Next season will bring a number of literary works about Africa, written by Africans or by people who spent a portion of their lives there. Though varied in subject matter and genre, all are being hailed by critics. For fiction, see chart; among nonfiction titles are Chameleon Days by Tim Bascom (Mariner), Black Gold of the Sun by Ekow Eshun (Pantheon), There Is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Greene (Bloomsbury), The White Masaiby Corinne Hofmann (Amistad) and Casting with a Fragile Threadby Wendy Kann (Holt).
| Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Knopf, Sept.) | Unconfessed by Yvette Christiansë (Other Press, Nov.) | Knots by Nuruddin Farah (Riverhead, Feb. 2007) | Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o (Pantheon, Aug.) | |
| About the author: | A black woman born in 1977 in Nigeria. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, was shortlisted for the Orange Fiction Prize. | A black woman born in South Africa under apartheid. Her previous book, Castaway, collected poems about life on an island off Africa. | A black man born in 1945 in what is now Somalia. Penguin reissued From a Crooked Rib; Graywolf will reissue Sweet and Sour Milk. | A black man born in 1938 in Kenya, imprisoned by the Kenyan government in 1977 for writing Petals of Blood. |
| Country where the story takes place: | Nigeria | South Africa | Somalia | The fictional Republic of Aburiria |
| Story: | War in Nigeria changes the lives of a 13-year-old peasant boy who survives recruitment into a raggedy army and sisters from a wealthy, well-connected family. | In the 1820s, a slave is sentenced to hard labor on an island near Capetown following her killing of her own son. | A woman returns to the war-torn streets of Mogadishu to reclaim family property presently being squatted in by a "minor warlord." | Amid despotism, an educated man with no job sets up shop as a wizard and dispenses sorcery to people who find witchcraft less absurd than everyday life. |
| Compared to Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe? | Yes, by the Washington Post Book World and Joyce Carol Oates | No | Yes, in the Wall Street Journal | Yes, by Pantheon Books publicity |
