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No one loves to reread a great book more than I do. In fact, I have read books such as Stay with Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ multiple times. I often return to a book I loved when I’m in a reading slump or revisit a book I read quickly the first time to catch any details I might have missed. Other times, I go back simply for the sheer pleasure of enjoying a well-written story again. Rereading a beloved book is like visiting an old friend; each encounter reveals something new, deepening your understanding of the story or subject.
Also, some books are designed to be revisited—they are filled with layers of meaning, intricate subplots, and complex characters that grow richer with each reading. These kinds of books linger in one’s mind, calling you to return and explore their depths once more.
In our latest book recommendation, we have compiled a list of seven African books that get better every time you reread them. These books reward your patience and curiosity with fresh perspectives and hidden details, making each reread worthwhile.
Read our recommendations below.
STAY WITH ME
AUTHOR: AYỌ̀BÁMI ADÉBÁYỌ̀
GENRE: FICTION
Yejide and Akin have been married since they met and fell in love at university. Though many expected Akin to take several wives, he and Yejide have always agreed: polygamy is not for them. But four years into their marriage—after consulting fertility doctors and healers, trying strange teas and unlikely cures—Yejide is still not pregnant. She assumes she still has time—until her family arrives on her doorstep with a young woman they introduce as Akin’s second wife. Furious, shocked, and livid with jealousy, Yejide knows the only way to save her marriage is to get pregnant, which, finally, she does—but at a cost far greater than she could have dared to imagine. An electrifying novel of enormous emotional power, Stay With Me asks how much we can sacrifice for the sake of family.
THE HUNDRED WELLS OF SALAGA
AUTHOR: AYESHA HARRUNA ATTAH
GENRE: FICTION
Aminah lives an idyllic life in the village of Botu, until she is brutally separated from her home and forced on a journey that will turn her from a daydreamer into a resilient woman. Wurche, the wilful daughter of a chief, is desperate to play an important role in her father’s court at Salaga-Kpembe.
The lives of these two remarkable women converge in a tumultuous meeting that takes them from mistress and slave to unlikely allies, as Aminah and Wurche find themselves tangled in a web of desire, jealousy, political intrigue and illicit affairs. Meanwhile, infighting among Wurche’s people threatens to leave the region exposed to powers much larger than themselves. The Hundred Wells of Salaga explores the depths of female friendship in this stirringly intimate reimagining of life in pre-colonial Ghana. Buy this book here.
HOMEGOING
Author: YAA GYASI
Genre: FICTION
Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle’s dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast’s booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia’s descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.
Cassava Republic Press is proud to announce the launch of their inaugural $20,000 Global Black Women’s Non-Fiction Manuscript Prize dedicated to exceptional works by Black women. Deadline: 30th June 2024. Learn more here.
SHE WOULD BE KING
Author: WAYÉTU MOORE
Genre: FICTION
She Would Be King reimagines the dramatic story of Liberia’s early years through three unforgettable characters who share an uncommon bond. Gbessa, exiled from the West African village of Lai, is starved, bitten by a viper, and left for dead, but still she survives. June Dey, raised on a plantation in Virginia, hides his unusual strength until a confrontation with the overseer forces him to flee. Norman Aragon, the child of a white British colonizer and a Maroon slave from Jamaica, can fade from sight when the earth calls him. When the three meet in the settlement of Monrovia, their gifts help them salvage the tense relationship between the African American settlers and the indigenous tribes, as a new nation forms around them.
Moore’s intermingling of history and magical realism finds voice not just in these three characters but also in the fleeting spirit of the wind, who embodies an ancient wisdom. Moore, illuminates with radiant and exacting prose the tumultuous roots of a country inextricably bound to the United States.
BORN A CRIME
AUTHOR: TREVOR NOAH
GENRE: NON-FICTION
Trevor Noah 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.
Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.
The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Noah illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother’s unconventional, unconditional love.
UNDER THE UDALA TREES
AUTHOR: CHINELO OKPARANTA
GENRE: FICTION
Ijeoma comes of age as her nation does; born before independence, she is eleven when civil war breaks out in the young republic of Nigeria. Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child and they, star-crossed, fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are also both girls. When their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself. But there is a cost to living inside a lie.
Under the Udala Trees uses one woman’s lifetime to examine the ways in which Nigerians continue to struggle toward selfhood. Even as their nation contends with and recovers from the effects of war and division, Nigerian lives are also wrecked and lost from taboo and prejudice. This story offers a glimmer of hope—a future where a woman might just be able to shape her life around truth and love.
THE SHADOW OF IMANA
AUTHOR: VÉRONIQUE TADJO
GENRE: NON-FICTION
Along with nine other African writers, Veronique Tadjo was invited to visit Rwanda to bear witness to the genocide that took place in 1994—wiping out one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus during a hundred days of barbaric violence. A poet and a storyteller, the author consistently achieves the right tone that challenges our preconceptions. From the unexpurgated story of a young woman reliving the horrors of the massacre to dialogues between strangers meeting across the past, and finally to her own reflections. Her prose alternates between raw and poetic, but always remains discreet, respectful and dignified. The one thing that comes through her narrative voice is a ray of hope. This is a book that grows in depth and meaning over time. It is translated by Veronique Wakerley.