Every year is the year of African literature. At Isele, it is always such a pleasure seeing new stories, genre-bending and experimental stories that continue to widen the definition of African literature. It is an even greater pleasure documenting these stories and sharing them with our readers.
With the volumes of fine, quality books published each year at home and abroad, and fortunately so, it’s becoming difficult curating an exhaustive listicle. But for our 2023 wrapped book edition, here are 23 African books published this year we recommend.
From the pens of debut authors like Stephen Buoro, DK Nnuro and Ani Kayode Somtochukwu, to legacy upholders like Zukiswa Wanner, Leila Aboulela, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, and Bisi Adjapon, these stories show the expansiveness of Africa and its thriving tales.
The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa follows the story of Andy and his pack of friends as they navigate life in a modern Nigeria amidst ethno-religious tensions. The narrative is spectacular for its multilayeredness and exploration of new concepts. The plot reads: “Fifteen-year-old Andrew Aziza lives in Kontagora, Nigeria, where his days are spent about town with his droogs, Slim and Morocca, grappling with his fantasies about white girls – especially blondes – and wondering who his father is. When he’s not in church, at school or attempting to form ‘Africa’s first superheroes’, he obsesses over mathematical theorems, ideas of black power and HXVX: the Curse of Africa.
Sure enough, the reluctantly nicknamed ‘Andy Africa’ soon 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.
The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa announces a dazzling, distinctive, new literary voice. Profound, exhilarating and highly original, this tragicomic novel is a stunning exploration of the contemporary African ‘condition’, the relentless infiltration of Western culture and, most of all, the ordinary but impossible challenges of coming of age in a turbulent world.”
After a successful debut, Stay With Me that has turned a classic, Adébáyọ̀ returns with A Spell of Good Things, a 2023 Booker Prize Nominee that takes on social inequality, through contact by two families from distinct backgrounds, and the events that unfold. Maintaining her signature, it is a familiar story told brilliantly.
Here is the full plot: “Eniola is tall for his age, a boy who looks like a man. Because his father has lost his job, Eniola spends his days running errands for the local tailor, collecting newspapers, begging when he must, dreaming of a big future.
Wuraola is a golden girl, the perfect child of a wealthy family. Now an exhausted young doctor in her first year of practice, she is beloved by Kunle, the volatile son of an ascendant politician.
When a local politician takes an interest in Eniola and sudden violence shatters a family party, Wuraola’s and Eniola’s lives become intertwined. In her breathtaking second novel, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ shines her light on Nigeria, on the gaping divide between the haves and the have-nots, and the shared humanity that lives in between.”
Yet another non-debut offering this year, Bisi Adjapon follows-up Tellers of Secret with the story of 21-year old Lola and her experiences living in the US. Read the full plot:
“Lola is twenty-one, and her life in Senegal couldn’t be better. An aspiring writer and university graduate, she has a great job, a nice apartment, a vibrant social life, and a future filled with possibility. But fate disrupts her world when she falls for Armand, an American Marine stationed at the U.S. Embassy. Her mother, a high court judge in Ghana, disapproves of her choice, but nothing will stop Lola from boarding a plane for Armand and America. That fateful flight is only the beginning of an extraordinary journey; she has traded her carefree life in Senegal for the perilous position of an undocumented immigrant in 1990s America.
Lola encounters adversity that would crush a less-determined woman. Her fate hangs on whether or not she’ll grow in courage to forge a different life from one she’d imagined, whether she’ll succeed in putting herself and family together again.
Daughter in Exile is a hope-filled story about mother love, resilience, and unyielding strength.”
When We Were Fireflies is Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s sophomore novel. It follows the story of an artist who has incessant flashes of his deaths in previous lives. The novel is praised for its divergence of the traditional tragic hero, and thematic thrust that intertwines love and death.
Here is the full plot: “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 of her own, who becomes key to helping him understand what he is experiencing. With a third death in his current life imminent, together they go hunting for remnants of his past lives. Will they find evidence that he is losing his mind or the people who once loved or loathed him?”
Indeed a fine year for African literature as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie returns with her first fiction book since Americanah, and first children’s book. Mama’s Sleeping Scarf is a tender story about a little girl’s love for her mother’s scarf, and the adventures she shares with it and her whole family. Here is the plot in full:
“Chino loves the scarf that her mama ties around her hair at night. But when Mama leaves for the day, what happens to her scarf? Chino takes it on endless adventures! Peeking through the colorful haze of the silky scarf, Chino and her toy bunny can look at her whole family as they go through their routines.
With stunning illustrations from Joelle Avelino, Mama’s Sleeping Scarf is a celebration of family, and a touching story about the everyday objects that remind us of the ones we love.”
Leila Aboulela is an author to always read for her deep insight into Islam through fiction. This year, she gave us River Spirit, a novel set in 19th Century Sudan during the Mahdist War which explores tensions between several dichotomies: Britain and Sudan, Christianity and Islam, colonizer and colonized, told through the lens of a coming-of-age woman.
The plot: “When Akuany and her brother Bol are orphaned in a village raid in South Sudan, they’re taken in by a young merchant Yaseen who promises to care for them, a vow that tethers him to Akuany through their adulthood. As a revolutionary leader rises to power – the self-proclaimed Mahdi, prophesied redeemer of Islam – Sudan begins to slip from the grasp of Ottoman rule, and everyone must choose a side. A scholar of the Qur’an, Yaseen feels beholden to stand against this false Mahdi, even as his choice splinters his family. Meanwhile, Akuany moves through her young adulthood and across the country alone, sold and traded from house to house, with Yaseen as her inconsistent lifeline. Everything each of them is striving for – love, freedom, safety – is all on the line in the fight for 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.”
Chika Unigwe, unarguably one of the most notable African writers writing today, continues in her documentation of women struggles with The Middle Daughter. This story of family and sisterhood follows Nani and her navigation of life in the aftermath of losing her sister and father.
The plot: “When seventeen-year-old Nani loses her older sister and then her father in quick succession, her world spins off its axis. Isolated and misunderstood by her grieving mother and sister, she’s drawn to an itinerant preacher, a handsome self-proclaimed man of God who offers her a new place to belong. All too soon, Nani finds herself estranged from her family, tethered to her abusive husband by children she loves but cannot fully comprehend. She must find the courage to break free and wrestle her life back—without losing what she loves most.”
This is a collection of contemporary stories set in Botswana. These stories relate familiar, ordinary experiences and provide a glimpse into Botswana today. In it, there is a story of two siblings who showcase their sexuality differently and are met with ironic reception from the society; a story about a young widow whose grief is policed by a biased society, among others. A complete collection!
Plot: “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.”
Maame by Jessica George is a 2023 book club favorite. Described by the New York Times as “Splendid”, in it we meet Maddie, whose life mirrors the immigrant experience of constantly being torn between two homes and cultures. It is a humorous light read that manages to maintain its joy, even while exploring heavy themes.
The plot: “It’s fair to say that Maddie’s life in London is far from rewarding. With a mother who spends most of her time in Ghana (yet still somehow manages to be overbearing), Maddie is the primary caretaker for her father, who suffers from advanced stage Parkinson’s. At work, her boss is a nightmare and Maddie is tired of always being the only Black person in every meeting.
So when her mum returns from her latest trip, Maddie seizes the chance to move out of the family home and finally start living. A self-acknowledged late bloomer, she’s ready to experience some important ‘firsts’: She finds a flat share, says yes to after-work drinks, pushes for more recognition in her career, and throws herself into the bewildering world of internet dating. But when tragedy strikes, Maddie is forced to face the true nature of her unconventional family, and the perils―and rewards―of putting her heart on the line.
Smart, funny, and affecting, Jessica George’s Maame deals with the themes of our time with humor and poignancy: from familial duty and racism, to female pleasure, the complexity of love, and the life-saving power of friendship. Most importantly, it explores what it feels like to be torn between two homes and cultures―and it celebrates finally being able to find where you belong.”
God’s Children Are Little Broken Things is a collection of stories by Nigerian writer, Arinze Ifeakandu. Its African edition was published in October 2023 by Narrative Landscape Press. Following the highly-read eponymous title, “God’s Children Are Little Broken Things” — the Caine Prize shortlisted story — the stories explore queer love in all its facets in contemporary Nigeria.
Here is the plot: “A man revisits the university campus where he lost his first love, aware now of what he couldn’t understand then. A young musician rises to fame at the price of pieces of himself, and the man who loves him. Arinze Ifeakandu explores with tenderness and grace the fundamental question of the heart: can deep love and hope be sustained in spite of the dominant expectations of society, and great adversity?”
Just as in Chibok Girls by Helon Habila and Buried Beneath the Boabab Tree by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, Nigerian writers continue to use literature to highlight the tragedy that is the Chibok Girls — the 2014 Boko Haram kidnappings of over 200 girls in Chibok, Borno. The Stolen Daughters of Chibok is a seminal work of nonfiction that documents real experiences of the girls through essays, interviews and photographs. It aims to capture their lives before the abduction and to highlight how their families have struggled to cope afterward.
South African writer, Zukiswa Wanner, in this essay lends an important hand in amplifying the voices of Palestinians amidst the ongoing violence in Gaza. An important book for anyone who wants to understand the crisis.
Plot: “In May 2023, South African author Zukiswa Wanner was a guest of the Palestine Festival of Literature. Coming from a country with a history of apartheid, she should have had an inkling of what to expect but her experiences were more than she had bargained for. As Palestinians are not always permitted to travel across checkpoints, Palestine Festival of Literature brought her and other festival participants to different parts of the Palestinian territories (glorified bantustans) for literary engagement with audiences. Vignettes is her witness account of contemporary settler colonialism, genocide and a world that’s damned by its refusal to see or hear the pleas for a truly free Palestine.”
In Gorgeous Display is the debut poetry collection by Nigerian poet and writer, Ugochukwu Damian. It is a tribute to lives lost to anti-queer and homophobic violence. The poems collected are lyrical reflections of queer perspectives in Nigeria and beyond.
The plot: “In Gorgeous Display, by Nigerian poet Ugochukwu Damian Okpara, is a volume dedicated to the memory of those lost to anti-queer violence in Nigeria and elsewhere. In this first full-length collection of his work, Okpara examines queer male identity, effeminacy, and exile, offering meditations on desire and sanctuary, freedom and estrangement. Forty-three poems pierce familial relationships, safety, fear, and anxiety portrayed through the outward sign of hand tremors, queer lynching, survival, hope, the emptiness of exile, and reclamation of the self. Embracing the ephemeral and spiritual nature of physical beauty, Okpara also reveals the scars of queer displacement, illuminating the ways that leaving home is never quite the utopia one hopes for and how often the ache of abandonment can haunt a life lived in the present.”
Kweku Abimbola, winner of the Academy of American Poets First Book Award centers his Ghanaian ancestry in his debut collection, Saltwater Demands a Psalm. Graywolf Press remarks that “these poems groove, remix, and recenter African language and spiritual practice to rejoice in liberation’s struggles and triumphs. Abimbola’s poetry invokes the ecstasy and sorrow of saying the names of the departed, of seeing and being seen, of being called and calling back.”.
The full plot: “Ghana’s Akan tradition, on the eighth day of life a child is named according to the day of the week on which they were born. This marks their true birth. In Kweku Abimbola’s rhapsodic debut, the intimacy of this practice yields an intricately layered poetics of time and body based in Black possibility, ancestry, and joy. While odes and praise songs celebrate rituals of self- and collective-care―of durags, stank faces, and dance―Abimbola’s elegies imagine alternate lives and afterlives for those slain by police, returning to naming as a means of rebirth and reconnection following the lost understanding of time and space that accompanies Black death.
Saltwater Demands a Psalm creates a cosmology in search of Black eternity governed by Adinkra symbols―pictographs central to Ghanaian language and culture in their proverbial meanings―and rooted in units of time created from the rhythms of Black life.”
Dazzling by Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ follows two girls, Treasure and Ozoemena, as they navigate a patriarchal society. Filled with magic and otherworldly elements, the fantastical story excites, while also tackling real-life situations.
The plot: “Treasure and her mother lost everything when Treasure’s daddy died. Haggling for scraps in the market, Treasure meets a spirit who promises to bring her father back – but she has to do something for him first.
Ozoemena has an itch in the middle of her back that can’t be scratched. An itch that speaks to her patrilineal destiny, to defend her people by becoming a leopard. Her father impressed upon her what an honour this was before he vanished, but it’s one she couldn’t want less.
But as the two girls reckon with their burgeoning wildness and the legacy of their fathers’ decisions, Ozoemena’s fellow students at her new boarding school start to vanish. 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.”
Caleb Azuma Nelson whose debut, Open Water was a blessing to shelves, returns with another novel, Small Worlds that has since enjoyed positive reviews. Small Worlds is about exploring the unusual in a society where comfort is found in tradition. It is a story of people, places and their relationships/attachments with those places.
The plot: “Set over the course of three summers, Small Worlds follows Stephen, a first-generation Londoner born to Ghanaian immigrant parents, brother to Ray, and best friend to Adeline. On the cusp of big life changes, Stephen feels pressured to follow a certain path—a university degree, a move out of home—but when he decides instead to follow his first love, music, his world and family fractures in ways he didn’t foresee. Now Stephen must find a path and peace for himself: a space he can feel beautiful, a space he can feel free.
Moving from London, England to Accra, Ghana and back again, Small Worlds is an exquisite and intimate new novel about the people and places we hold close, from one of the most ‘elegant, poetic’ (CNN) and important voices of a generation.”
A heartrending story of two Nigerian queer men who choose their affection amidst the homophobia and violence they witness. What is beautiful about this novel is the non-patronising language. We see Segun in his pure queer joy, choosing to be happy irrespective, and then August who struggles to accept his sexuality, putting up a toxic facade. The varying queer perspectives challenge the monolithic idea of sexuality.
The plot: “And Then He Sang A Lullaby is a breathtaking and captivating story of two gay men who find each other in Nigeria and are determined to love despite all that stands in their way. August is a straight-passing track star who has left Enugu, his overbearing sisters, and an apathetic father to find himself at the University of Nigeria Nsukka. Segun is an openly gay student who is reluctant to fall in love with August, wanting only to be with a man who is comfortable with his sexuality and has the capacity to love without shame. But when the Same Sex (Marriage) Prohibition Act is passed, August and Segun must find a way to tend to their blossoming romance in a country determined to eradicate them. And even while they run into harshness and cruelty at the hands of people whose lives and loves are legal, the two young lovers find kindness, understanding, solace and comfort in the arms of each other and in unexpected places.”
History of Ash is a moving fictional story of a prison account by Mouline and Leila, two political activists who stood against state oppression during the Lead Years of the 1970s and 1980s Morocco. It is a story of resistance, rebellion and sheer determination in an overwhelming repressive atmosphere.
The plot in full: “History of Ash is a fictional prison account narrated by Mouline and Leila, who have been imprisoned for their political activities during the so-called Lead Years of the 1970s and 1980s in Morocco, a period that was characterized by heavy state repression.
Moving between past and present, between experiences lived inside the prison cell and outside it, in the torture chamber and the judicial system, and the challenges they faced upon their release, Mouline and Leila describe their strategies for survival and resistance in lucid, often searing detail, and reassess their political engagements and the movements in which they are involved.”
Wole Talabi is one of the best writers of Orisha and other elements of African spirituality. His writing and editorial years in African speculative fiction peak in his debut novel, Shigidi. It tells a mythic tale of disgruntled gods, revenge, and a heist across two worlds.
The plot reads: “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.
From the boisterous streets of Lagos to the swanky rooftop bars of Singapore and the secret spaces of London, Shigidi and Nneoma will encounter old acquaintances, rival gods, strange creatures, and manipulative magicians as they are drawn into a web of revenge, spirit business, and a spectacular heist across two worlds that will change Shigidi’s understanding of himself forever and determine the fate of the Orisha spirit company.”
Innards is a collection of stories by Magogodi oaMphela Makhene. Through linked stories and relatable characters, Makhene takes us on a journey to Soweto from the early years of apartheid to its dissolution and beyond.
The full plot: “Set in Soweto, the urban heartbeat of South Africa, Innards tells the intimate stories of everyday black folks processing the savagery of apartheid with grit, wit, and their own distinctive bewildering humor. Rich with the thrilling textures of township language and life, it braids the voices and perspectives of an indelible cast of characters into a breathtaking collection flush with forgiveness, rage, ugliness, and beauty. Meet a fake PhD and ex-freedom fighter who remains unbothered by his own duplicity, a girl who goes mute after stumbling upon a burning body, twin siblings nursing a scorching feud, and a woman unraveling under the weight of a brutal encounter with the police. At the heart of these stories about deceit and ambition, appalling violence, familial turmoil, and love is South Africa’s history of slavery, colonization, and apartheid. Like many Americans today, Innards’ characters must navigate the shadows of the recent past alongside the uncertain opportunities of the promised land.
Full to bursting with life, in all its complexities and vagaries, Innards is an uncompromising depiction of black South Africa. Visceral and tender, it heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.”
Obari Gomba won the 2023 Nigeria Prize for Literature with his play, Grit, published in the same year. It is a family saga that talks about two brothers whose political affiliations wound up in an external crisis they must both join hands to fight against. It has been described by Brittle Paper as “magnificent and multifaceted,” and in Leadership as “…a wholesome commentary on Nigeria’s contemporary political circumstance.”
What Napoleon Could Not Do is the debut novel by Ghanaian-born writer, DK Nnuro. It is a migration story through which we see America via the lens of three Ghanaians.
Plot: “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 such a compelling, insightful read.”
Highly experimental and imaginative, Jarred Thompson in his signature lyrical prose tells a bizarre story about an unusual house with even more unusual hosts.
The plot: “You wouldn’t know it was there, the unnumbered house behind the iron-grille gate, just below the craggy rocks of Northcliff ridge. To the untrained eye the rambling property might seem neglected, with its tangle of trees and untamed indigenous bush. But there is purpose here, and a peaceful, subterranean focus on all that withers and dies. Five strangers – a model, a former nun, a couple in crisis, and an offender newly released from prison – have come here, to this place, to discover an end to life as they’ve known it. Placing their trust in their hosts, the Mortician and Mustafa, the five open their minds and bodies to an alternative experience. Not all of them will survive – or at least not in the way they imagined – but all of them will be shown the limits of their living.
The Institute for Creative Dying is vivid and visceral, unique in its bold and imaginative exploration of mortality and the interconnectedness of all forms of being.”
About the Author:
Uchenna Emelife is an assistant editor at Isele Magazine.
Isele Magazine 
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