Books like Disruption — picked by fans

Vanessa Nakate is a Ugandan climate activist. The book title is a play on the story that catapulted her into the news. She was part of a youth climate change delegation to Davos that included Greta Thunberg and three other prominent young, white female activists. In their coverage, the Associated Press cut Vanessa from the photo.

Vanessa was outraged, and her video condemning the racist edit went viral. Africa generates the least carbon dioxide of all the continents, and it is most affected by climate change. In all subsequent photo shoots, the group placed Vanessa in the center so it couldn’t happen again.

This book is a personal story, an important African perspective on the crisis, and a good read. She ends the book with a "what can you do chapter." In her last paragraph, she says, "It doesn’t matter where you start or how; what matters is that you… show more.

I get bored when aliens always seem to land on the National Mall in Washington or hover over Los Angeles, so I was delighted to discover that at least one alien ship prefers to land in the lagoon off Lagos, Nigeria.

It’s a city as big or bigger than New York, after all. There is the challenge of dealing with very enigmatic visitors, but the time is the present and readers get a whirlwind tour of one of the world’s megacities. It’s like having the most highspeed guide you can imagine… who happens to be one of the most compelling SF writers today.

The title says it all: It does not have to be this way—we can build a better, more just and kinder world together, if…we learn to act on our dreams/visions in order to make this happen. But this path—as Capetonian author Alistair Mackay outlines, in a passionate and riveting exploration of fraught existences in an increasingly divided and desertified Southern Africa—will always come at personal cost. What price are we willing to pay for a better and more inclusive human future? What artificial ways of seeing (and consuming) do we need to resist to see and value each other as we all truly are? I loved this book as it is both darkly funny and tragic, yet never loses hope for a new and better world.

This book provides a detailed and trenchant analysis of how African novels have sought ways of reflecting and resisting the destruction wrought by colonial occupations and neo-colonial extractive capitalism. This analysis thoughtfully includes ‘nonhuman life’ and the need to ‘redefine our notion of personhood to include other beings that we do not normally ascribe to this (yet with whom our ecological history remains deeply entangled).’ Iheka also points out how Africa has ostensibly been demarcated as a ‘sacrifice zone’ by other major global powers (many of who benefited from the colonial enterprise) and how African fiction attempts to decentre narrative perceptions from the Global (and anthropomorphic) North. I enjoyed the subtle and inclusive approach of the author, who emphasised the porous nature of borders and the ethical need to reengage with what it means to be human as a way of finding our way out of a ‘slow apocalypse.’ 

Who Fears Death was a book assigned to me in a college course, and it was the most enjoyable piece of course work I ever had to read. Centered in post-apocalyptic Africa, Who Fears Death follows a biracial girl living in a segregated society that rejects “mixed blood.” I was endlessly cheering for the main character—Onyesonwu—and her stubborn pursuit of her own magical path. I pushed off reading most of my other coursework in order to finish this story and discover where Onye’s path would take her. Okorafor’s society-building was not only convincing, but also heartbreaking, and contained mirrors to present-day society. This book had me excited to do my homework, and is one I would recommend to anyone—in school or not.

Rich in interesting and juicy detail, this account of governance in Africa presents a chronicle, rather than an analysis, of what was, and still is, wrong with the continent. Kenyon tells the story of state and power differently, basing it on personalities and circumstances, rather than ages-long continuities. His personalities are the corrupt leaders of seven unhappy countries, who managed to amass enormous power and keep it for decades. With such personalities come passions, greed, and immeasurable cruelty to their compatriots, all presented in intimate detail, as the author saw it all – he was there. But the global context does not go away. None of his “heroes” could have turned into the monsters they became without the interaction with and support, even if indirect, of global actors who needed the resources which their countries possess, natural or human. 

Set in the fictitious West African country of Kinjanja, the hapless exploits of an ill-fated British High Commission delegate in the wrong place at the wrong time left me exhausted from laughing out loud so hard.

It’s a sliding-door adventure thriller about the comic yet tragic downfall of a good man trying to do his best in the face of unrelenting adversity. I read it while living in Nigeria (Kinjanja is a cross between Ghana and Nigeria) and found it to be the perfect fusion of exotic location and sense of place, combined with a headlong descent into mayhem and madness.

Wangari Maathai was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her environmental activism with the Women’s Green Belt Movement.

Africa perhaps has more humanitarian, environmental, and political challenges than any other continent. Many of these arise from its colonial history and this book eloquently and forcefully presents the way this has hindered African development.

It then calls on Africans to develop and implement their own solutions rather than to have them imposed by outsiders who don’t understand the context of the continent.

The Hand on my Scalpel was interesting and amusing to read. Dr. Thompson gave a first-hand account of his work in Africa as a surgeon. He is an excellent writer who was able to relate his life and challenges in Africa with vivid clarity and descriptions. I was able to envision each scene as if I were there. 

Africa has been a test-bed for China’s new foreign economic policy since the early 2000s. This is the seminal, and at the time definitive, treatment of Chinese engagement on the continent. Brautigam’s knowledge of Sino-African relations is unrivalled and her myth-busting approach makes for compelling and enlightening reading. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the nature of Sino-African relations.