Mirrors and Windows into East Africa: Five Must-Read Books

For #ReadingAfrica 2026, we’ve invited several writers to share guest posts featuring their “5 Must-Reads” from a specific region of Africa. Feel free to join us over on social media for the weeklong celebration of African writing in all its forms. By Donica Merhazion

I hope I meet you here, dear reader, on a perfect day for reading, when you are in between books and your TBR is in need of some good additions. Welcome! 

Choosing five books to recommend to you from the hundreds I’ve read is no easy task. So, before sharing my selections, I should tell you a little bit about the lens through which I chose them.

The lens I used is shaped by reflecting on the myriad life experiences of a multicultural adult navigating life as an immigrant, a mother, a student, an educator, a friend, a daughter… You get the point. 

These five stories enter worlds that grapple with displacement, cruelty, love, and the yearning to be loved; power—the absolute kind and the absence of it. The stories here embody courage in the face of difficult choices, successes, failures, and the desperation that comes with the need to survive. 

Before sharing my recommendations, I’d also love to share a 6th much shorter read, one that fundamentally changed how  I think about books and the worlds they open to us.

In 1990, Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, often called the mother of multicultural children’s literature, wrote an essay titled "Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass Doors."  It remains one of my favorite pieces of writing as an educator.

Bishop describes how stories can be mirrors that reflect our identities and experiences, windows that allow us to see into worlds different from our own, and sliding glass doors that invite us to step into those worlds through imagination. Her essay helped me understand something I hadn’t fully considered during my early years of voracious reading—the importance of seeing ourselves in stories but also the extraordinary possibilities that open when we encounter lives unlike our own.

I encourage you to read that paper, and I hope you enjoy diving into my picks for you below. These five books have offered me mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors at different moments in my life. I hope they do the same for you; may these stories continue to travel far and wide!

Title: The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears

Author: Dinaw Mengistu Publisher: Riverhead Books Buy here.

This story follows the life of Sepha Stephanos, an Ethiopian who, displaced by the Red Terror in Ethiopia, restarts life in Washington DC, running a grocery store. Keeping a business going is hard, but he is up for meeting the challenges of the daily grind. As someone who grew up in a communal culture where everyone is with and for everyone, living in relative isolation after deep trauma is one more unexpected life hurdle. 

One would think that safety after a time of extreme conflict is all one needs in life, but the loneliness that permeates each day feels suffocating. Hope walks in the door in the form of new neighbors: a mother and her daughter. Just as it seems he may have made the connection he didn’t realize he needed, priorities shift, and he finds himself stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place, holding the short end of the stick. 

As you read this novel, you will be challenged to re-examine what we consider beautiful as we see the world through the life of one displaced from the familiar and find that looking for beauty wherever he can is a necessity.

Title: Beneath the Lion’s Gaze Author: Maaza Mengiste Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Buy here.

I read this book before Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, and it was the first novel I ever read that told stories of the underbelly of the Red Terror. It puts us right in the room with Emperor Haile Selassie as his world caves in; his disbelief as he realizes that he is losing his grip on power is palpable. Hunger reigns supreme and refuses to be ignored, driving people to the streets in protest and paving the way for the Red Terror that is to come years later.

It’s hard not to get emotionally invested in the family we follow in Addis Ababa, who, when we are introduced to them, lead relatively normal lives: a doctor tending to an unwell wife, educated adult children, and an adopted cousin. It isn’t long before they are swept up by atrocities that go beyond their (and the readers') understanding and tear them apart. There is a lot of history to learn here, through the eyes of characters who lived it. Be ready to have your eyes opened to the extremes of human nature and how ordinary moments can change the trajectory of lives so dramatically that we can't help but understand the meaning of "the point of no return."

Title: The Havoc of Choice

Author: Wanjiru Koinange Publisher: Jacaranda Buy here.

Set in Kenya during a tumultuous post-election period, experience what that was like through the eyes of one family. Kavata is Ngugi's wife and hopes never to be anywhere near the sordid political family life she grew up with under her power-hungry father, Muli.

Kavata is pulled back into the political world she has tried to escape when Muli convinces Ngugi to run for office. What follows is a chain of decisions driven by ambition, greed, anger, and self-preservation, each unleashing consequences far beyond those who made them. Koinange shows us how quickly life can unravel, and how the choices of a powerful few can devastate the lives of many who had no say in them. Even seemingly insignificant decisions can shape the lives of future generations, whether or not they ever learn what set those events in motion.

Though the story plot pulls you from one moment to the next, this is by no means an easy read. There is death, there is violence, there are the things people do for money and power that are beyond understanding, and finally, there are so many of us who don’t have a choice but to bear the consequences.

Title: I Hope You Find What You Are Looking For

Author: Bsrat Mezghebe Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation Buy here.

Set in Washington, D.C., some thirty-five years after Eritrea's war for independence, Bsrat Mezghebe's novel draws us into the lives of three Eritrean women: Elsa, a former liberation fighter; Zewdi, her vivacious neighbor; and Lydia, Elsa's teenage daughter.

The women have pieced together lives in the D.C. metropolitan area, finding ways to navigate the complexities of their adopted home. But the fragile stability they have built begins to unravel when Lydia starts asking questions about her father's identity and whereabouts.

From the outset, Elsa, a former fighter turned immigrant, carries a painful secret. Her persistent silence about Lydia's father only deepens her daughter's determination to uncover the truth, widening the emotional distance between them. What begins as a daughter's search for answers gradually exposes the weight of a past that refuses to remain buried. What draws one into the story is the immersion into the aftermath of what happens to women like Elsa when the fighting has long ended. All the women in this story have different relationships with their Eritrean identity, duty, sacrifice and what it means to have freedom.

Title: Salt in the Snow Author: Sahra Noor Publisher: Catalyst Press Buy here.

This story takes us into the complicated love between a daughter and a father. We are immersed in the warmth of family life in Mogadishu and follow the tumultuous journey to Minneapolis after war breaks out. We walk alongside Sahra as she learns to build a new life after war displaces her.

This memoir is much more than the story of a refugee's journey. It is about a daughter coming to understand the father she loves deeply, even as she struggles to free herself from the expectations he has placed on her. As she navigates marriage, motherhood, education, and the challenges of finding belonging in a new country, we see that the courage it takes to survive is not always the same as the courage it takes to choose a life of your own.

What stays with me most deeply is the complicated relationship between father and daughter, and the ways community and traditional expectations can shape that bond. Noor invites us to consider whether forgiveness means making peace with the choices of those we love, even when those choices have caused us pain. Perhaps understanding the circumstances that shaped them is where forgiveness begins.