BOOK CLUB April 2026 Selection

This month we will be discussing Beyond the Door of No Return by David Diop, translated from the French by Sam Taylor.

Diop has received numerous prizes for his work, including the Prix Goncourt in France and the International Booker Prize in the UK. Beyond the Door of No Return is the story of a French botanist in the latter half of the 18th century who travels to Senegal to study plants and finds himself overwhelmed by love for an African woman.

BOOK CLUB February 2026 Selection

Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom brilliantly re-creates the drama of the experiences that helped shape Nelson Mandela’s destiny. It is emotive, compelling, and uplifting– the exhilarating story of an epic life; a story of hardship. resilience and ultimate triumph told with the clarity and eloquence of a born leader.

An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma will be our first book of the new year.

A heartbreaking story about a Nigerian poultry farmer who sacrifices everything to win the woman he loves. Here is a link to a review from The Guardian guardian.com/books/2019/jan/15/an-orchestra-of-minorities-chigozie-obioma-review 

A Girl is a Body of Water by Jennifer Nanasubuga Makumbi, is a coming-of-age story set in 1970s Uganda.

Here is a link to a very positive review of the book from the New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/01/books/review/a-girl-is-a-body-of-water-jennifer-nansubuga-makumbi.html

The Missing American by Kwei Quartey is a detective novel that takes place in Ghana and features a young woman detective.

The book was shortlisted for the Edgar Allen Poe First Novel award In 2020. We previously read Wife of the Gods by the same author and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Africa Book Club  meets every six weeks to discuss a book about Africa. We read both fiction and non-fiction, primarily books by modern African writers (although we have also read some classics and some books by people who spent time in Africa).

New members are always welcome. For more information, contact us at message@ujamaagrandmas.com

Americanah, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, is written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, a wonderful writer whose novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, we enjoyed a couple of years ago.

This is a modern classic about star-crossed lovers that explores questions of race and being Black in America—and the search for what it means to call a place home.

We are in the process of settling on an August date that works best for all, so please contact  message@ujamaagrandmas.com Attn: Africa Book Club if you are interested in attending or would like more information on the book club.

The Inheritors: An Intimate Portrait of South Africa’s Racial Reckoning by Eve Fairbanks is a non-fiction book (we alternate fiction a non-fiction) and winner of the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction.

A dozen years in the making, The Inheritors weaves together the stories of three ordinary South Africans over five tumultuous decades in a sweeping and exquisite look at what really happens when a country resolves to end white supremacy.

We chose this book because our discussion last month of the classic novel, Cry the Beloved Country made us wonder what South Africa is like almost seventy years later.

BOOK CLUB March 2025 Selection

The Color Bar by Susan Williams tells the fascinating story of Seretse Khama, born into a royal family in what was then Bechuanaland, a British protectorate. He attended university in the UK and fell in love with and married a British woman, but when the time came for them to return to Africa, the South African government pressured the British government to prevent him from returning to his home. It was only several years later that the couple were allowed to return. Khama eventually became Prime Minister and later President of what became the independent country of Botswana. 

BOOK CLUB February 2025 Selection

Ghost Season by Fatin Abbas from Sudan, is a sweeping history of the breakup of Sudan and takes you to Saraaya, a fictional town rich with crude oil, located at the border of Sudan and South Sudan.

Abbas was born in Khartoum where she experienced the upheaval of the 1989 coup that forced her family to move to New York City. But, her ties to Sudan remained strong, and she drew from these experiences, particularly her time in the town of Abyei, in crafting the world of Saraaya, a place of quiet mystery and tension. into the lives of  five strangers in an NGO compound on the border between Sudan and South Sudan.

This novel  is a “gripping, vivid debut that announces Abbas as a powerful new voice in fiction”.

BOOK CLUB January 2025 Selection

BOOK CLUB November 2024 Selection

The History of a Difficult Child by Mihret Sibhat is a novel about a young girl growing up during turbulent times in a small town in Ethiopia in the 1980s. The narrator is ten years old by the end of the story and  according to one reviewer, is “a magnificent guide to this ancient and enduring culture.” (New York Review of Books).

Our club welcomes new members. We meet approximately every six weeks and generally alternate between fiction and non-fiction books written about Africa, primarily although not exclusively by African authors.

For more information or to join us, write tomessage@ujamaagrandmas.com and we will  get back to you.

Born a Crime: Stories of a South African Childhood, by Trevor Noah is a memoir of growing up as a mixed-race person in South Africa.

Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.This promises to be an enlightening read that is also very funny.

BOOK CLUB July  2024 Selection

This month our  book is Tea, Scones and Malaria by Katlynn Brooks.

This book is a phenomenal true account of one girl’s extraordinary upbringing in the rough and feral bushveld of 1950s and 60s Rhodesia. Moving from one makeshift camp to the next, the family follows Dad, a bridge builder for the government, deep into the heart of elephant and cheetah country.

“We ran barefoot in the bush, and swam in crocodile-infested rivers. We shared our camps with snakes, scorpions, and jerrymunglums. There was no electricity, no hospitals, and no schools in the bush. How I survived it all, I will never know.”

Hilarious, touching, raw, and deeply honest, this memoir records the journey from child to teenager to woman against the backdrop of a vanishing world, as Rhodesia begins its long and tumultuous transition into the independent country of Zimbabwe.

BOOK CLUB April  2024 Selection

This month our  book is This Child Will Be Great, a memoir by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Sirleaf shares the story of her rise to power, including her early childhood; her experiences with abuse, imprisonment, and exile; and her fight for democracy and social justice. She reveals her determination to succeed in multiple worlds, from her studies in the United States to her work as an international bank executive, to campaigning in some of Liberia’s most desperate and war-torn villages and neighborhoods. It is the tale of an outspoken political and social reformer who fought the oppression of dictators and championed change. By telling her story, Sirleaf encourages women everywhere to pursue leadership roles at the highest levels of power, and gives us all hope that we can change the world.

Sirleaf became the first elected head of state of an African country (in this case, Liberia, in 2006) She  won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011.

Burger’s Daughter by Nadine Gordimer (winner  of the Nobel Prize for Literature) was published in 1979. This novel is modelled after real people involved in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.

This is the moving story of the unforgettable Rosa Burger, a young woman from South Africa cast in the mold of a revolutionary tradition. Rosa tries to uphold her heritage handed on by martyred parents while still carving out a sense of self. Although it is wholly of today, Burger’s Daughter can be compared to those 19th century Russian classics that make a certain time and place come alive, and yet stand as universal celebrations of the human spirit.

Most of our books to date have been written by contemporary young, black African authors and we thought it would be interesting to go back to this earlier period in history.