Africa

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9780192802484

African History: A Very Short Introduction

This Very Short Introduction looks at Africa's past and reflects on the changing ways it has been imagined and represented. Key themes in current thinking about Africa's history are illustrated with a range of historical examples, drawn from over 5 millennia. Authors: John parker and Richard Rathbone. (184 pages)
Level: Library/Depot/Interdisciplinary projects etc.

  • Concrete histories and stories are used to build a picture of the continent's past and how that past has been interpreted in Africa and beyond.
  • The idea of study of 'African history' itself is new, and the authors show why it is still controversial
  • Themes include the unity and diversity of African cultures, slavery, religion, colonial conquest etc.
  • Questions covered: Who invented the idea of 'Africa'? How is African history pieced together, given such a lack of documentary evidence? How did Africa interact with the world 1,000 years ago?

Contents: 1: The idea of Africa; 2: Africans: diversity and unity; 3: Africa's past: historical sources; 4: Africa in the world; 5: Colonialism in Africa; 6: Imagining the future, rebuilding the past; 7: Memory and forgetting, past and present

0582437806

Atlas of Slavery

James Walvin maps the history of slavery from ancient to modern times and provides a concise commentary that deepens our understanding of slavery and its impact on global history. Walvin's atlas reminds us of the magnitude of the task that faced those who sought – and still seek – to eradicate slavery. Despite the wide-ranging atrocities of the twentieth century, the Atlantic slave system continues to hold a horrible fascination. In this book Walvin looks at slavery in the Americas in the broadest context, taking account of both earlier and later forms of slavery. The relationship between the critical continents, Europe, Africa and the Americas, is examined through a collection of maps and related text, which puts the key features of the history of slavery in their geographical setting. Walvin shows how the people of three widely separated continents were brought together into an economic and human system that was characterized both by violence and cruelty to its victims and huge economic advantage to its owners and managers. We may think of slavery as a largely bygone phenomenon, but it is a practice that continues to this day, and the exploitation of vulnerable human beings remains a pressing contemporary issue. A great resource from which the teacher can easily pull relevant sections.
Contents: Introduction — 1. Slavery in a global setting — 2. The Ancient World — 3. Overland Trade Routes — 4. European slavery and slave trades — 5. Exploration and the spread of sugar — 6. Europeans, slaves and West Africa — 7. Britain, slavery and the slave trade — 8. Africa — 9. The Atlantic — 10. Crossing the Atlantic — 11. Destinations — 12. Arrivals — 13. Brazil — 14. The Caribbean — 15. North America — 16. Cotton and the USA — 17. Slave Resistance — 18. Abolition and Emancipation — 19. East Africa and the Indian Ocean — 20. Slavery after abolition — 21. Chronology
(146 pages)
Level: Gymnasiet etc./A Teacher's resource for projects in co-operation with history/Library/Depot
9780195374636

Bottom Billion

In this impassioned synthesis from one of the world's leading experts on Africa and poverty, economist Paul Collier writes persuasively that although nearly five billion of the world's people are beginning to climb from desperate poverty and to benefit from globalization's reach to developing countries, there is a “bottom billion” of the world's poor whose countries, largely immune to the forces of global economy, are falling farther behind and are in danger of falling apart, separating permanently and tragically from the rest of the world. Collier identifies and explains the four traps that prevent the homelands of the world's billion poorest people from growing and joining in the benefits of globalization — civil war — the discovery and export of natural resources in otherwise unstable economies — being landlocked and therefore unable to participate in the global economy without great cost — and finally, ineffective governance. As he demonstrates that these billion people are quite likely in danger of being irretrievably left behind, Collier will argue that we cannot take a “headless heart” approach to these seemingly intractable problems; rather, that we must harness our despair and our moral outrage at these inequities to a reasoned and thorough understanding of the complex and interconnected problems that the world's poorest people face. Collier addresses the fact that conventional aid has been unable to tackle these problems and puts forward a radical new plan of action including a new agenda for the G8 which includes more effective anti-corruption measures, preferential trade policies and where necessary direct military intervention. Author: Paul Collier. (209 pages)
Level: Inspiration for the teacher/SRP/Kan læses i uddrag
9781861685742

Child Exploitation (Issues)

(Replaces Exploited Children)

Across the globe, children are forced to work as domestic labourers, as workers in clothing 'sweatshops' and as child soldiers. Others are sexually abused and forced into prostitution or pornography. How can we tackle human trafficking and ensure that children's rights are preserved? How does child labour affect the products available in the UK? How can child sex tourism be stopped?

  • Up to 1.2 million children are trafficked annually all over the world.
  • Two-thirds of all children that are not going to school are girls.
  • More than 200 million children worldwide are still in child labour.
  • Commercial sexual exploitation of children through prostitution is a global problem.
  • Trafficked and children will all suffer from a form of post-traumatic stress.
  • Less than half of prosecutions for human trafficking offences, including the exploitation of children for sex or crime, result in a conviction.
  • Africa has the largest number of child soldiers.

Key Facts;  Glossary;  Additional Resources (websites etc.);  Index

043590566X

Contemporary African Short Stories (Heinemann Book of)

This anthology (20 short stories written between 1980-1991) represents the talent and scope to be found in contemporary African writing. They are divided by region: five stories from Southern Africa; two from Central Africa; five from East Africa; two from Northern Africa; and six from West Africa. The issues of the area are often reflected in the selections — those from South Africa use racism as a major theme. Several have strong maternal figures struggling to provide for their families under intolerable burdens. Among the authors are Nadine Gordimer, Ben Okri, Kojo Laing, Mia Couto and Moyez Vassanji. (200 pages)
Level: C-A
9780143114734

Gods and Soldiers

The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary African Writing

20% Discount in 2012!

Gods and Soldiers captures the remarkable renaissance in African writing today:

With stories from northern Arabic-speaking to southern Zulu-speaking writers, this collection conveys thirty different ways of approaching what it means to be African. It features recent short stories, novel extracts and some nonfiction by 30 authors. Whether about life in the new urban melting pots of Cape Town and Luanda, or amid the battlefield chaos of Zimbabwe and Somalia, or set in the imaginary surreal landscapes born out of the oral storytelling tradition, these stories represent a striking cross section of new African writing. Each piece finds a human story to illuminate the continent's history of plight and promise, for instance Helon Habila's breathtaking tale of a political prisoner forced to write poems for the prison superintendent's girlfriend ... or a scene from Ngugi wa Thong'o's novel Wizard of the Crow depicting an Orwellian celebration for an unnamed ruler. Editor: Rob Spillman. Click on “Flere oplysninger” to see the Table of Contents. (336 pages)
Level: Gymnasiet

9781557046703

Hotel Rwanda (screenplay and essays)

This book, edited by director Terry George, includes essays on the history of the genocide, the complete screenplay written by Keir Pearson & Terry George, and more than 70 historical photos and film stills:
In 1994, as his country descended into madness, Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager of a Belgian-owned luxury hotel in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, used cunning and courage to save 1,268 people from certain death while the rest of the world closed its eyes. Outside about 800,000 people, mostly minority Tutsi, were being slaughtered by machete-wielding Hutu, the country's majority. His story inspired Terry George, to make the extraordinary film, Hotel Rwanda. The complete screenplay of the film makes up the main part of this film.
The book also contains several essays:  Terry George and co-screenwriter Keir Pearson's stories of their three-year struggle to gain support and financing; a brief history of Rwanda with details on the actual events portrayed in the movie;  journalist Nicola Graydon's report on joining Paul Rusesabagina when he first returned to Rwanda on the tenth anniversary of the genocide; writer Anne Thompson's personal journal of her visit to the set in Africa; the transcript of the PBS Frontline documentary revealing the afterthoughts of officials who chose not to listen to the cries for help. In addition there is a timeline of the crisis and a further reading and viewing list. (256 pages)
Level: All levels of the gymnasium/Good interdisciplinary possibilities
9780571232888

Last King of Scotland

Combining elements of the thriller noir with comedy, this novel is based on the macabre events of Idi Amin's regime. Shortly after his arrival in Uganda, Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan is called to the scene of a bizarre accident: Idi Amin, racing down a dirt road in his red Maserati, has run over a cow. When Garrigan tends to Amin, the dictator, who is obsessed with all things Scottish, appoints him as his personal physician. And so begins a fateful dalliance with the central African leader whose autocracy soon transforms into a reign of surreal and brutal terror, which Garrigan is drawn into the heart of. Amin is as ridiculous as he is abhorrent — a grown man who must be burped like an infant, a self-proclaimed cannibalist who, at the end of his 8 years in power, would be responsible for 300,000 deaths. Garrigan is both fascinated and appalled by Amin and awakens to a realisation of  his baroque barbarism — and his own complicity in it.  The book becomes a meditation on conscience, charisma, and the corruption of the human heart. Author: Giles Foden.  (345 pages)
Level: B/A

9780571201983

Poisonwood Bible

*NEW IN JANUARY 2012*

This is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it — from garden seeds to Scripture — is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is the story of one family' s tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.

The novel is set against the Congo' s fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs it of its autonomy. Against this backdrop, Orleanna Price tells the story of her evangelist husband' s part in the Western assault on Africa and raises questions about her own culpability. Also narrating the story, by turns, are her four daughters, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia. Ultimately each of them must strike her own separate path to salvation. This is a compelling exploration of moral risk and personal responsibility and a classic of postcolonial literature. Author: Barbara Kingsolver. (626 pages)
Level: 2nd and 3rd Years of Gymnasium/Reading Groups

9781848420885

Ruined

The Pulitzer Prize winning play by black New York playwright Lynn Nottage, set in present-day Africa:

How do you dramatize distant, gruesome political realities? In Ruined Lynn Nottage depicts the horrific toll sexual violence has taken on women in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She balances unspeakably awful facts with the ordinary, and even hopeful in a way that increases the emotionally wrenching effect.
Mama Nadi owns a bar and poolroom staffed by waitresses who provide more than whiskey and food. It's located in a mining town, where demand for tin has escalated a brutal power struggle between various factions. Mama Nadi, a survivor and opportunist, caters not just to the miners, but to soldiers of whichever faction enters her premises. She runs a cozy little whorehouse — one of the cleanest and safest places in the area — and she’s determined to keep it that way. No bullets, no brawling, no unwashed hands and no talk of the civil war raging outside. Her determined impartiality and strict rule about guns being emptied by all who enter her little kingdom, has enabled her to control what goes on within her house, if not what happens beyond its front door. But will Mama be able to stay neutral forever? Menace overhangs life in the bar, and intensifies every time customers arrive. For the young women working here, whoring is nice work, compared with what they experienced before. Inspite of her neutrality Mama cannot remain emotionally uninvolved with the damaged girls who work for her — especially Sophie who is a victim not just of rape but mutilation, which gives her the bad luck status of a ruined girl. Lyrical written this powerful play is based on extensive interviews with Congolese women. (126 pages)
Level: 2nd and 3rd years of the Gymnasium/B-A

9781844081165

Slave: My True Story

A personal story that gives an insight into the 21st century slave trade:

Mende Nazer's happy childhood was cruelly cut short at the age of twelve when the Mujahidin rode into her village in the Nuba mountains of Sudan. They hacked down terrified villagers, raped the women and abducted the children. Mende was amongst them. She was taken and sold to an Arab woman in Khartoum. She was stripped of her name and her freedom. For seven long years she was kept as a domestic slave, an 'abid', without any pay or a single day off. Her food was the leftover scraps and her bed was the floor of the locked-up garden shed. She endured this harsh and lonely existence without knowing whether her family was alive or dead, for seven long years. Passed on by her master, like a parcel, to a relative in London, Mende eventually managed to escape to freedom. Slave is a shocking first-person insight into the modern day slave trade. It is also a memoir of an African childhood and a moving testimony to a young girl's indomitable spirit in the face of adversity. Author: Mende Nazer. (336 pages)
Level: From the end of the first year of the Gymnasium/HF etc.