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Africa: New Books 2010
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Dec 10, 2010 (101210)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
There's never enough time to read all the books one would like to,
or even to make sure one hears of those books that one would put
highest on one's personal list. This week AfricaFocus highlights
12 new books published this year that I have noted as likely to be
of interest to many AfricaFocus readers. They are listed below with
brief descriptions.
And, of course, there are also links to other related AfricaFocus
pages for you to browse for books or CDs for yourself or for gifts.
AfricaFocus subscribers include more than 200 published authors. If
you are one of those, or are just interested in who is, check out
the updated page with links to books by subscribers. It's at
http://www.africafocus.org/books/subscribers.php for links to
Amazon.com; alternate pages links to Powells, to Amazon UK, and to
Amazon Canada. At some future point, I'll also be linking to Google
E-Books, once a higher proportion of books are available there.
If your name is not on this subscribers book page, and should be,
please let me know at africafocus@igc.org
For a much wider selection of books, see the AfricaFocus Bookshop
home page at http://www.africafocus.org/books/afbooks.php or
http://www.africafocus.org/books/afbooks_uk.php
The bookshop pages include select pages on many African countries
and topics, as well as on African publishers, and a list of the 100
best African books of the 20th century.
If you are looking for good gift ideas for the holidays, or for
your own browsing pleasure, also check out these Bulletins from
2008 to 2010, featuring recent books or CDs:
E-Books Poised to Take Off
http://www.africafocus.org/docs10/eb1011.php
Book Notes
http://www.africafocus.org/docs10/bk1007.php
New Books from AfricaFocus Subscribers
http://www.africafocus.org/docs09/sub0912.php
New Books on South Africa
http://www.africafocus.org/docs09/sab0912.php
Gift Music CDs
http://www.africafocus.org/docs09/cds0912.php
New Books 2009
http://www.africafocus.org/docs09/nb0905.php
Gift Books Issue 2008
http://www.africafocus.org/docs08/book0811.php
Gift Music CDs Issue 2008
http://www.africafocus.org/docs08/cds0812.php
And, on a personal note, several of my books are now available as
e-books on Google E-Books (although they don't yet show up in the
search!) None is priced at more than $4.
Apartheid's Contras: An Inquiry into the Roots of War in Angola and
Mozambique (1994)
http://books.google.com/books?id=iq970FthE0IC
King Solomon's Mines Revisited: Western Interests and the Burdened
History of Southern Africa (1986)
http://books.google.com/books?id=hInY3fym7IkC
Operation Timber: Pages from the Savimbi Dossier
http://books.google.com/books?id=LY2LnKwXdcoC
Portuguese Africa and the West (1972)
http://books.google.com/books?id=6JH9Ix3qfLcC
Imperial Network and External Dependency: The Case of Angola (1972)
http://books.google.com/books?id=iDk1XRE7oNAC
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note++++++++++++++++++++
New and Notable: A Sampling of Recent Non-Fiction Books
[Descriptions below are taken from the publisher's description,
unless otherwise noted.]
Stephanie Beswick and Jay Spaulding, eds., African Systems of
Slavery.
Africa World Press, 2010.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1592217257
African Systems of Slavery continues a discussion opened by Suzanne
Miers and Igor Kopytoff in 1977 with their seminal collection
Slavery in Africa. African slavery, in the first instance, should
be approached on its own terms. The contributors address a variety
of historical settings both old and new, from large kingdoms and
decentralized small-scale communities, widely distributed across
the reaches of an admittedly vast and complex continent.
Donald Martin Carter, Navigating the African Diaspora: The
Anthropology of Invisibility
University of Minnesota, 2010.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?081664778X
Investigating how the fraught political economy of migration
impacts people around the world, Donald Martin Carter raises
important issues about contemporary African diasporic movements.
Developing the notion of the anthropology of invisibility, he
examines invisibility in its various forms, from social rejection
and residential segregation to war memorials and the inability of
some groups to represent themselves through popular culture,
scholarship, or art. The geographic span of his analysis is global,
encompassing Senegalese Muslims in Italy and the United States and
concluding with practical questions about the future of European
societies.
General Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe, If
something is wrong: The invisible suffering of commercial farm
workers and their families due to 'Land Reform'
Weaver Press, 2010
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?0797441425
If Something is Wrong examines the preliminary results of a study
conducted by field officers of the General Agriculture and
Plantation Workers, Union of Zimbabwe (GAPWUZ). This publication
presents statistical evidence alongside first-person testimony to
provide a chilling account of the physical and psychological
violence perpetrated against Zimbabwe's farm workers. They number
some 1.8 million people, and have been the principal victims of
Zimbabwe's 'land-reform' programme.
Karim Hirji, Cheche: Reminiscences of a Radical Magazine.
Mkuki na Nyota, 2010.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?9987080987
Cheche was a radical, socialist student magazine that was started
at the University of Dar es Salaam in 1969. Among its contributors
were Walter Rodney, John Saul, and Issa Shivji. Because it was
independent of authority and spoke without fear or favor, it was
banned by the government after one year of existence. This books
narrates the life and times of Cheche and reflects on the student
radicalism of that era. It has been written by its former editors
and associates.
Mark Hunter, Love in the Time of AIDS: Inequality, Gender, and
Rights in South Africa
Indiana University Press, 2010
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?0253222397
"Beautifully, powerfully, and movingly written. The best analysis
I have seen not only of the reasons for the HIV/AIDS pandemic in
southern Africa, but of its wider socioeconomic, cultural, and
political dynamics." -- Shula Marks, School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London
Sarah Kitakule and Margaret Snyder, Above the Odds: A Decade of
Change for African Women Entrepreneurs
Africa World Press, 2010
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1592217648
In her new book, Margaret Snyder revisits many of the 74 women she
interviewed for her book Women in African Economies, and, with her
co-author Sarah Kitakule, gives a unique account of how they have
coped over the past decade. Covering women who belong to both the
informal and formal sector, farmers and traders as well as owners
of small businesses, the book gives a feel for how women have been
and remain the economic backbone of their communities and country.
John Liebenberg and Patricia Hayes, Bush of Ghosts: Life and War in
Namibia, 1986-1990
Struik, 2010
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1415201005
"A magisterial book: 270 pages, dominated with the intense,
startling, mundane and provocative images - the raw histories - of
life and war in Namibia from more-or-less 1986 to 1990. Liebenberg,
through various periods photographed and interacted with the SADF
(and its various components like Koevoet); with SWAPO and PLAN;
with ordinary people in the everyday of war, cuca shops, herders
and homes; with migrant workers and their personal portraits; with
the struggle and protests inside Namibia, and overwhelmingly with
the landscapes of war, its aftermath (the 'end of war') and with
the bush of ghosts, and its atrocious consequences of violence
(amongst others). But this is not a book about both, or opposing
sides, or even multiple sides, so much as it is a collection of
photographs of the mutuality of life and war, of how, all are
simultaneously in and out of it, and within each other's constructions of the bush
of ghosts." - Gary Minkley, University of Fort Hare
Hein Marais, South Africa Pushed to the Limit: The Political
Economy of Change
UCT Press, Zed Books, 2010.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1848138598
Since 1994, the democratic government in South Africa has worked
hard at improving the lives of the black majority, yet half the
population still lives in poverty, jobs are scarce, and the country
is more unequal than ever. For millions, the color of a person's
skin still decides their destiny. In its wide-ranging, in-depth and
provocative analysis, South Africa Pushed to the Limit shows that
although the legacies of apartheid and colonialism weigh heavy,
many of the strategic choices made since 1994 have compounded those
handicaps. The economy remains dominated by a handful of large
conglomerates that are now entwined in the circuitry of the global
economy. The government, meanwhile, has squandered its leverage
over their decisions. The social costs have been punishing. Marais
explains why those choices were made, where they went awry, and why
South Africa's vaunted formations of the left failed to prevent or
alter them.
Adele Newson-Hurst, ed., The Essential Nawal El Saadawi
Zed Books, 2010
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1848133359
This book, the first volume in "Zed's Essential Feminists" series,
gathers a selection of the whole range of Saadawi's writing
together in one volume for the first time. From fiction -- novellas
and short stories -- to essays on politics, culture, religion and
sex, from extensive interviews to her work as a dramatist, from
poetry to selections of her travel writing, this book will be
essential to anyone wishing to gain a sense of the total range of
Saadawi's work.
Michael Peel, A Swamp Full of Dollars: Pipelines and Paramilitaries
at Nigeria's Oil Frontier
Lawrence Hill Books, 2010
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1569762864
"The premise of Michael Peel's illuminating investigation into the
Nigerian condition - longlisted for the Guardian first book award
- is that this vast and complex land is not just the creature of
the west in the old colonial sense, but is fatally cursed by our
dependence on its oil to grease the wheels of our society and
financial institutions. Nigeria, he argues, offers a terrifying
vision of the consequences of tolerating gross inequality,
profligate energy use and environmental abuse. Peel is clear.
Nigeria's two main client states, the US and Britain, have profited
vastly from the systematic plunder of the country's assets by
dictators, governors and businessmen." - John Vidal, The Guardian
Bereket Habte Selassie, Wounded Nation: How a Once Promising
Eritrea Was Betrayed and Its Future Compromised
Red Sea Press, 2010
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1569023409
The second volume of Bereket Selassie's unforgettable memoirs, The
Crown and the Pen, is an outstanding analysis of the descent of
Eritrea into personal rule and dictatorship. This beautiful land
along the Red Sea is aptly described as a wounded nation, for its
once promising quest for freedom, lasting peace and material
prosperity has been betrayed by the denial of democratic rights and
liberties, the destruction of constitutional government, and the
lack of an aggressive pursuit of regional integration and
development in the Horn of Africa through pan-African solidarity.
Ian Smillie, Blood on the Stone: Greed, Corruption and War in the
Global Diamond Trade
Anthem Press, 2010.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?0857289632
"Ian Smillie's new book on conflict diamonds in Africa tells the
story of a small group of international actors taking on the most
powerful forces and institutions on the planet. The story and
Smillie's telling of it exposes the dilemmas and fault lines of
international social justice action, in a deeply intimate and
detailed fashion. And in its unfolding we glimpse the limits of the
prevailing paradigms of international institutional social justice
advocacy. It can be read as an inspirational story of trial and
triumph, or as a cautionary tale; in fact it is both, and worth
studying on both counts." - Brian Murphy
[see full review in Pambazuka News at
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/books/68011]
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with
a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.
AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
write to this address to subscribe or unsubscribe to the bulletin,
or to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about
reposted material, please contact directly the original source
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