Books I Read March 23, 2025

Read a bit this week.

Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani and Viviana Mazza – The life of a girl in rural northern Nigeria is upended when her village is attacked by Boko Haram. Spare and terrible.

The Brothers' War: Biafra and Nigeria by John de St. Jorre – Had to jump through various hoops to attain a copy of this unfortunately out of print history of the Biafran civil war. Strange that a conflict which was so formative in the West's view of post-colonial Africa has gone so completely down the rabbit hole. Anyway, St. Jorre was a journalist and visited the breakaway Iboan republic, but manages to combine an on the ground view of the conflict with a nuanced take on the complex factors which caused and prolonged it.

The Villain's Dance by Fiston Mwanza Mujila – A selection of neer'do'wells try and make it big in the closing days of the Mobutu regime in this lively and sardonic novel. Mujila emigrated to Austria and there is more than a touch of Mitteleuropa in his bleak hedonism and chaotic enumerations (also he name checks Musil quite a lot). I've become quite a fan of Mujila after two books, his novels are sharp and strange and entirely concerned with themselves rather than pandering to the expectations of a Western audience.

Katanga 1960-63: Mercenaries, Spies and the African Nation that Waged War on the World by Christopher Othen – Congo's first post-colonial war as told in a narrative so compellingly snappy it makes me want to double check the sources. Which admittedly is a backhanded compliment and perhaps a bit unfair, particularly as I found this informative and engaging.

Larger Than Life by Dino Buzzati – A scientist and his wife become involved in a secret government project. I won't say more on the off chance you pick up this largely forgotten post-war Italian sci-fi novella, but it's got a good stiff kick at the end.

The Book of Not by Tsitsi Dangarembga – A precocious native girl matriculates at a mostly white Catholic school in war-torn Rhodesia. Dangarembga is a fine writer, with a sharp eye and a neat pen, but I found this overwhelmingly miserable, and not in the 'boy, war-torn Rhodesia was a shitty place to live' way, so much as a 'only bad things ever happen to this protagonist which undercuts the drama and starts to feel cloying' sort of way. Still, it's a good book and I'll be reading the sequel.

Zulu Zulu Golf: Two Years with KOEVOET by Arn Durand – The auto-biography of a reckless teenager who becomes embroiled in one of South Africa's many small wars throughout the continent. Interesting in an unhinged and amoral way.