At The Republic, our 2023 literary journey began with a list of books to anticipate in the same year. This list featured upcoming book releases by African authors such as Bisi Adjapon, Ukamaka Olisakwe, Chika Unigwe, and more. Since then, we have continued to share curated book recommendations via our #ReadSomethingAfrican series and discuss with African authors through our First Draft interview column.
In 2023, the African literary landscape witnessed the release of intriguing and insightful works that have garnered well-deserved recognition. For instance, Nigerian writer and the author of the acclaimed debut novel, Stay With Me, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, unveiled her second novel, A Spell of Good Things. This novel delves into the socio-economic polarities and political corruption in Nigeria, earning a deserved longlist spot in the 2023 Booker Prize.
Also, D.K Nnuro’s debut novel, What Napoleon Could Not Do, was shortlisted for the 2023 New American Voices Award and longlisted for the Center for Fiction 2023 First Novel Prize. The literary scene also saw the return of the award-winning Sudanese novelist, Leila Aboulela, whose latest book, River Spirit, explores the trials of a beleaguered young woman’s coming of age during the Mahdist War in 19th-century Sudan. As of November 2023, Jessica George’s debut book, Maame, had surpassed 125,000 copies in sales in the United States and the United Kingdom. The book also garnered deserved nominations at the Goodreads Award.
It is clear that 2023 has been an interesting year for African literature. As we continue to dive into these books, here are our favourite books this year.
RIVER SPIRIT
Author: LEILA ABOULELA
Genre: FICTION
The new novel from Caine Prize winner, Leila Aboulela, follows the life of an embattled young woman’s coming of age during the Mahdist War in 19th century Sudan. Through the voices of seven men and women whose fates grow inextricably linked, Aboulela’s latest novel illuminates a fraught and bloody reckoning with the history of a people caught in the crosshairs of imperialism. River Spirit is a powerful tale of corruption, coming of age, and unshakeable devotion to a cause, to one’s faith, and to the people who become family.
A SPELL OF GOOD THINGS
Author: AYỌ̀BÁMI ADÉBÁYỌ̀
Genre: FICTION
From the author of the critically acclaimed debut novel, Stay With Me, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’s 2023 novel further cements her place as one of the outstanding voices of Nigerian literature. Her second novel, A Spell of Good Things, is a captivating tale of two families trapped in the riptides of riches, power, and political corruption in contemporary Nigeria. The novel presents a true Nigerian voice through its portrayal of socio-economic issues such as unemployment, and everyday events such as morning conversations at newspaper stands. In this novel, we follow the lives of Eniola and Wuraola, both from different backgrounds. When a local politician takes interest in Eniola and sudden violence shatters a family party, Wuraola and Eniola’s lives become intertwined.
UNTOLD HISTORIES OF NIGERIAN WOMEN
Author: OMOTAYO AGUNBIADE
Genre: NON-FICTION
This book is a curation of insightful and engaging narrations aimed at freeing women from the margins of Nigeria’s history. It chronicles their protest movements against colonial administrations, including ‘monster’ petitions on taxation and food price controls. It details a string of remarkable political landmarks which highlight women’s historical credentials as nationalists, as well as their voice in early male-dominated legislative institutions. It also narrates more contemporary episodes in women’s resistance against oil exploitation, environmental pollution and anger over the mass abduction of school girls. This timely preservation of the voice and agency of Nigerian women from a wide variety of colonial and contemporary documents will benefit readers interested in African history and gender and women’s studies.
NO ONE DIES YET
Author: KOBBY BEN BEN
Genre: FICTION
2019. The Year of the Return. It has been exactly 400 years since the first slave ships left Ghana for America, and Ghana has opened its doors for Black diasporans to come to know the land of their ancestors. Elton, Vincent, and Scott arrive from America to visit preserved sites from the transatlantic slave route, and to explore the country’s underground queer scene. Their activities are narrated by their two combative guides; Kobby, their liaison with Accra’s privileged circles; and Nana, the voice of tradition and religious principle. The two’s tense relationship set the tone for what becomes a shocking and unsettling tale of murder that is at times funny or erotic, but always outspoken and iconoclastic.
THE FIVE SORROWFUL MYSTERIES OF ANDY AFRICA
AUTHOR: STEPHEN BUORO
GENRE: FICTION
In Stephen Buoro’s debut novel, fifteen-year-old Andrew Aziza lives in Kontagora, Nigeria, where he grapples with his fantasies about white girls—especially blondes—and wonders who his father is. Andrew obsesses over mathematical theorems, ideas of black power and HXVX: the Curse of Africa. Andrew, nicknamed ‘Andy Africa’, falls hopelessly and inappropriately in love with the first white girl he lays eyes on, Eileen. But at the church party held to celebrate her arrival, multiple crises loom. An unfamiliar man claims, despite his mother’s denials, to be Andy’s father, and the gathering of an anti-Christian mob is headed for the church, both set to shake the foundations of everything Andy knows and loves. According to book reviewer, Kenechukwu Nwokedi, ‘the novel aims to highlight the complexities of living in a country like Nigeria through the perspective of a malleable teenager full of promise and, I think, it shoots to kill.’
DAZZLING
AUTHOR: CHỊKỌDỊLỊ EMELỤMADỤ
GENRE: FICTION
In this Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ’s debut novel, two girls must reckon with their burgeoning wildness and the legacy of their fathers’ decisions. Treasure and Ozoemena will face terrible choices as each must ask herself: in a world that always says ‘no’ to women, what must two young girls sacrifice to get what is theirs? Dazzling is steeped in magical realism and Nigerian mythology.
AFRICA IS NOT A COUNTRY
AUTHOR: DIPO FALOYIN
GENRE: NON-FICTION
Africa Is Not A Country is a bright portrait of modern Africa that pushes back against harmful stereotypes to tell a more comprehensive story. In this funny and insightful book, Dipo Faloyin offers a much-needed corrective. He examines each country’s colonial heritage, and explores a wide range of subjects, from chronicling urban life in Lagos and the lively West African rivalry over who makes the best Jollof rice, to the story of democracy in seven dictatorships and the dangers of stereotypes in popular culture. By turns intimate and political, Africa Is Not A Country brings the story of the continent towards reality, celebrating the energy and fabric of its different cultures and communities in a way that has never been done before.
MAAME
AUTHOR: JESSICA GEORGE
GENRE: FICTION
In a review published earlier this year, associate editor at The Republic, Peace Onafuye, described Jessica George’s debut as ‘an intense yet uplifting journey towards self-discovery. The novel carefully explores what it means to find one’s true self and how to deal with grief.’ In George’s debut, which is set in London and based on the life of Maddie, we accompany a protagonist whose experiences direct the reader. The novel sums up an individual’s journey through self-discovery. In her journey to self-discovery, we follow the life of a young woman who battles loneliness, grief, filial duties, career stagnation, and other captivating travails.
RAIMBEL
AUTHOR: PRIYA HEIN
GENRE: FICTION
Fifteen-year-old Noemi has no choice but to leave school and work in the house of the wealthy De Grandbourg family. Just across the road from the slums where she grew up, she encounters a world that is starkly different from her own—yet one which would have been all too familiar to her ancestors. Bewitched by a pair of green eyes and haunted by echoes, her life begins to mirror those of girls who have gone before her. In Riambel, Priya Hein invites us to protest, to rail against long–standing structures of class and ethnicity. She shows us a world of natural enchantment contrasted with violence and the abuse of power. This seemingly simple tale of servitude, seduction and abandonment blisters with a fierce sense of injustice.
WHEN WE WERE FIREFLIES
AUTHOR: ABUBAKAR ADAM IBRAHIM
GENRE: FICTION
When brooding artist, Yarima Lalo, encounters a moving train for the first time, two serendipitous events occur. First, it triggers memories of past lives in which he was twice murdered—once on a train. He also meets Aziza, a woman with a complicated past, who becomes key to helping him understand this experience. Faced with an imminent third death, together they go hunting for the remnants of his past lives. Will they find the people who once loved or loathed him or evidence that he is losing his mind?
I AM STILL WITH YOU
AUTHOR: EMMANUEL IDUMA
GENRE: NON-FICTION
After spending many years in New York, Emmanuel Iduma recounts his journey back to Nigeria, where he was raised. He travelled home to learn the fate of his uncle Emmanuel, his namesake, who disappeared in the Nigerian Civil War in the late 1960s. Iduma made numerous stops throughout the former Biafra territory in search of the truth, reuniting with family members to elicit their memories, snooping through university libraries to covertly photocopy materials, and stopping by abandoned monuments. He came to the conclusion that if he could comprehend his father’s grief at losing a sibling in the war, he might be able to learn how to grieve his own deceased father.
THE GOD OF GOOD LOOKS
AUTHOR: BREANNE MCIVOR
GENRE: FICTION
Writing has always been Bianca Bridge’s passion. However, Trinidadian society is notoriously stern, so having an affair with a married government figure is a surefire way to damage your chances. So when Obadiah Cortland, a tyrannical entrepreneur in the island’s beauty and fashion scene, offers her a job, Bianca accepts, realizing that working on his magazine is the closest to the dreams she’ll get. The God of Good Looks is an insightful and entertaining novel that switches back and forth between Bianca’s diary entries and Obadiah’s first-person account to depict the class divide and the commodification of beauty in a patriarchal society that exists in modern Trinidad.
LOVE ACROSS BORDERS: PASSPORTS, PAPERS, AND ROMANCE IN A DIVIDED WORLD
AUTHOR: ANNA LEKAS MILLER
GENRE: NON-FICTION
In this empathetic and insightful read, journalist, Anna Lekas Miller, reveals the experiences of couples throughout the world who have life-changing ordeals with immigration systems in order to be together—as she did in order to be with her partner. Miller’s work is the product of meticulous reporting, that takes readers around the world, from Turkey to Iraq, Syria to Greece, Mexico to the United States, to reveal the widespread prejudicial laws intent on dividing people. She describes how she met and fell in love with Salem Rizk while they were both reporting on the Syrian War from Istanbul. But when Turkey started cracking down on refugees, Salem, who is Syrian, wasn’t allowed to stay in the country, nor could he safely return to Syria. Miller combines these complex and beautiful love stories with an eye-opening history of passports, colonial legacies, and the unfair regulations that affect how people move around the globe on a daily basis.
CALL AND RESPONSE
AUTHOR: GOTHATAONE MOENG
GENRE: FICTION
A young widow adheres to the expectations of wearing mourning clothes for nearly a year, though she’s unsure what the traditions mean or whether she is ready to meet the world without their protection. An older sister returns home from a confusing time in America, only to explain at every turn why she’s left the land of opportunity. A younger sister hides her sexual exploits from her family, while her older brother openly flaunts his infidelity. The stories collected in Call and Response are strongly anchored in place—in the village of Serowe, where the author is from, and in Gaborone, the capital city of Botswana—charting the emotional journeys of women seeking love and opportunity beyond the barriers of custom and circumstance.
AVENUES BY TRAIN
AUTHOR: FARAI MUDZINGWA
GENRE: FICTION
In Farai Mudzingwa’s debut novel, when seven-year-old Jedza witnesses a tragic incident involving a train and the death of his close boyhood friend in his hometown Miner’s Drift, he is convinced that his life is haunted. Now in his mid-20s, Jedza is a down-and-out electrician, moving to Harare in the hopes that he will escape the darkness and superstitions of the small town. But living in the shadowy restless atmosphere of the Avenues with its mysterious pools of water rising under musasa trees, he is tormented by the disappearance of his sister and their early encounters with ancestral spirits, the shape-shifting power of the njuzu and a vengeful ngozi. To move forward, he must stop running away and confront the trauma of his past.
SMALL WORLDS
AUTHOR: CALEB AZUMAH NELSON
GENRE: FICTION
Stephen has only ever known himself in song, but what becomes of him when the music fades? When his father begins to speak of shame and sacrifice? When his home is no longer his own? How will he find space for himself: a place where he can feel beautiful, a place he might feel free? Set over three summers in Stephen’s life; from London to Ghana and back again, Small Worlds is an exhilarating and expansive novel about the worlds we build for ourselves; the worlds we live, dance and love within.
WHAT NAPOLEON COULD NOT DO
AUTHOR: DK NNURO
GENRE: FICTION
When siblings Jacob and Belinda Nti were growing up in Ghana, their goal was simple: to move to America. For them, the United States was both an opportunity and a struggle, a goal and an obstacle. Jacob, an awkward computer programmer who still lives with his father, wants a visa so he can move to Virginia to live with his wife—a request that the U.S. government has repeatedly denied. He envies his sister, Belinda, who achieved, as their father put it, ‘what Napoleon could not do’: she went to college and law school in the United States and even managed to marry Wilder, a wealthy Black businessman from Texas. Wilder’s view of America differs markedly from his wife’s, as he’s spent his life railing against the racism and marginalization that are part of life for every African American living here. For these three, their desires and ambitions highlight the promise and the disappointment that life in a new country offers. How each character comes to understand this and how each learns from both their dashed hopes and their fulfilled dreams lie at the heart of what makes What Napoleon Could Not Do by DK Nnuro an insightful read.
SHIGIDI AND THE BRASS HEAD OF OBALUFON
AUTHOR: WOLE TALABI
GENRE: FICTION
Shigidi, Wole Talabi’s debut fantasy novel, presents a mythic tale of disgruntled gods, revenge, and a heist across two worlds. Shigidi is a disgruntled and demotivated nightmare god in the Orisha spirit company, reluctantly answering prayers of his few remaining believers to maintain his existence long enough to find his next drink. When he meets Nneoma, a sort of succubus with a long and secretive past, everything changes for him. Together, they attempt to break free of his obligations and the restrictions that have bound him to his godhood and navigate the parameters of their new relationship in the shadow of her past. But the elder gods that run the Orisha spirit company have other plans for Shigidi, and they are not all aligned or good.
DON’T ANSWER WHEN THEY CALL YOUR NAME
AUTHOR: UKAMAKA OLISAKWE
GENRE: FICTION
Two years after the release of her critically acclaimed novel, Ogadinma, Ukamaka Olisakwe returns with a novel that blends myth and magic to introduce readers to an enchanting, spectral world where a young girl and her dog must change the destiny of an ill-fated community. Don’t Answer When They Call Your Name is an extraordinary novel bursting with kaleidoscopic worlds and beings. It is a feat of the imagination of a born storyteller.
THE MIDDLE DAUGHTER
AUTHOR: CHIKA UNIGWE
GENRE: FICTION
Award-winning author of On Black Sister’s Street, Chika Unigwe, returns with The Middle Daughter. This novel is a modern reimagining of the myth of Hades and Persephone within a Nigerian family. It is a lush tale of family and sisterhood that follows the life of seventeen-year-old Nani who loses her older sister and then her father in quick succession.