunds Emerging Voices Award for Fiction, the NAACP Image Award, and the Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction and have been nominated for many others. Together, they have been translated into thirty languages. He was named one of Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers. He is a professor of creative writing at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and divides his time between the United States and Nigeria.
The Road to the Country
The first images of the vision are grainy—like something seen through wet glass. But slowly it clears, and there appears the figure of a man.
Set in Nigeria in the late 1960s, The Road to the Country is the epic story of a shy, bookish student haunted by long-held guilt who must go to war to free himself. When his younger brother disappears as the country explodes in civil war, Kunle must set out on an impossible rescue mission. Kunle’s search for his brother becomes a journey of atonement that will see him conscripted into the breakaway Biafran army and forced to fight a war he hardly understands, all while navigating the prophecies of a local Seer, he who marks Kunle as an abami eda—one who will die and return to life.
The story of a young man seeking redemption in a country on fire, Chigozie Obioma’s novel is an odyssey of brotherhood, love, and unimaginable courage set during one of the most devastating conflicts in the history of Africa. Intertwining myth and realism into a thrilling, inspired, and emotionally powerful novel, The Road to the Country is the masterpiece of Chigozie Obioma, a writer Salman Rushdie calls “a major voice” in literature.
Sand and Roses by Hamza Koudri
Publisher: Holland House Books
Date: November 1, 2023
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Nuria, Amazon, Masobe
Hamza Koudri
Hamza Koudri holds an MA in English Literature and Civilization and has been working in education and international development since 2008. He is currently serving as the Country Director with the British Council in Algeria. Research for his debut novel Sand Roses (2023) took the better part of a decade, seeking traces of a muted past between the folds of visual documentation and oral histories. In 2022, Sand Roses was shortlisted for the Island Prize for unpublished African authors.
Sand and Roses
It is 1931 when two sisters arrive in Bousaada bursting with dreams of becoming successful dancers. But the city, occupied by the ruthless French colonial army, changes their lives forever. When they kill a soldier in self-defense, Fahima and Salima must outsmart the French Colonel who will stop at nothing to uncover the truth. The sisters are driven further into a cycle of violence with every attempt to hide their crime. Risking their lives and the lives of their loved ones, the dancers find themselves at the heart of a civilizational clash.
The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil by Shubnum Khan
Publisher: Pan Macmillan South Africa
Date: January 1, 2024
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Pan Macmillan South Africa;
Shubnum Khan
Shubnum Khan is a South African author and artist. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Sunday Times, Marie Claire and others. Her first novel, Onion Tears (2011) was shortlisted for the Penguin Prize for African Writing and the University of Johannesburg Debut Fiction Prize. Her essay collection, How I Accidentally Became a Stock Photo was published in South Africa and India with Pan Macmillan in 2021.
The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil
Sana and Meena will never meet. The two women share little beyond Akbar Manzil, the sprawling mansion they call home. When Meena fell in love with the owner of the house, it was the grandest residence on South Africa’s east coast near Durban. Eight decades later when Sana and her father move to the house, the latest of Akbar Manzil’s long list of tenants, it is in near-ruins, crumbling, shabby and dark. This is a place where people come to forget. Or to be forgotten.
Full of questions about her new home, Sana is drawn to the deserted east wing, home to a clutter of broken and abandoned objects – and to the locked door at its end, unopened for decades. Soon, Sana begins to discover the tangled, troubling history of the house, awakening the memories of the house itself and dredging up old and terrible secrets that will change the lives of everyone – living and dead – at Akbar Manzil.
Sublime, heart-wrenching and lyrically stunning, The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil is a haunting, a love story and a mystery, all twined beautifully into one young girl’s search for belonging.
Amour, Patrie et Soupe de Crabes by Johary Ravaloson
Publisher: Dodo Caen
Date: March 29, 2019
Genre: Fiction
Language: French
Where to find it: Amazon
Johary Ravaloson
Born in Antananarivo, Madagascar, Johary Ravaloson is an author and publisher living in Normandy. Return to the Enchanted Island, his first novel to be translated into English, won the Prix du roman de l’Océan Indien. In 2006 he founded Dodo Vole Publishing with his wife, contemporary artist Sophie Bazin, starting a new trend of in-country publishing in Madagascar and Réunion. Ravaloson is also the recipient of the 2016 Prix du livre insulaire and the 2017 Prix Ivoire for Francophone African Literature for his novel Vol à vif.
Amour, Patrie et Soupe de Crabes (English: Love, Homeland and Crab Soup)
Antananarivo. I wanted to talk about a place without which my city would have been nothing more than an agglomeration irrigated by commerce without real exchange, inhabited by women and men who do not live together. The Place du 13-Mai made me hope for even more: a meaning to all this, a feeling of belonging to the future, because common ancestors are not enough to live together.
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