Another year-end, another look back at the books I’ve read this year. For old time’s sake, I will use my five-star rating system, but having grown increasingly sceptical of ratings of late, here’s the key, which is entirely subjective: five stars mean I enthusiastically recommend this book to all; four stars mean I recommend it, subject to your genre preferences; three stars means I did like it, but just check the blurb and the reviews to see if it piques your interest! And less than that… A few notes about this list. I don’t count books that I’ve read strictly for academic purposes, or for my ..read more

It is the end of 2022. Here, as always, is a brief summary of the books I read this year, organised (inadequately) by geography and genre, and even more inadequately, by a rough rating system. This year was marked by a foray into contemporary Japanese literature (as I was traveling to that country) – in particular, Japanese crime fiction, which has a rather distinct and compelling identity of its own. There was also a fairly heavy dose of science fiction, which – as you’ll see – was a bit patchy. Read on! A. Fiction: Africa Khadija Abdalla Bajaber, The House of Rust (****): A little difficult ..read more

“You will find them at bus stations pretending to read newspapers, telling the time, scratching the tips of their noses. In a cafe, they order either tea or coffee. They whisper among themselves. They look shabby – girls with Afros, netelas, and sneakers, and boys with worn out jeans and sneakers.” A State official’s description of the members of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP) In 1974, the regime of the Ethiopian Emperor, Haile Selassie, was overthrown in a revolution. Left-wing student movements played a significant part in the revolution, primarily through the vehicle ..read more

City-writing is always a challenge, and writing about one of the most over-determined cities of the world is particularly challenging. For example, what is left to write about Paris that can still unsettle a reader’s sedimented expectations, after all the novels, memoirs, and films? How is one to write about Paris so that the account will not seem one or more of trite, repetitive, intentionally contrarian, or just trying-too-hard-to-be-fresh (for an answer, see Eric Hazan’s A Walk Through Paris!)? In Undercurrents: A Story of Berlin, Kirsty Bell take another approach towards documenting the p ..read more

I first read (and reviewed) Dambudzo Marechera’s The House of Hunger a few years ago, and fell in love with this strange, indefinable, and incandescent piece of work. His observations on language – and the use of English by outsiders (master’s tools/master’s house) to serve their purpose – were acute and brilliant, and there was something iconoclastic about the way he took on legendary figures such as Ngugi in his claim that “if you are a writer for a specific nation or a specific race, then fuck you.” Over the years, in my foray into literature from the African continent, Marechera’s name cr ..read more

As with many other people, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed was both a gateway into science fiction for me as a child, as well as a very early political textbook. The bleak egalitarianism of Anarres, the striking contrasts with Urras, the scenes of the general strike, and the character of Shevek himself – all these stayed with me for many years, even as the details grew hazy in memory. Earlier this year, I returned to the book, after the passage of a decade and a half. It was a fascinating experience to come back to such a formative piece of work as an adult, and now with a long-standing ..read more

It is the end of 2021. Here, as always, is a brief summary of the books I read this year, organised (inadequately) by geography and genre, and even more inadequately, by a rough rating system. A. Continent: Africa S.O. Kenani, For Honour and Other Stories (****): A set of compelling, dark – and sometimes – brutal short stories set in Malawi. This was my first introduction to Malawian fiction. Longer review on Goodreads. Ayesha Haruna Attah, The Hundred Wells of Salaga (*****): One of my favourite reads of the year: this novel of colonialism and resistance from Ghana has one of the most memora ..read more

Ayesha Harruna Attah’s The Hundred Wells of Salaga is the story of two women: Aminah, who grows up in the village of Botu, part of a little community that lives under the fear of slaver raids; and Wurche, the daughter of an ambitious local noble who has designs on the throne of Salaga. When Aminah’s village is destroyed by raiders, she is forced away from her home and her society, and into a long journey that will take her to Salaga, city of a hundred wells. There, her life will intersect with Wurche, who is seeking for a way out of a loveless marriage, forced upon her for political reasons ..read more

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, The Dragonfly Sea: The Dragonfly Sea is the story of Ayaana, who grows up with her mother, Munira, and a father that she adopts – Muhidin – on the island of Pate, off the Kenyan coast. Her life changes when – on the basis of DNA tests – it is found that she is one of the distant descendants of a Chinese naval expedition that was wrecked off the coast of Pate seven hundred years ago. As part of their cultural diplomacy, the Chinese declare her a cultural ambassador – someone who can “walk the space between the past and the present, so that the future could be shared” (p ..read more

This year saw a significant shift in my reading, triggered by the fact that I published my debut science fiction novel, The Wall, and spent most of the year working on its sequel. Being a genre writer shapes your reading preferences in a very specific way: you begin to actively look out for, and read, novels that share the stylistic or narrative commitments of your own, and you also find yourself reading more broadly in the genre, to gain a sense of what it looks like. So, in 2020, a large part of my reading was science fiction and fantasy, and I feel it ended up becoming a little too skewed ..read more