Books I Read June 1st, 2025

This week I stepped on salt flats.

The Shameful State by Sony Labou Tansi – A surrealist post-modern satire of the African tyrant, I gather effectively the ur-text for this form of regional fiction. Not an easy read, as you'd imagine from the description, but excellent all the same. The language is complex but comprehensible, if viscerally and deliberately unpleasant at points. Another Alain Mabanckou recommendation which was very much worth the time.

African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa by Michael A. Gomez – A comprehensively researched, relatively readable history of the great pre-colonial West African empires. Limitations in the historical record make the early portions a little touch and go but the later bits offered valuable (to me) insight into the basis framework of the epoch.

No Sweetness Here and Other Stories by Ama Ata Aidoo – Elegant short fiction exploring the disappointment of the post-colonial African dream. Varied and well-realized.

Waiting for the Waters to Rise by Maryse Conde – A kindly disaporean doctor tries to return a Haitain newborn to her family.