Her presence polarizes a community that does not see her people as human, and condemns her to the lonely life of an outcast. In the love story and intrigue that follows, Head brilliantly combines a portrait of loneliness with a rich affirmation of the mystery and spirituality of life. The core of this otherworldly, rhapsodic work is a plot about racial injustice and prejudice with a lesson in how traditional intolerance may render whole sections of a society untouchable.

Read worldwide for her wisdom, south african–born bessie head 1937–1986 offers a moving and magical tale of an orphaned girl, authenticity, Margaret Cadmore, and skillful prose, who goes to teach in a remote village in Botswana where her own people are kept as slaves.

G.: A Novel Vintage International

A brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in history's private moments. With profound compassion, and what happens during sex, the quiet cumulation in each of his sexual experiences of all of those that precede it, to reveal the conditions of the Don Juan's success: his essential loneliness, the tenderness that infuses even the briefest of his encounters, Berger explores the hearts and minds of both men and women, and the way women experience their own extraordinariness through their moments with him.

In this luminous novel -- winner of Britain's prestigious Booker Prize -- John Berger relates the story of "G. A young man forging an energetic sexual career in Europe during the early years of this century. All of this berger sets against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi and the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898, the Boer War, and the first flight across the Alps, making G.

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The Inheritance of Loss

The cook witnesses India’s hierarchy being overturned and discarded. Winner of the national book critics circle award and the man Booker Prize: An “extraordinary” novel “lit by a moral intelligence at once fierce and tender” The New York Times Book Review. In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas, an embittered old judge wants only to retire in peace.

A book about tradition and modernity, the past and the future—and about the surprising ways both amusing and sorrowful, in which they all connect. The independent. But his life is upended when his sixteen-year-old orphaned granddaughter, Sai, arrives on his doorstep. In a grasping world of colliding interests and conflicting desires, every moment holds out the possibility for hope or betrayal.

When a nepalese insurgency threatens Sai’s new-sprung romance with her tutor, the household descends into chaos. The judge’s chatty cook watches over the girl, hopscotching from one miserable New York restaurant job to another, but his thoughts are mostly with his son, Biju, trying to stay a step ahead of the INS.

Published to extraordinary acclaim, The Inheritance of Loss heralds Kiran Desai as one of our most insightful novelists. The judge revisits his past and his role in Sai and Biju’s intertwining lives. She illuminates the pain of exile and the ambiguities of postcolonialism with a tapestry of colorful characters and “uncannily beautiful” prose O: The Oprah Magazine.

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So Long a Letter

Angered by the traditions that allow polygyny, they inhabit a social milieu dominated by attitudes and values that deny them status equal to men. The brief narrative, written as an extended letter, is a sequence of reminiscences —some wistful, some bitter—recounted by recently widowed Senegalese schoolteacher Ramatoulaye Fall.

Winner of the prestigious Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. Written by award-winning african novelist mariama bâ and translated from the original French, So Long a Letter has been recognized as one of Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century. Addressed to a lifelong friend, aissatou, it is a record of Ramatoulaye’s emotional struggle for survival after her husband betrayed their marriage by taking a second wife.

Ramatoulaye hopes for a world where the best of old customs and new freedom can be combined. Considered a classic of contemporary african women’s literature, So Long a Letter is a must-read for anyone interested in African literature and the passage from colonialism to modernism in a Muslim country. This semi-autobiographical account is a perceptive testimony to the plight of educated and articulate Muslim women.

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When Rain Clouds Gather

Rural botswana is the backdrop for when rain clouds Gather, the first novel published by one of Africa’s leading woman writers in English, Bessie Head 1937–1986. A south african political refugee and an englishman join forces to revolutionize the villagers’ traditional farming methods, opposition from the local chief, but their task is fraught with hazards as the pressures of tradition, and the unrelenting climate threaten to divide and devastate the fragile community.

Inspired by her own traumatic life experiences as an outcast in Apartheid South African society and as a refugee living at the Bamangwato Development Association Farm in Botswana, Head’s tough and telling classic work is set in the poverty-stricken village of Golema Mmidi, a haven to exiles. Head’s layered, compelling story confronts the complexities of such topics as social and political change, race relations, religion, tribalism, conflict between science and traditional ways, the role of traditional African chiefs, and male–female relations.

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Haroun and the Sea of Stories Penguin Drop Caps

When haroun khalifa’s father, the renowned storyteller Rashid Khalifa, loses his gift of gab, Haroun knows he has to help. There, and at the end of his quest, he finds a host of comical, unforgettable new friends, from Iff the Water Genie to Blabbermouth the page, a formidable enemy – the Prince of Silence, Khattam-Shud himself.

Soon, he’s tumbled headfirst into an adventure story of his own, journeying toward the legendary Sea of Stories on the back of a flying Hoopoe bird. Salman rushdie has created an instant classic - a dazzling read for children and adults alike that both celebrates and embodies the magic of fiction. At once vastly humorous and deeply tender, Haroun and the Sea of Stories is a fantastical, witty contemporary fable and a powerful statement about the importance of storytelling.

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The Underdogs: A Novel of the Mexican Revolution Penguin Classics

Hailed as the greatest novel of the mexican revolution, the Underdogs recounts the story of an illiterate but charismatic Indian peasant farmer’s part in the rebellion against Porfirio Díaz, and his subsequent loss of belief in the cause when the revolutionary alliance becomes factionalized. Azuela’s masterpiece is a timeless, authentic portrayal of peasant life, revolutionary zeal, and political disillusionment.

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The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales

Regarded today as one of africa’s best-known woman writers in English, Head draws on the rich oral tradition of southern Africa and masterfully applies storytelling’s language and imagery. Carefully sequenced, the anthology gives special focus to village people from independence-era Botswana and the status, position, and plight of African women.

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Don Quixote Signet Classics

Complete and unabridged, don Quixote is the epic tale of the man from La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza. Their picaresque adventures in the world of seventeenth-century Spain form the basis of one of the great treasures of Western literature. In a new translation that “comes closest, to the simple, among the modern translations, intimate, direct style that characterizes Cervantes’ narrative, ”* Don Quixote is a novel that is both immortal satire of an outdated chivalric code and a biting portrayal of an age in which nobility was a form of madness.

John J. Allen, professor emeritus of Spanish, University of Kentucky and Past President of the Cervantes Society of America.

Flight to Canada: A Novel

Ishmael reed’s parody of slave narratives—the classical literature of the African American tradition—which redefined the neo-slave genre and launched a lucrative academic industrySome parodies are as necessary as the books they answer. But this particular civil war–era landscape is littered with modern elements, from Xerox copiers to airplanes, and freely reimagines historic figures as sacred as Abraham Lincoln.

Though flight to canada has been classified by some as a “post race” novel, the villains and the heroes are clear. Three slaves are on the run from the Swille plantation. Such is the case with flight to canada, Ishmael Reed’s scathing, offbeat response to conventional anti-slavery novels such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Among them, a poet who seeks freedom in Canada, the most hotly pursued is Raven Quickskill, and ultimately hopes to return and liberate others. A comedy flashing with insight, Flight to Canada poses serious questions about history and the complex ways that race relations in America are shaped by the past.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Ishmael Reed including rare images of the author.

A Grain of Wheat Penguin African Writers Series Book 2

At the center of it all is the reticent Mugo, the village's chosen hero and a man haunted by a terrible secret. With more than 1, 700 titles, penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

As we learn of the villagers' tangled histories in a narrative interwoven with myth and peppered with allusions to real-life leaders, including Jomo Kenyatta, a masterly story unfolds in which compromises are forced, friendships are betrayed, and loves are tested. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world.

. Barack obama, via facebook: “A compelling story of how the transformative events of history weigh on individual lives and relationships. The nobel prize–nominated kenyan writer’s best-known novelset in the wake of the Mau Mau rebellion and on the cusp of Kenya's independence from Britain, A Grain of Wheat follows a group of villagers whose lives have been transformed by the 1952–1960 Emergency.

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