I will look into these titles,which do you recommend I start with since I have not delved into African Lit?
I don't claim to be an expert by any means, in fact I only really started exploring African literature half-seriously this year (hell, the fact that I was talking about "African" literature, as if it were one country, should tell you how well-versed I am...) :whistling: But I've loved both
Things Fall Apart and
Wizard of the Crow as previously mentioned; the latter is a bit of a handful at about 900 pages, but it's a both hilarious and thought-provoking look at post-post-colonialist Africa... and TFA, like ABC says, is just a must-read. (Two other rightfully well-known takes on similar subjects are Tayeb Salih's
Season of Migration to the North and Wole Soyinka's
Aké.)
I wasn't that impressed with either Farah or Coetzee, but a lot of people rate them very highly and I'm starting to think I ought to give
From A Crooked Rib a first try and
Disgrace a second.
Al-Aswany's
The Yacoubian Building isn't exactly a masterpiece of modern fiction, but it
is a tremendously entertaining novel which packs quite a few punches in the way it deals with controversial subjects. Definitely recommended.
Also, I posted
this list of the 100 best African books of the 20th century a while back. I'm guessing the top isn't a bad place to start.
Lined up for me in the near future: Tahar ben Jelloun, Chris Abani, Assia Djebar, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, Ivan Vladislavic (yes, he's South African despite the name) and Alan Patel. And Camus, I guess, but I've been putting him off for years already, and why break a good tradition...