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Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Seven Pillars of Wisdom
  • Author(s): T E Lawrence
  • Location(s): North Africa, Sahara
  • Genre(s): Autobiography/Memoirs
  • Era(s): Early 20th Century

As Angus Calder states in his introduction to this edition, ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom is one of the major statements about the fighting experience of the First World War’. Lawrence’s younger brothers, Frank and Will, had been killed on the...

Shame

Shame
  • Author(s): Melanie Flinn
  • Location(s): Africa, Switzerland
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): Modern

Shortlisted for 2015 Not the Booker Prize REDEMPTION IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY – or so Pilgrim Jones hopes as she looks up at a departures board and takes the first flight.   She is running away; from her failed...

Stranger, Visitor, Foreigner, Guest

Stranger, Visitor, Foreigner, Guest
  • Author(s): Elizabeth Porter
  • Location(s): Tanzania, Zanzibar
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): Early 19th Century /Late 20th Century

Stranger Visitor Foreigner Guest is the story of a collision of worlds and the ways in which westerners interact and impact on an extraordinary social and political arena. At the heart of the novel are the true events of the...

Thank You, Madagascar: The Conservation Diaries of Alison Jolly

Thank You, Madagascar: The Conservation Diaries of Alison Jolly
  • Author(s): Alison Jolly
  • Location(s): Madagascar
  • Genre(s): Autobiography/Memoirs
  • Era(s): Contemporary

Madagascar is one of the world’s natural jewels, with over ninety per cent of its wildlife found nowhere else on Earth. Few people knew it better than the pioneering primatologist and conservationist, Alison Jolly. Thank You, Madagascar is her...

The Baobab Beach Retreat

The Baobab Beach Retreat
  • Author(s): Kate Frost
  • Location(s): Tanzania, Cheltenham, Zanzibar
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Romance
  • Era(s): Contemporary

Tanzania. A place to be happy, to sleep uncovered with the sound of waves crashing to the shore. For Connie Stone, it’s a place to heal. When Connie leaves behind a cheating husband and heartache in the UK for...

The Book of Memory

The Book of Memory
  • Author(s): Petina Gappah
  • Location(s): Zimbabwe (Rhodesia)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): Contemporary

The story you have asked me to tell begins not with the ignominious ugliness of Lloyd’s death but on a long-ago day in April when the sun seared my blistered face and I was nine years old and my...

The Cartography of Others – Short Stories

The Cartography of Others – Short Stories
  • Author(s): Catherine McNamara
  • Location(s): Ghana, Hong Kong, Italy, London, Mali, Paris, Sydney
  • Genre(s): Short Stories
  • Era(s): Contemporary

A Japanese soprano sets sail for arid, haunted Corsica where she seeks her lost voice. A nude woman at the window of a Hong Kong hotel watches her lover dine in an adjacent building, but is her desire faltering?...

The Country of Others

The Country of Others
  • Author(s): Leila Slimani
  • Location(s): Morocco, Meknes
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1940s and 1950s

Alsace, 1944. Mathilde finds herself falling deeply in love with Amine Belhaj, a Moroccan soldier billeted in her town fighting for the French. After the Liberation, Mathilde leaves her country to follow her new husband to Morocco. But life...

The Drinker of Horizons

The Drinker of Horizons
  • Author(s): Mia Couto
  • Location(s): Mozambique
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): 1890s

Set against the backdrop of the war between the Kingdom of Gaza, one of the last great pre-colonial African kingdoms, and the Portuguese colonialists, a young African woman Imani and the Portuguese sergeant Germano de Melo have shared an...

The Fishermen

The Fishermen
  • Author(s): Chigozie Obioma
  • Location(s): Nigeria
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1990s

Man Book Shortlisted 2015 Told from the point of view of nine-year-old Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, The Fishermen is the Cain and Abel-esque story of an unforgettable childhood in 1990s Nigeria. When their father has to travel to a...

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