Author: Roger S. Levine
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300168594
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 477
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Book Description
Born into a Xhosa royal family around 1792 in South Africa, Jan Tzatzoe was destined to live in an era of profound change—one that witnessed the arrival and entrenchment of European colonialism. As a missionary, chief, and cultural intermediary on the eastern Cape frontier and in Cape Town and a traveler in Great Britain, Tzatzoe helped foster the merging of African and European worlds into a new South African reality. Yet, by the 1860s, despite his determined resistance, he was an oppressed subject of harsh British colonial rule. In this innovative, richly researched, and splendidly written biography, Roger S. Levine reclaims Tzatzoe's lost story and analyzes his contributions to, and experiences with, the turbulent colonial world to argue for the crucial role of Africans as agents of cultural and intellectual change.
Author: Timothy Keegan
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813949181
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 473
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Book Description
An Age of Hubris is the first comprehensive overview of the impact of missionary enterprise on the Xhosa chiefdoms of South Africa in the first half of the nineteenth century, chronicling a world punctuated by war and millenarian eruptions, and the steady encroachment of settler land hunger and colonial hegemony. With it, Timothy Keegan contributes new approaches to Xhosa history and, most important, a new dimension to the much-trodden but still vital topic of the impact—cultural, social, and political—of missionary activity among African peoples. The most significant historical works on the Xhosa have either become dated, foreground imperial-colonial history, or remain heavily theoretical in nature. In contrast, Keegan draws fruitfully on the rich Africanist comparative and anthropological literature now available, as well as extant primary sources, to foreground the Xhosa themselves in this crucial work. In so doing, he highlights the ways in which Africans utilized new ideas, resources, and practices to make sense of, react to, and resist the forces of colonial dispossession confronting them, emphasizing missionary frustration and African agency.
Author: William Boyd
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307787796
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 391
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Book Description
In the small African republic of Kinjanja, British diplomat Morgan Leafy bumbles heavily through his job. His love of women, his fondness for drink, and his loathing for the country prove formidable obstacles on his road to any kind of success. But when he becomes an operative in Operation Kingpin and is charged with monitoring the front runner in Kinjanja’s national elections, Morgan senses an opportunity to achieve real professional recognition and, more importantly, reassignment. After he finds himself being blackmailed, diagnosed with a venereal disease, attempting bribery, and confounded with a dead body, Morgan realizes that very little is going according to plan.
Author: Xolela Mangcu
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857734202
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
Steve Biko was an exceptional and inspirational leader, a pivotal figure in South African history. As a leading anti-apartheid activist and thinker, Biko created the Black Consciousness Movement, the grassroots organisation which would mobilise a large proportion of the black urban population. His death in police custody at the age of just 30 robbed South Africa of one of its most gifted leaders. Although the rudimentary facts of his life - and death - are well known, there has until now been no in-depth book on this major political figure and the impact of his life and tragic death. Xolela Mangcu, who knew Biko, provides the first in-depth look at the life of one of the most iconic figures of the anti-apartheid movement, whose legacy is still felt strongly today, both in South Africa, and worldwide in the global struggle for civil rights.
Author: Jeffrey Gettleman
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062284118
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
“A page-turner. The portrait of Africa that emerges is disturbing, tender, and harsh. . . . A tremendous read. I couldn’t put it down.” —Abraham Verghese, New York Times–bestselling author of The Covenant of Water A seasoned war correspondent, Jeffrey Gettleman has covered every major conflict over the past twenty years, from Afghanistan to Iraq to the Congo. For the past decade, he has served as the East Africa bureau chief for the New York Times, fulfilling a teenage dream. At nineteen, Gettleman fell in love, twice. On a do-it-yourself community service trip in college, he went to East Africa—a terrifying, exciting, dreamlike part of the world in the throes of change that imprinted itself on his imagination and on his heart. But around that same time he also fell in love with a fellow Cornell student—the brightest, classiest, most principled woman he’d ever met. To say they were opposites was an understatement. She became a criminal lawyer in America; he hungered to return to Africa. For the next decade he would be torn between these two abiding passions. A sensually rendered coming-of-age story, Love, Africa is a tale of passion, violence, far-flung adventure, tortuous long-distance relationships, screwing up, forgiveness, parenthood, and happiness that explores the power of finding yourself in the most unexpected of places. “Aptly displays why [Gettleman's] a Pulitzer Prize winner and a New York Times bureau chief . . . there's a thrilling immediacy and attention to detail in Gettleman's writing that puts the reader right beside him. . . . An absolute must-read.” —Booklist, starred review “Love, Africa offers a key to understanding humankind’s past and future and a key to understanding our hearts.” —Sheryl Sandberg
Author: Christopher Osagie
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1462067654
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 101
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Book Description
In his memoir, The Man from Africa, author Christopher Osagie describes the cultural differences that he experienced when he moved from Africa to the United States. In spite of these differences, he adjusts to his new life and learns to appreciate the higher moral standards in his new country. From being a pest control technician to becoming a poultry specialist, he demonstrates the abundance of opportunities available to anyone who is ready and willing to work very hard. In Nigeria, as in many other African countries, immigrating to the United States is a common dream. The United States is usually referred to as Gods own country because of the perceived limitless opportunities available to all those willing to work hard in order to achieve their individual ambitions. Consequently, Nigerians with successful careerseven established professionals, such as medical doctors, lawyers, and engineershave chosen to leave behind all that they have achieved in order to immigrate to the United States, where they believe they will have the opportunity to attain even more. The Man from Africa was written to enlighten new immigrants from other countries in Africa and from all over the world about what to expect if they choose to immigrate to the United States.
Author: Patrick Lenahan
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004549935
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 333
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Book Description
When the Scottish poet Thomas Pringle emigrated to the Cape Colony in 1820 he voyaged also into a new creative life and an art responsive to his colonial home, “sterner verse” for “darker scenes”. Accompanying him to the Cape, the sonnet became his most consistent choice for capturing his experiences and convictions, his personal crises and the greater trauma of colonial appropriation and racial oppression. In this study his unique contribution to the Romantic-era sonnet is for the first time given its full due, through readings that are as attentive to form and formal agency as to the cultural, social and historical conditions in which they are enmeshed. Moving beyond colonial theory to consider issues of literary migration, this illuminating work shows how Pringle effectively opened up a radical conversation between the habitual modes of perception and response of British Romanticism and his new, southern world.
Author: Teun Voeten
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429982004
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342
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Book Description
In 1998, acclaimed photojournalist Teun Voeten headed to Sierra Leone for what he thought would be a standard assignment on the child soldiers there. But the cease-fire ended just as he arrived, and the clash between the military junta and the West African peace-keeping troops forced him to hide in the bush from rebels who were intent on killing him. How de Body? ("how are you?" in Sierra Leone's Creole English) is a dramatic account of the conflict that has been raging in the country for nearly a decade-and how Voeten nearly became a casualty of it. Accessible and conversational, it's a look into the dangerous diamond trade that fuels the conflict, the legacy of war practices such as forced amputations, the tragic use of child soldiers, and more. The book is also a tribute to the people who never make the headlines: Eddy Smith, a BBC correspondent who eventually helps Voeten escape; Alfred Kanu, a school principal who risks his life to keep his students and teachers going amidst the bullets and raids; and Padre Victor, who runs a safe haven for ex-child soldiers; among others. Featuring Voeten's stunning black-and-white photos from his multiple trips to the conflict area, How de Body? is a crucial testament to a relatively unknown tragedy.
Author: Helen Tilley
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226803481
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 520
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Book Description
Tropical Africa was one of the last regions of the world to experience formal European colonialism, a process that coincided with the advent of a range of new scientific specialties and research methods. Africa as a Living Laboratory is a far-reaching study of the thorny relationship between imperialism and the role of scientific expertise—environmental, medical, racial, and anthropological—in the colonization of British Africa. A key source for Helen Tilley’s analysis is the African Research Survey, a project undertaken in the 1930s to explore how modern science was being applied to African problems. This project both embraced and recommended an interdisciplinary approach to research on Africa that, Tilley argues, underscored the heterogeneity of African environments and the interrelations among the problems being studied. While the aim of British colonialists was unquestionably to transform and modernize Africa, their efforts, Tilley contends, were often unexpectedly subverted by scientific concerns with the local and vernacular. Meticulously researched and gracefully argued, Africa as a Living Laboratory transforms our understanding of imperial history, colonial development, and the role science played in both.
Author: Martin Dugard
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0385504527
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 442
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Book Description
What really happened to Dr. David Livingstone? The New York Times bestselling coauthor of Survivor: The Ultimate Game investigates in this thrilling account. With the utterance of a single line—“Doctor Livingstone, I presume?”—a remote meeting in the heart of Africa was transformed into one of the most famous encounters in exploration history. But the true story behind Dr. David Livingstone and journalist Henry Morton Stanley is one that has escaped telling. Into Africa is an extraordinarily researched account of a thrilling adventure—defined by alarming foolishness, intense courage, and raw human achievement. In the mid-1860s, exploration had reached a plateau. The seas and continents had been mapped, the globe circumnavigated. Yet one vexing puzzle remained unsolved: what was the source of the mighty Nile river? Aiming to settle the mystery once and for all, Great Britain called upon its legendary explorer, Dr. David Livingstone, who had spent years in Africa as a missionary. In March 1866, Livingstone steered a massive expedition into the heart of Africa. In his path lay nearly impenetrable, uncharted terrain, hostile cannibals, and deadly predators. Within weeks, the explorer had vanished without a trace. Years passed with no word. While debate raged in England over whether Livingstone could be found—or rescued—from a place as daunting as Africa, James Gordon Bennett, Jr., the brash American newspaper tycoon, hatched a plan to capitalize on the world’s fascination with the missing legend. He would send a young journalist, Henry Morton Stanley, into Africa to search for Livingstone. A drifter with great ambition, but little success to show for it, Stanley undertook his assignment with gusto, filing reports that would one day captivate readers and dominate the front page of the New York Herald. Tracing the amazing journeys of Livingstone and Stanley in alternating chapters, author Martin Dugard captures with breathtaking immediacy the perils and challenges these men faced. Woven into the narrative, Dugard tells an equally compelling story of the remarkable transformation that occurred over the course of nine years, as Stanley rose in power and prominence and Livingstone found himself alone and in mortal danger. The first book to draw on modern research and to explore the combination of adventure, politics, and larger-than-life personalities involved, Into Africa is a riveting read.
