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Original poster

Can you recommend books set in colonial era Africa, prefereably South Africa?

56 replies

BaleOfHay · 16/05/2024 12:22

Looking for recommendations. Something absorbing and rich in historical/local detail please.

OP posts:
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sorrynotathome · 18/05/2024 08:39

Laurens van der Post?

VladimirVsVolodymyr · 18/05/2024 08:37

@Roseau18 thanks for the correction, I always get that mixed up.

OffficerChurlish · 17/05/2024 01:00

The Apricot Tree by Rae Norridge. Fiction. The story line is a little bit melodramatic (one character, Hannah, seems to have maximum drama AND maximum luck throughout the book), but the scope and detail is terrific. It focuses on a mixed Afrikaner-English family living on a farm in the Transvaal during the Boer War (action takes place around 1897 - 1903), with the main family group fighting/working on the side of the Boers but one daughter (Hannah) married to a British officer in Cape Town and assumed to be loyal to the British side. A lot of detail both on landscape and culture and on the history and the politics of the day, without getting too bogged down. The author is South African.

stillcovidhere · 17/05/2024 00:23

I loved The Africa House by Christina Lamb. Wonder if it's still in print? Non fiction but utterly absorbing.

TheCatJumps · 17/05/2024 00:03

AlwaysFreezing · 16/05/2024 18:42

Do you want African written fiction? Or just the setting?

I have soft spot for Buchi Emecheta.

And some of the slave narratives too, like Oludah Equiano.

Yy to the Heinemann AWS. Lots to choose from.

Equiano’s story is extraordinary, but from memory, very little of it is set in any part of Africa? OP, another South African novel I like is Imraan Coovadia’s Tales of the Metric System.

RumNotRun · 16/05/2024 21:54

I recently read The Last Horseman by David Gilman which is set in the Boer War. It was a bit hard going at first but i was disappointed when it ended as I had got really into it.

Roseau18 · 16/05/2024 21:44

VladimirVsVolodymyr · 16/05/2024 20:49

"To Sir, With Love"by Nadine Gordimer is one of the first books that I read as a child.

Show quote history

That's not by Nadine Gordimer and nor is it set in South Africa. It's by Braithwaite.

Dougt · 16/05/2024 20:57

Do try The Poisonwood Bible. I haven’t got on with a few of her books, but this is one of my absolute favourites.

VladimirVsVolodymyr · 16/05/2024 20:49

heldinadream · 16/05/2024 12:44

Lots of Doris Lessing. Nadine Gordimer. Can't come up with titles right now but those are the obvious ones for me.

"To Sir, With Love"by Nadine Gordimer is one of the first books that I read as a child.

BathTangle · 16/05/2024 20:17

Porridgeislife · 16/05/2024 19:10

The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay. Quite an old book now but a really good read. Set in 1930s South Africa.

Yes, this! And the sequel which I think is called Thandia.

Porridgeislife · 16/05/2024 19:10

The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay. Quite an old book now but a really good read. Set in 1930s South Africa.

ConstitutionHill · 16/05/2024 18:55

My Traitor's Heart. Rían Malan.

AlwaysFreezing · 16/05/2024 18:42

Do you want African written fiction? Or just the setting?

I have soft spot for Buchi Emecheta.

And some of the slave narratives too, like Oludah Equiano.

Yy to the Heinemann AWS. Lots to choose from.

PrincessOfPreschool · 16/05/2024 18:19

Lisbeth50 · 16/05/2024 12:41

The Poisonwood Bible

Agree

Evenmoretired44 · 16/05/2024 18:18

Mafeking Road by Herman Charles Bosman. Set in the lowveld around the time of the Boer War. Problematic language but vivid, some great satire and moving in parts.

a diary of Iris Vaughn - written by a child living in Victorian Cape. I remember it being funny.

BathTangle · 16/05/2024 18:12

The Africa House by Christina Lamb. Biography of an English gentleman who built a house in Zambia (Northern Rhodesia).

commonground · 16/05/2024 18:09

The Flame Trees of Thika, Elspeth Huxley.

frippit · 16/05/2024 17:58

Also 'The city of gold' by Francis Brett Young.

frippit · 16/05/2024 17:55

Francis Brett Young, 'They seek a country'.
I also found Alan Patons book 'Cry the beloved Country' very moving but it covers the apartheid era.

Almahart · 16/05/2024 17:48

Just remembered another - Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)

Almahart · 16/05/2024 17:47

The first volume of Doris Lessing's autobiography is fascinating on rural Rhodesia.

King Leopold's Ghost, by Adam Hochschild is one of the most shocking and also gripping books I have ever read. It's about the Belgians in the Congo.

To pp who couldn't get on with White Mischief, I literally gave up on it last week. Endless descriptions of women called Baby with cheetahs round their neck, I never actually found out what happened.

Xiaoxiong · 16/05/2024 17:22

Non-fiction is also interesting - Tales from the Dark Continent by Charles Allen is a collection of oral histories and interviews of people who were part of the colonial apparatus in Africa. It's absolutely fascinating and shows what people were thinking at the time, including attitudes that were racist as well as those who were fully aware of the problems that colonialism was causing.

It's the second of a trilogy that addresses British colonial history in South Asia, Africa and finally South East Asia and fully represents the complex intentions and results of colonisation and then independence across the British Empire.

FraterculaArctica · 16/05/2024 17:14

Red Strangers by Elspeth Huxley - about the arrival of the British in Kenya

JaninaDuszejko · 16/05/2024 17:01

The Big Jubilee Read has a lot of good suggestions from different Commonwealth countries. The
Heinemann African Writers Series might be another place to look for ideas.

Otherwise:
Tsitsi Dangarembga's trilogy starting with Nervous Conditions about the end of colonial era Zimbabwe
Segu by Maryse Condé
The Country of Others by Leïla Slimani about Morocco at the end of the colonial period

Big Jubilee Read - Wikipedia

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Jubilee_Read

Mishmashs · 16/05/2024 14:25

Mister Johnson about colonial era Nigeria. It’s tragic. I haven’t read it for 20 years so not sure how it is viewed today.