Hello darlings!

12 more days before i´m leaving Sweden and all the packing and moving from the apartment is finally done. On tuesday I´m giving the keys to the new tenants and after that I´m officially homeless which feels a bit weird tbh.
But I´m not homeless, I have the apartment in Kotu that is waiting for me.

I´ve started to look for interesting books to read. Preferably books by Gambian authors or books about the Gambia to begin with. It´s kind of crazy that we don´t get taught much about anything African-related in school. Or maybe we do and I just can´t remember it? Anyways I´m lookin forward to have the time to read and learn new things 🙂

Our local library here didn´t have Reading the ceiling by Dayo Forster from 2007 which I really would like to read, so I ended up borrowing the following books instead:

The Sun will soon shine by Sally Sadie Singhateh, 2004

For an intelligent, ambitious girl growing up in a Gambian village, life holds few tempting prospects. Marriage and motherhood, often forced, are the paths assigned to most. Nyima, too, is subject to this fate, as well as having to endure the health-endangering ongoing practice of genital mutilation.

But ours is a heroine of immense courage, able to see beyond her situation, despite the bleakness of life. She makes it through her darkest hours, and emerges stronger on the other side, though permanently scarred by her ordeals.It is in education and work that Nyima finds her salvation, and begins to rebuild her life, and indeed be reborn. The question is, though, can she ever truly love or trust again?

This is a moving and emphatic tale of a young woman’s struggle to come to terms with her past and culture, and above all, the possibility of having a future to look forward to, no matter what the odds.

 

African Aliens by Lang Fafa Dampha, 2005

Sainy, a young Gambian, arrives in Paris with high hopes for a better life. Confronted by a minefield of immigration restrictions with which he struggles vainly, he accepts an easy way in by marrying a Gambian-born divorcée and becoming the step-father of the woman’s young son.

As the months pass, Sainy learns new fact about Africans living in France and sees how their home-grown values of culture, community and morality adapt in their new culture, for better or worse.

An authentic and grasping story with sly humour, of African immigrants in Paris facing a seemingly irreconcilable culture clash laden with racism and self destructiveness. This is the pulsating underbelly of Paris that tourists never experience.
Mark Cramer/ Author ofInsider´s Paris, and Scared Money, a work of fiction.

 

A killing in the sun by Dilman Dila 2014

A Killing in the Sun’ is a collection of speculative fiction from Africa. It draws from the rich oral culture of the author’s childhood, to tell a wide variety of stories. Some of the stories are set in a futuristic Africa, where technology has transformed everyday life and a dark force rules. Others are set in the present day, with refugee aliens from outer space, ghosts haunting brides and grooms, evil scientists stalking villages, and greedy corporations creating apocalypses. There are murder mysteries, tales of reincarnation and of the walking dead, and alternative worlds whose themes any reader will identify with. This collection is deftly crafted, running along the thin boundary of speculative and literary genres.

 

I will get back with my thoughts and a review. I think I will post them to their own book log page HERE.

Do you have any suggestions of Gambian / African authors that I should read? Or books about the Gambia / the African continent?
I´m interested in both fact and fiction so give me your best tips plz 🙂

xoxo/ Salla V