Books like The Spiral House — picked by fans

One of the best examples of “history from below” I’ve read.

It tells the well-known story of David Livingstone’s last journey–how after he died in tropical Africa, his servants marched his body across the continent to the port of Dar es Salaam, so that it could be shipped back to England and buried there with appropriate pomp and reverence. This forms the framework for an utterly original novel that presents this epic trek from the perspective of two of Livingstone’s slave servants: his feisty Muslim cook, Halima, who brings her gossipy sardonic perspective to the enterprise, and his devout and pompous body servant Joseph, a Christian determined to do right by his master.

This work sparkles with energy and humor, as well as presenting a fresh perspective on a well-trodden path.

I’m in awe of this author’s trilogy of award-winning novels about Zimbabwe’s colonial history. Haunting and hypnotic, they blend magical realism, epic history, and social satire. Although they form a series with some recurring characters, all are standalone reads.

Her first, The Theory of Flight, won South Africa’s biggest literary award. The second, recommended here, is a sustained act of grace in which the author climbs into the skin of an alpha white male Rhodesian, Emil Coetzee, whose ambitions lead to his running the doomed colony’s sinister secret police. It humanizes him without excusing him in an imaginative tour de force that asks a burning question: why do we sometimes choose evil?

If you love this book (you will), Ndlovu’s third novel, The Quality of Mercy, brings the series to a redemptive close.

Few know that thousands of villagers from India were shipped to various colonies as indentured laborers after slavery ended in Britain’s territories.

Lured by promises of rich earnings they could send home, they replaced slaves and worked in similar conditions of hardship. In South Africa’s Colony of Natal, Indian indentured laborers did backbreaking work on sugar plantations, and their stories have seldom been told. In particular, no one has revealed the hidden stories of women plantation workers. In this heartbreaking yet lyrical novel, Joanne Joseph (tracing her own grandmother’s history) breaks the mold with her story of Shanti, who runs away from an arranged marriage and finds herself apparently powerless in a foreign land. How she indeed exercises her will, forges friendships, and finds love and peace makes for a riveting story.

This is the novel that brought South Africa’s Lauren Beukes international plaudits, and which was serialised for Apple TV. 

But she writes speculative fiction, and this has an especially zany hook–a time-travelling serial killer–so why is this a historical novel? Beukes did deep research into several key periods in US history, bringing the “shining girls” of those eras alive in ways that are breathtakingly imaginative and entertaining.

In particular, her accounts of the black women who worked in shipyards during World War 2–and the middle-class women who operated “underground railways” for abortion in the 1960s–are heartbreakingly relevant in current times. Beukes explicitly states that she wanted women–so often the passive corpses or suffering victims in crime fiction–and their histories to be front and center of this novel.

It's not an easy read, but I read this one and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road back-to-back. These are two books about lost souls walking away from something, not knowing where they’re going.

Michael K is another character who invokes more sympathy/pity than admiration. Sometimes, I didn’t overly care about Michael K’s suffering, feeling he’d brought it on himself. Mostly, though, I wanted him to find his simple peace.

JM Coetzee is such a good writer. His sparse but full sentences always deliver something.

As an indie author myself, I am committed to supporting other independent authors and Mark Fine is one of the best. Fine has created an epic love story set against the backdrop of South Africa’s apartheid in the 1970s. When a beautiful white model falls in love with a black man, they become prey in a deadly manhunt that stretches from the golden city of Johannesburg to the dangerous wilds of the African bushveld. The author’s compelling characters and vivid descriptions shine a light on the effects of tribalism and social injustice during a dark period in this nation’s history. This story will keep you riveted until the last page is turned.

Phiona once told me that she grew up in Katwe believing that everyone in the world lived in the same desperate circumstances that she did and that if you’re born in Katwe, you are expected to die there. Mathabane was similarly anchored to his poverty-ravaged township of Alexandra outside of Johannesburg. “Kaffir” is an ugly ethnic slur common during Apartheid-era South Africa, a term that the author battled to overcome every day while surviving an environment plagued by gang violence. Mathabane’s salvation was his education (and, similar to Phiona, success in an unlikely sport), which eventually led him to attend college in the U.S., just like Beah, Kamkwamba, and Mutesi.

First published in 1948, this book will forever occupy a special place in my heart.

Not only is the book partially set in the very countryside where I was raised in South Africa, but it was also responsible for awakening my young conscience to the harsh realities of what many South Africans endured leading up to and during the apartheid years.

I was forever moved by the story and characters, and discovered the power of fiction by reading it.

This is a heart-warming true story of the courage of one woman you have probably never heard of but you need to. A woman of great courage and integrity who took on the South African apartheid regime and for a while as a liberal was the only opposition member (and I think the only woman) in the racist all-white parliament. Some are naturally courageous, some have courage thrust upon them. Nelson Mandela and the ANC took on the racist regime from outside, Helen Suzman almost single-handedly took it on from within parliament. A real hero.

A brilliant, challenging collection of the writings of the great anti-apartheid activist, who stressed the importance of freeing minds as well as bodies. "Inspirational" is an overused word, but it absolutely fits a work this wise, heartfelt, and urgent.

Biko's friendship with the journalist Donald Woods—immortalised in the film Cry, Freedom—is a testament to the power of the pen, and "I Write What I Like" is Biko at his finest, in his own words.