Books like Dear Exile — picked by fans

This is a wonderful memoir about teaching English in a school in a small town on the banks of the Yangtze River in Sichuan. Hessler was the first foreigner to live in the town for several decades, and I loved reading about how he learned more about himself from his students and his own understanding of what it is like to be immersed in a completely new cultural environment.

Many Peace Corps memoirs have been penned, but this account of the author’s experience living and working with a midwife in a remote village in Mali is my favorite because it captures in moving, page-turning prose the depth of the bond that develops between the author and her local counterpart, Monique.

I loved how the story immersed me in the local culture, gender relations, and medical reality as Monique fought, with determination and good humor, to save lives and provide hope to vulnerable women. It is also a story, as it is for many Peace Corps volunteers and was for me, of growing up and broadening horizons during a formative time.       

Truly a “two for the price of one” read! This tale begins in the early days of the Peace Corps, where newlyweds Laurie and Rich are assigned volunteer posts in Niger (pronounced nee-zher), Laurie as a public health worker, and Rich on an agricultural assignment at a peanut cooperative. Packed with lively prose and riveting tales of close calls, humorous misunderstandings, finding one’s feet, discovering meaning in the midst of suffering, and the bewildering feeling of displacement upon arriving back in the States, the first half of the story encompasses all the earmarks of a “classic” Peace Corps experience.

After 30 years, Laurie—now remarried, mother of grown children, and retired from an active career in liberal politics—travels back to Niger to reconnect with loved ones. Despite the chafing between this American woman’s independent spirit and the restrictive patriarchal Muslim society, along with the inevitable modernization of the humble agrarian… show more.

Breathtaking in its honesty and poetic style, this is the Peace Corps memoir “hidden gem” you’ll be glad you’ve unearthed! Eleanor and her husband are newlyweds sent to the remote Portuguese-based Creole-speaking islands of Cape Verde. Not long after arriving, Eleanor develops an eating disorder that drains the vitality of her body, her mind, her work, and her marriage. The narrative nimbly weaves poetic imagery, keen observation, personal stories, history, and geography lessons together into a fascinating literary tapestry. This is a story about fidelity, the search for meaning, the frailty of the human condition, suffering, perseverance, and redemption; in short: a survivor’s story.

The story of environmental activist Wangari Maathai has been told many times, including in several children’s books. I chose this book not only for its spectacular scratchboard illustrations of the Kenyan countryside but also because of its thoughtful attention to Maathai’s passion for science and her path-breaking journey as an African woman scientist. Having overcome gender barriers in the pursuit of her education, Maathai went on to become the kind of scientist who stands up against injustice and for the land and its people.

Her mobilization of village women to plant trees all across Kenya, along with her bold political activism for freedom and democracy, won her the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. This book’s depiction of a scientist who moves between villages and university laboratories, valuing the work of rural people as much as that of city elites, reminded me of the ideal I tried to convey in Moth… show more.

It isn’t just African politics that is different. Economics is too. If modern economics had been invented by an African, instead of Adam Smith, it would look very different. Wealth would be measured in people rather than material objects, property, and capital. There would be much less emphasis on markets. Some things, should never be sold, and if they were it would create “bitter money” and bad luck. This book is a great place to start to re-think your ideas about economics.

Feel the force of fifty children’s voices and celebrate how art and story-telling unite young people who live continents apart. At age seven, I discovered libraries and a love of reading and writing, but the idea that a working-class girl from Luton could become an author was as crazy as eating the straw boater with which my birthplace was associated.

Middle-class parents can afford to buy books for their children. Lack of access to books for children without them is a handicap for upward mobility. That is why the Nasio Trust wants to build the first community library in West Kenya, and Cosmic Cats will be the first book in the library to show the children that they belong there. In our imaginations, we are all equal. BBC South recorded the launch, bringing together the two schools.

Ben Rawlence’s City of Thorns makes the list because of his ability to weave a powerful narrative around the day-to-day lives of refugees living in camps. Far too often our knowledge of refugees is limited to numbers—the number of people who die crossing the Mediterranean, the number living in a camp, or the amount of dollars required to ease the suffering. This book is an antidote to the numbers. Rawlence introduces us to the hopes and challenges of nine residents of what was then the world’s largest refugee camp, Dadaab, Kenya. Unfortunately for the nine, Rawlence’s book covers a period when famine and terrorism hit the Horn of Africa adding another dimension to understanding the plight of the most vulnerable caught up in the vagaries of war.

Written and photographed by three of Britain’s leading wildlife personalities, The Marsh Lions remains a seminal text when it comes to lions. Scott’s and Jackman’s unrivalled knowledge of what is perhaps Africa’s most famous lion pride (which was immortalised in Big Cat Diary, hosted by Jonathan Scott) shines through in the writing, which is patient wildlife storytelling at its best. 

This is the kind of book that all British historians should be trying to write: an honest, factual, detailed account of what British officials actually did in the service of the Empire. There is no scope for imperial nostalgia over this horrifying story of the brutal violence employed by Britain in the 1950s in an effort to hang onto its colony of Kenya in the face of the Mau Mau Rebellion. With concentration camps, collective punishments, and multiple judicial murders, British methods were among the worst. The ideal Christmas present for any Empire supporters among your friends & family.