Blogs in December 2020

Songs in the Shade of the Cashew and Coconut Trees: Lullabies and Nursery Rhymes from West Africa and the Caribbean 5th December 2020

Songs about children playing in the schoolyard, sisters braiding each other’s hair at the beach, and parents dancing late into the night mesh together thanks to the music. A wide array of styles–nursery rhymes from Gabon, lullabies from Cape...

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Footprints of the Outsider 28th September 2020

This is the story of the life of Abudu Olwit, and of Teboke, the village where he is born and raised. In Teboke, two Indians build a cotton ginnery, and recruit workers from Sudan and the Congo to operate...

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The Roots of Heaven 26th June 2020

The Roots of Heaven takes as its subject the deliberate and relentless hunting and killing of elephants for their ivory. Morel, a former dentist whose survival in a Nazi concentration camp he attributes to his fixation on the freedom...

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The Overloaded Ark 26th June 2020

Gerald Durrell, director and owner of Jersey Zoo, was internationally famous for his amusing books about collecting wild animals. The Overloaded Ark, his first, remains his funniest book. It describes an expedition to the remote territory of the Cameroons...

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By Night The Mountain Burns 17th June 2020

By Night The Mountain Burns recounts the narrator’s childhood on a remote island off the West African coast, living with his mysterious grandfather, several mothers and no fathers. We learn of a dark chapter in the island’s history: a...

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