5 Great African Historical Novels for #ReadingAfricaWeek

This week, we’ll include listicles of other genres by African writers for #ReadingAfricaWeek 2024, but for the first listicle, we can’t help but tackle our classic understanding of the Great African Novel, which almost always tends to involve history—whether the continent is wracked by the slave trade or invaded by colonizers or uprising against colonizers and settlers, these novels are a re-litigation or reimagining of  our understanding of African history. African history was written by Europeans and told from a European point of view until an educated and determined class of Africans wrested the story from the hands of their colonizers and said, “Enough. We have agency, and we’re going to present the same story from our perspective.” Interesting to note that sometimes, as in the case of The History of Man, we re-learn history from the perspective of an African imagining and interpreting the colonizer’s point of view, turning expectations upside down.

Here’s our list of 5 Great African Historical Novels. Note that if we really went to town, this would be a list of the 100 Great African Novels but for the sake of time, we’re listing just five.

Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi. The year is 1750. As he makes his way to the capital to pledge allegiance to the new leader of the Buganda Kingdom, Kintu Kidda unleashes a curse that will plague his family for generations. As the centuries pass, the tale moves down the bloodline, exploring the lives of four of Kintu Kidda s descendants. Although the family members all have their own stories and live in very different circumstances, they are united by one thing the struggle to break free from the curse and escape the burden of their family s past. In an ambitious tale of a clan and a nation, Makumbi weaves together the stories of Kintu’s descendants as they seek to break from the burden of their shared past and reconcile the inheritance of tradition and the modern world that is their future. Buy here.

No list is complete without Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. A classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political and religious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. Buy here.

The History of Man by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu. Set in a southern African country that is never named, this powerful tale of human fallibility—told with empathy, generosity, and a light touch—is an excursion into the interiority of the colonizer. Emil Coetzee, a civil servant in his fifties, is washing blood off his hands when the ceasefire is announced. Like everyone else, he feels unmoored by the end of the conflict. War had given him his sense of purpose, his identity. But why has Emil's life turned out so different from his parents’, who spent cheery Friday evenings flapping and flailing the Charleston or dancing the foxtrot? What happened to the Emil who used to wade through the singing elephant grass of the savannah, losing himself in it? Buy here.

A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Set in the wake of the Mau Mau rebellion and on the cusp of Kenya's independence from Britain, A Grain of Wheat follows a group of villagers whose lives have been transformed by the 1952–1960 Emergency. At the center of it all is the reticent Mugo, the village's chosen hero and a man haunted by a terrible secret. As we learn of the villagers' tangled histories in a narrative interwoven with myth and peppered with allusions to real-life leaders, including Jomo Kenyatta, a masterly story unfolds in which compromises are forced, friendships are betrayed, and loves are tested. Buy here.

Ancestor Stones by Aminatta Forna

When a cousin offers Abie her family’s plantation in the West African village of Rofathane in Sierra Leone, she leaves her husband, children, and career in London to reclaim the home she left behind long ago. With the help of her four aunts—Asana, Mariama, Hawa, and Serah—Abie begins a journey to uncover the past of her family and her home country, buried among the neglected coffee plants. From rivalries between local chiefs and religious leaders to arranged marriages, manipulative unions, traditional desires, and modern advancements, Abie’s aunts weave a tale of a nation’s descent into chaos—and their own individual struggles to claim their destiny. Buy here.

--Jessica Powers, publisher Catalyst Press5 Great African Historical Novels