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

[BaleOfHay]

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

Typo - it's Alan Paton who wrote Cry the Beloved Country

Jock of the Bushveld - Sir Percy Fitzpatrick
I cried in maths class as i was reading on my lap in secret 😆and then had to explain myself!

Fiela’s Child - Dalene Mathee
and her other forest books. All originally in Afrikaans and I do think a bit has been lost in translation

Haven't read it for a long time but 'I dreamed of Africa' by Kuki Gallmann is definitely worth a read.

I can’t remember exactly when it’s set but Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight was a good read.

Yes. I suggested it just above you but hesitated. It's so beautifully written but problematic.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

The Flame Trees of Thika, Elspeth Huxley.

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

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.

Agree

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.

My Traitor's Heart. Rían Malan.

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.

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

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

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