Leopard at the Door by Jennifer McVeigh – Kenya
Circling the Sun by Paula McLain – KenyaHistorical novel set in 1950s HONG KONG
Ten Great Books set in EAST AFRICA
25th August 2025
Ten great books set in East Africa. East Africa is a region of stunning geographical and cultural diversity, serving as the cradle of humanity. Dominated by the Great Rift Valley, the landscape features iconic landmarks like Mount Kilimanjaro, the Serengeti plains, and Lake Victoria.
Economically, the region is a burgeoning hub, with nations like Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania driving growth through agriculture, technology, and tourism. It is world-renowned for its biodiversity and the ‘Great Migration,’ where millions of wildebeest traverse the plains. Beyond wildlife, East Africa is a tapestry of over hundreds of ethnic groups, united by languages like Swahili, fostering a rich heritage of music, art, and resilience.
Here are ten of our favourites books set in the area.
The Baobab Beach Retreat by Kate Frost –Tanzania
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 her aunt’s beach retreat, the last thing she wants is for her life to once again be complicated by men.
Yet when her past follows her to Tanzania, her time to heal is short-lived and a reckless decision shatters her hopes for a fresh start. An unexpected return to the UK reveals a long-hidden family secret that Connie has to deal with before she can decide the direction her life should take.
Getting over a broken heart was never going to be easy. Can Connie put the past to rest and find peace and love in a country far from home?
Leopard at the Door by Jennifer McVeigh – Kenya
Stepping off the boat in Mombasa, eighteen-year-old Rachel Fullsmith stands on Kenyan soil for the first time in six years. She has come home.
But when Rachel reaches the family farm at the end of the dusty Rift Valley Road, she finds so much has changed. Her beloved father has moved his new partner and her son into the family home. She hears menacing rumours of Mau Mau violence, and witnesses cruel reprisals by British soldiers. Even Michael, the handsome Kikuyu boy from her childhood, has started to look at her differently.
Isolated and conflicted, Rachel fears for her future. But when home is no longer a place of safety and belonging, where do you go, and who do you turn to?
Stranger, Visitor, Foreigner, Guest by Elizabeth Porter – Tanzania, Zanzibar
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 Bushiri war. Lucy, is a would-be missionary in East Africa in the early 19th century. Sasha is a young American water engineer in Tanzania today. He is making a life for himself and he has fallen in love with Grace.
As we listen to Lucy and Sasha telling their stories, it becomes clear that no action is ever without consequences, even a hundred years down the line.
No Picnic on Mount Kenya by Felice Benuzzi – Kenya
Felice Benuzzi recounts one of the most bizarre and daring prisoner-of-war and escape adventures of the past century. In 1943, Felice Benuzzi and two Italian compatriots escaped from a British POW camp in equatorial East Africa with only one goal in mind – to climb the dangerous seventeen-thousand-foot Mount Kenya. NO PICNIC ON MOUNT KENYA is the classic tale of this most bizarre and thrilling adventure, a story that has earned its place as a unique masterpiece of daring and suspense.
The Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden – Uganda
No, we’re not talking Bonnie Prince Charlie here. The title character of Giles Foden’s debut novel, The Last King of Scotland, is none other than Idi Amin, the former dictator of Uganda. Told from the viewpoint of Nicholas Garrigan, Amin’s personal physician, the novel chronicles the hell that was Uganda in the 1970s. Garrigan, the only son of a Scots Presbyterian minister, finds himself far away from Fossiemuir when he accepts a post with the Ministry of Health in Uganda. His arrival in Kampala coincides with the coup that leads to President Obote’s overthrow and Idi Amin Dada’s ascendancy to power. Garrigan spends only a few days in the capital city, however, before heading out to his assignment in the bush. But a freak traffic accident involving Amin’s sports car and a cow eventually brings the good doctor into the dictator’s orbit: a few months later, Garrigan is recalled from his rural hospital and named personal physician to the president. Soon enough, Garrigan finds himself caught between his duty to his patient and growing pressure from his own government to help them control Amin.
Then She was Born by Cristiano Gentili – Tanzania, Mwanza
2017 Award Winning B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree and Awesome Indies Seal of Excellence for Outstanding Independent Literature.
Then She Was Born is more than a novel. It’s an international human rights awareness campaign supported by eleven Nobel Peace Prize laureates, the Dalai Lama and Pope Francis. Based on an inconceivable reality for many in the world today, Then She Was Born combines the drama and redemption of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner with the spirituality of Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist.
A child is born and the joy of her parents turns to horror. The child is different, in a way that will bring bad luck to their superstitious community. The tradition should be for her to be abandoned, but Nkamba, the grandmother, is allowed to care for her.
Naming her Adimu, Nkamba raises her as her own. Adimu is constantly marginalized and shunned by the community, although her spirit remains undiminished and full of faith. But when she encounters the wealthy British mine owner Charles Fielding and his wife Sarah, it is the beginning of something which will test them all.
As Charles Fielding’s fortunes wane, he turns in desperation to a witch doctor whose suggestion leaves him horrified. But as events begin to spiral out of control he succumbs to the suggestions and a group of men are sent on a terrible mission. The final acts, of one man driven by greed and another by power, will have a devastating effect on many lives.
Cristiano Gentili’s glittering prose and vivid imagery will have you captivated from the first page.
Lost Empire by Clive Cussler – Tanzania
Scuba diving off the Tanzanian coast, husband-and-wife treasure-hunting team, Sam and Remi Fargo discover a huge ship’s bell, covered in cryptic carvings. But as they struggle to first recover the bell and then decode its clues, they find they are not alone in wanting to discover its secrets.
When news of the find is publicised, Mexican President Quauhtli Garza is forced to act. He knows that this bell comes from a former Confederate ship that sank off the African coast and he fears that the discovery of a missing piece of a Quetzalcoatl statuette, which was aboard the ship, will undermine his plans for Mexico’s future.
With Garza determined to stop the Fargo’s investigation at all costs, the couple are drawn into a deadly conspiracy that connects the 1883 Krakatoa explosion with an attempt to resurrect the fallen Aztec empire . . .
A Girl is a Body of Water by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi – Uganda
In her twelfth year, Kirabo, a young Ugandan girl, confronts a piercing question that has haunted her childhood: who is my mother? Kirabo has been raised by women in the small village of Nattetta—her grandmother, her best friend, and her many aunts, but the absence of her mother follows her like a shadow. Complicating these feelings of abandonment, as Kirabo comes of age she feels the emergence of a mysterious second self, a headstrong and confusing force inside her at odds with her sweet and obedient nature.
Seeking answers, Kirabo begins spending afternoons with Nsuuta, a local witch, trading stories and learning not only about this force inside her, but about the woman who birthed her, who she learns is alive but not ready to meet. Nsuuta also explains that Kirabo has a streak of the “first woman”—an independent, original state that has been all but lost to women.
Kirabo’s journey to reconcile her rebellious origins, alongside her desire to reconnect with her mother and to honor her family’s expectations, is rich in the folklore of Uganda and an arresting exploration of what it means to be a modern girl in a world that seems determined to silence women. Makumbi’s unforgettable novel is a sweeping testament to the true and lasting connections between history, tradition, family, friends, and the promise of a different future.
Blue Sunflower Startle by Yasmin Ladha – Tanzania
In the early 1960s, a young girl and her brother move to their grandparents’ flourmill in Dodoma in newly-independent Tanzania. Her grandfather bellows his love for East Africa, where he and other Indian merchants have thrived. But the ground is shifting. President Nyerere is calling for the widespread nationalization of property. The hum of the mill has quieted. The young girl prays at the jamatkhana (Give me back my father) and spends evenings at the cinema watching cowboy films, grief and grievances, if only momentarily, disappear.
Circling the Sun by Paula McLain – Kenya
As a young girl, Beryl Markham was brought to Kenya from Britain by parents dreaming of a new life. For her mother, the dream quickly turned sour, and she returned home; Beryl was brought up by her father, who switched between indulgence and heavy-handed authority, allowing her first to run wild on their farm, then incarcerating her in the classroom. The scourge of governesses and serial absconder from boarding school, by the age of sixteen Beryl had been catapulted into a disastrous marriage – but it was in facing up to this reality that she took charge of her own destiny.
Scandalizing high society with her errant behaviour, she left her husband and became the first woman ever to hold a professional racehorse trainer’s licence. After falling in with the notoriously hedonistic and gin-soaked Happy Valley set, Beryl soon became embroiled in a complex love triangle with the writer Karen Blixen and big game-hunter Denys Finch Hatton (immortalized in Blixen’s memoir Out of Africa). It was this unhappy affair which set tragedy in motion, while awakening Beryl to her truest self, and to her fate: to fly.
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