African Stories

A Pocket Classics hardcover collection of 36 terrific stories by major writers from across Africa, selected by the Booker Prize–winning Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri Award-winning writer Ben Okri, author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The Famished Road, curates this one-volume overview of the best of African literature. Here is a pantheon of enormous talents from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, hailing from a wide variety of countries and cultures and including multiple winners of the Nobel Prize in literature, the Booker Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. The writers include Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Tayeb Salih, Doris Lessing, J. M. Coetzee, M. G. Vassanji, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and many more. The short story form has a rich history on the African continent, drawing on a deep well of traditional oral tales, fables, and legends as well as a vital and ongoing engagement with the forces of history and modernity. Subjects range from the vicissitudes of daily life to sweeping social commentary, with such varied characters as a shopkeeper yearning for love in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s “Cages,” a faith-healing priest in Bessie Head’s “Jacob,” a freedom fighter facing apartheid in Nadine Gordimer’s “Amnesty,” and invading aliens overcome by music in Emmanuel Boundzéki Dongala’s “Jazz and Palm Wine.” Whether they touch on the spirit world, the urban experience, colonialism, politics, humor, or love, these stories are both dazzling and moving. Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket.

BEN OKRI is a Nigerian-born British poet and novelist. His books have won several awards including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Africa and the Paris Review's Aga Khan Prize for Fiction. The Famished Road won the Booker Prize in 1991. He was born in Minna, Nigeria, and lives in London.

CONTENTS Preface by Ben Okri Chinua Achebe, “The Voter” / NIGERIA Olympe Bhely-Quenum, “A Child in the Bush of Ghosts” / REPUBLIC OF BENIN Ngugi wa Thiong’o, “The Martyr” / KENYA Bessie Head, “Jacob: The Story of the Faith-Healing Priest” / SOUTH AFRICA and BOTSWANA Camara Laye, “The Eyes of the Statue” / GUINEA Doris Lessing, “A Sunrise on the Veld” / ZIMBABWE, Nobel Prize winner Ben Okri, “Incidents at the Shrine” / NIGERIA Grace Ogot, “Green Leaves” / KENYA Ousmane Sembene, “Tribal Marks” / SENEGAL Mouhamadou Nouktan Diop, “The Pot of Gold” / MAURITIUS Abdulrazak Gurnah, “Cages” / ZANZIBAR, Nobel Prize winner Ama Ata Aidoo, “Two Sisters” / GHANA Mia Couto, “The Birds of God” / MOZAMBIQUE Jomo Kenyatta, “Gentlemen of the Jungle” / KENYA Tayeb Salih, “A Handful of Dates” / SUDAN Ezekiel (Es’kia) Mphahlele, “The Coffee-Cart Girl” / SOUTH AFRICA David Owoyele, “The Will of Allah” / NIGERIA Nadine Gordimer, “Amnesty” / SOUTH AFRICA, Nobel Prize winner Henri Lopes, “The Plot” / REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO Clementine Nzuji Madiya, “Ditetembwa” / ZAIRE Daniel Mandishona, “A Wasted Land” / ZIMBABWE Ahmed Essop, “Hajji Musa and the Hindu Fire-Walker” / INDIA/SOUTH AFRICA J . M. Coetzee, “The Glass Abattoir” / SOUTH AFRICA, Nobel Prize winner Jean Pliya, “The Watch-Night” / REPUBLIC OF BENIN Guillaume Oyono-Mbia, “The Little Railway Station” / CAMEROON B. L. Honwana, “Papa, Snake & I” / MOZAMBIQUE Saida Hagi-Dirie Herzi, “Government by Magic Spell” / SOMALIA Dambudzo Marechera, “Protista” / ZIMBABWE Jack Cope, “Power” / SOUTH AFRICA Jamal Mahjoub, “Road Block” / SUDAN Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, “Ghosts” / NIGERIA Francis Bebey, “Edda’s Marriage” / CAMEROON Adewale Maja Pearce, “The Hotel” / NIGERIA Okey Chigbo, “The Housegirl” / NIGERIA M. G. Vassanji, “Leaving” / TANZANIA Emmanuel Boundzeki Dongala, “Jazz and Palm Wine” / CONGO