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The best part of a university education is that it is a transformative period that comes with academic challenges, personal growth, and the pursuit of knowledge. Preparing to transition from the higher education system to the wider world is crucial for students, and certain books can offer invaluable insights and guidance.
During my undergraduate days, two books that profoundly shaped my thoughts on the effects of colonization were Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. These books opened my eyes to ‘real’ world problems and revealed what many African nations have struggled with over the years.
In our latest book recommendation, we have compiled a list of seven books everyone should read before leaving university. Whether you’re an international student looking for a relatable story, interested in learning more about Africa’s historical past, or simply in need of a good story that promises a deeper understanding of the world around you, these books are sure to leave a lasting impression.
Read our recommendations below.
IN DEPENDENCE
AUTHOR: SARAH LADIPO MANYIKA
GENRE: FICTION
It is the early sixties when a young Tayo Ajayi sails to England from Nigeria to take up a scholarship at Oxford University. In this city of dreaming spires, he finds himself among a generation high on visions of a new and better world. The whole world seems ablaze with change: independence at home, the Civil Rights movement and the first tremors of cultural and sexual revolutions. It is then that Tayo meets Vanessa Richardson, the beautiful daughter of an ex-colonial officer. Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s novel is Tayo and Vanessa’s story of a brave but bittersweet love affair. It is the story of two people struggling to find themselves and each other—a story of passion and idealism, courage and betrayal, and the universal desire to fall, madly, deeply, in love. Buy this book here.
NO LONGER AT EASE
Author: CHINUA ACHEBE
Genre: FICTION
Obi Okonkwo is an idealistic young man who, thanks to the privileges of an education in Britain, has now returned to Nigeria for a job in the civil service. However in his new role he finds that the way of government seems to be backhanders and corruption. Obi manages to resist the bribes that are offered to him, but when he falls in love with an unsuitable girl—to the disapproval of his parents—he sinks further into emotional and financial turmoil. The lure of easy money becomes harder to refuse, and Obi becomes caught in a trap he cannot escape.
Showing a man lost in cultural limbo, and a Nigeria entering a new age of disillusionment, No Longer at Ease concludes Achebe’s remarkable trilogy charting three generations of an African community under the impact of colonialism, the first two volumes of which are Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God.
EVERYTHING GOOD WILL COME
AUTHOR: SEFI ATTA
GENRE: FICTION
It is 1971, a year after the Biafran War, and Nigeria is under military rule—though the politics of the state matter less than those of her home to Enitan Taiwo, an eleven-year-old girl tired of waiting for school to start. Will her mother, who has become deeply religious since the death of Enitan’s brother, allow her friendship with the new girl next door, the brash and beautiful Sheri Bakare? Everything Good Will Come charts the fate of these two African girls, one born of privilege and the other, a lower class ‘half-caste’; one who is prepared to manipulate the traditional system while the other attempts to defy it.
Written in the voice of Enitan, the novel traces this unusual friendship into their adult lives, against the backdrop of tragedy, family strife, and a war-torn Nigeria. In the end, Everything Good Will Come is Enitan’s story; one of a fiercely intelligent, strong young woman coming of age in a culture that still insists on feminine submission. Sefi Atta’s novel tells the universal story of love, friendship, prejudice, survival, politics, and the cost of divided loyalties.
WE NEED NEW NAMES
AUTHOR: NOVIOLET BULAWAYO
GENRE: FICTION
Darling is only ten years old, and yet she must navigate a fragile and violent world. In Zimbabwe, Darling and her friends steal guavas, try to get the baby out of young Chipo’s belly, and grasp at memories of before. Before their homes were destroyed by paramilitary policemen, before the school closed, before the fathers left for dangerous jobs abroad.
But Darling has a chance to escape: she has an aunt in America. She travels to this new land in search of America’s famous abundance only to find that her options as an immigrant are perilously few. An exciting literary debut, NoViolet Bulawayo’s novel is an unflinching and powerful story of a young girl’s journey out of Zimbabwe and to America.
DISGRACE
AUTHOR: J. M. COETZEE
GENRE: FICTION
Set in post-apartheid South Africa, J. M. Coetzee’s novel tells the story of David Lurie, a twice divorced, 52-year-old professor of communications and romantic poetry at Cape Technical University. Lurie believes he has created a comfortable, if somewhat passionless, life for himself. He lives within his financial and emotional means. Though his position at the university has been reduced, he teaches his classes dutifully; and while age has diminished his attractiveness, weekly visits to a prostitute satisfy his sexual needs. He considers himself happy. However, when Lurie seduces one of his students, he sets in motion a chain of events that will shatter his complacency and leave him utterly disgraced.
THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH
AUTHOR: FRANTZ FANON
GENRE: NON-FICTION
The Wretched of the Earth is a brilliant examination of the psychology of the colonized and their path to liberation. Bearing singular insight into the rage and frustration of colonized peoples, and the role of violence in effecting historical change, the book incisively attacks the twin perils of post-independence colonial politics: the disenfranchisement of the masses by the elites on the one hand, and intertribal and interfaith animosities on the other.
Frantz Fanon’s analysis, a veritable handbook of social reorganization for leaders of emerging nations, has been reflected all too clearly in the corruption and violence that has plagued present-day Africa. The Wretched of the Earth has had a major impact on civil rights, anticolonialism, and black consciousness movements around the world.
SEASON OF MIGRATION TO THE NORTH
AUTHOR: TAYEB SALIH
GENRE: FICTION
After years of study in Europe, the young narrator of Season of Migration to the North returns to his village along the Nile in the Sudan. It is the 1960s, and he is eager to make a contribution to the new postcolonial life of his country. Back home, he discovers a stranger among the familiar faces of childhood—the enigmatic Mustafa Sa’eed. Mustafa takes the young man into his confidence, telling him the story of his own years in London, of his brilliant career as an economist, and of the series of fraught and deadly relationships with European women that led to a terrible public reckoning and his return to his native land.
But what is the meaning of Mustafa’s shocking confession? Mustafa disappears without explanation, leaving the young man—whom he has asked to look after his wife—in an unsettled and violent no-man’s-land between Europe and Africa, tradition and innovation, holiness and defilement, and man and woman, from which no one will escape unaltered or unharmed. Season of Migration to the North is a work of deep honesty and incandescent lyricism.