Recommendations based on "In the House of the Interpreter"

Mahlangeni, the Tsonga word for "meeting place", is one of the most remote ranger stations in the Kruger National Park. Far from everywhere, this isolated corner of the wilderness was home for eleven years to Kobie Kruger, wife of the ranger in charge of the station, and their their three daughters. Running a household and raising a family in a place where leopards, elephants, snakes and the like are your only neighbours, where you have no telephone, and where a trip to town means first crossing a river full of hippos and crocodiles, is hardly a straightforward business. But Kobie Kruger tackled each problem with undaunted pragmatism and an energy that gives new meaning to word resourceful.

THE NEW YORK TIMES #1 BESTSELLEROPRAH BOOK CLUB PICK'One of the best books I have ever read in my entire life. I haven't felt this way since I first read Beloved . . .' Oprah WinfreyThe unmissable debut novel by the critically acclaimed author of Between the World and Me and We Were Eight Years in Power - a richly imagined and compulsively page-turning journey to freedomHiram Walker is born into bondage on a Virginia plantation. But he is also born gifted with a mysterious power that he won't discover until he is almost a man, when he risks everything for a chance to escape. One fateful decision will carry him away from his makeshift plantation family - his adoptive mother, Thena, a woman of few words and many secrets, and his beloved, angry Sophia - and into the covert heart of the underground war on slavery.Hidden amidst the corrupt grandeur of white plantation society, exiled as guerrilla cells in the wilderness, buried in the coffin of the deep South and agitating for utopian ideals in the North, there exists a widespread network of secret agents working to liberate the enslaved. Hiram joins their ranks and learns fast but in his heart he yearns to return to his own still-enslaved family, to topple the plantation that was his first home. But to do so, he must first master his unique power and reclaim the story of his greatest loss.Propulsive, transcendent and blazing with truth, The Water Dancer is a story of oppression and resistance, separation and homecoming. Ta-Nehisi Coates imagines the covert war of an enslaved people in response to a generations-long human atrocity - a war for the right to life, to kin, to freedom.'I was enthralled, I was devastated. I felt hope, I felt gratitude, I felt joy... [Ta-Nehisi Coates] is a magnificent writer' Oprah Winfrey

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of The Covenant of Water: An enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home. • “Filled with mystical scenes and deeply felt characters.... Verghese is something of a magician as a novelist.” —USA TodayMarion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.Moving from Addis Ababa to New York City and back again, Cutting for Stone is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, medicine and ordinary miracles—and two brothers whose fates are forever intertwined.This sweeping, emotionally riveting novel that "shows how history and landscape and accidents of birth conspire to create the story of a single life" (Los Angeles Times).

Preorder now and receive the stunning DELUXE LIMITED EDITION while supplies last―featuring a special alternate cover design on the hardcover case, gorgeous sprayed edges, and exclusive endpapers. This breathtaking edition is only available on a limited first print run."Her best work yet... about fame and family, culture and change, the power of story, the writer’s life... and robots. This one has it all.” — George R.R. MartinIn this exhilarating tale by New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor, a disabled Nigerian American woman pens a wildly successful Sci-Fi novel, but as her fame rises, she loses control of the narrative—a surprisingly cutting, yet heartfelt drama about art and love, identity and connection, and, ultimately, what makes us human. This is a story unlike anything you’ve read before.The future of storytelling is here.Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister’s lavish Caribbean wedding, she’s unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have so far peppered her unremarkable career. It’s a far-future epic where androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization. She calls it Rusted Robots.When Zelu finds the courage to share her strange novel, she does not realize she is about to embark on a life-altering journey—one that will catapult her into literary stardom, but also perhaps obliterate everything her book was meant to be. From Chicago to Lagos to the far reaches of space, Zelu’s novel will change the future not only for humanity, but for the robots who come next.A book-within-a-book that blends the line between writing and being written, Death of the Author is a masterpiece of metafiction that manages to combine the razor-sharp commentary of Yellowface with the heartfelt humanity of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Surprisingly funny, deeply poignant, and endlessly discussable, this is at once the tale of a woman on the margins risking everything to be heard and a testament to the power of storytelling to shape the world as we know it.

In the spring of 1938, Teodor Mykolayenko returns to his family after nearly two years in prison for the crime of trying to feed them. Given shelter by his sister Anna, his wife, Maria, and their five children barely survived on the harsh and brutal Canadian prairie landscape. Channelling a determination gained from escaping starvation and Stalin's crimes in the Ukraine, Teodor is committed to making a home. With unbending resolve, he takes to the land and as the crops grow, his family heals and strengthens, but their comfort is soon challenged: Anna's rogue husband returns with an unforgivable plan. Mesmerizing and passionate, Under This Unbroken Sky is an astonishing tale of family, love, betrayal, and the resiliency of the human spirit.

From one of the greatest writers of the modern era, an intimate and essential collection of personal essays on home, identity, and colonialism Chinua Achebe’s characteristically eloquent and nuanced voice is everywhere present in these seventeen beautifully written pieces. From a vivid portrait of growing up in colonial Nigeria to considerations on the African-American Diaspora, from a glimpse into his extraordinary family life and his thoughts on the potent symbolism of President Obama’s elections—this charmingly personal, intellectually disciplined, and steadfastly wise collection is an indispensable addition to the remarkable Achebe oeuvre.

She promised her mama she'd keep them safe.It's been six months since Mama died, and Chanda is struggling to raise her little brother and sister. Determined to end a family feud, she takes them to her relatives' remote rural village.But across the nearby border, a brutal civil war is spreading. Rebels led by the ruthless General Mandiki attack at night, stealing children. All that separates Chanda from the horror is a stretch of rugged bush and a national park alive with predators. Soon, not even that. Before she knows it, Chanda must face the unthinkable, with a troubled young tracker as her unlikely ally.Chanda's Wars is the unforgettable story of a teenager who risks everything to save her brother and sister. Epic in its sweep, intimate in its humanity, here is a gripping tale of family intrigue, love and courage, forgiveness and hope.

From the exiled Kenyan novelist, playwright, poet, and literary critic--a magisterial comic novel that is certain to take its place as a landmark of postcolonial African literature.In exile now for more than twenty years, Ngugl wa Thiong’o has become one of the most widely read African writers of our time, the power and scope of his work garnering him international attention and praise. His aim in Wizard of the Crow is, in his own words,nothing less than “to sum up Africa of the twentieth century in the context of two thousand years of world history.”Commencing in “our times” and set in the “Free Republic of Aburlria,” the novel dramatizes with corrosive humor and keenness of observation a battle for control of the souls of the Aburlrian people. Among the contenders: His High Mighty Excellency; the eponymous Wizard, an avatar of folklore and wisdom; the corrupt Christian Ministry; and the nefarious Global Bank. Fashioning the stories of the powerful and the ordinary into a dazzling mosaic, Wizard of the Crow reveals humanity in all its endlessly surprising complexity.Informed by richly enigmatic traditional African storytelling, Wizard of the Crow is a masterpiece, the crowning achievement in Ngugl wa Thiong’o’s career thus far.

In The Angels Weep by Wilbur Smith, on a continent of breathtaking beauty and bitter suffering, two vastly different cultures clashed, mingled, and recoiled. Here, amidst mist-shrouded mountains and gold-studded plateaus, ancient tribesmen lived close to the earth, as white men dug fortunes out from beneath them and laid plans for a new civilization.Out of Southern Africa the enigmatic Cecil Rhodes built an empire in the late 1800s and attracted the brightest and bravest of a generation--including a remarkable far-flung family named Ballantyne. But for the natives, another day was dawning: a day of retribution...From a courageous woman doctor to a fierce, one-eyed slave trader turned soldier, the whites of Africa were buffeted by two horrific waves of war. And just when a bloody peace seemed possible, the seeds of future turmoil were sown ...

A haunting tale of an Africa and an adolescence undergoing tremendous changes by a talented young Nigerian writer. Fifteen-year-old Kambili's world is circumscribed by the high walls of her family compound and the frangipani trees she can see from her bedroom window. Her wealthy Catholic father, although generous and well-respected in the community, is repressive and fanatically religious at home. Her life is lived under his shadow and regulated by schedules: prayer, sleep, study, and more prayer. She lives in fear of his violence and the words in her textbooks begin to turn to blood in front of her eyes. When Nigeria begins to fall apart under a military coup, Kambili's father, involved in mysterious ways with the unfolding political crisis, sends Kambili and her brother away to their aunt's. The house is noisy and full of laughter. Here she discovers love and a life -- dangerous and heathen -- beyond the confines of her father's authority. The visit will lift the silence from her world and, in time, reveal a terrible, bruising secret at the heart of her family life. This first novel is about the promise of freedom; about the blurred lines between the old gods and the new; between childhood and adulthood; between love and hatred. An extraordinary debut, Purple Hibiscus is a compelling novel which captures both a country and an adolescence at a time of tremendous change.