This novel imagines aspects of a true story. Sarah Forbes Bonetta was born into a West African tribe around 1843, orphaned, and captured with the intention of selling her into slavery or using her for human sacrifice. In 1850, she was given to Frederick Forbes, a representative of Queen Victoria who was working to stop… [Read More]
Blog
Category: Africa
Ghana: Ghana Must Go (the other novel)
When I did my reading around Africa project a few years back, I read a novel called Ghana Must Go. Now, I’m plugging away on my reading around the world project, and I finished another novel called Ghana Must Go. The title of both refers to the 1983 expulsion of Ghanaian migrants from Nigeria. Many… [Read More]
Morocco: Bank Al-Maghrib Museum
Morocco’s central bank has a museum in Rabat, the nation’s capital, and it is worth a visit. The collection and exhibits are a mix of economic history, numismatics, and works by Moroccan artists. The Bank al-Maghrib Museum also hosts public performances and corporate events. (Maghrib, which means “west” or “sunset”, is the Arabic name for… [Read More]
Egypt: Palace of Desire
To cover Egypt in my Around the World project, I picked up the second book in the Naguib Mahfouz Cairo Trilogy. I read the first one, Palace Walk, seemingly a million years ago. It may take me another million years to get to the third, but I hope not because the first two were really… [Read More]
Uganda: Kintu
I’m skipping around the alphabet and sliding around the world to land on Uganda and the book Kintu, a novel by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi. It’s a multigenerational story about a curse released in 1750. Kintu Kiddu’s descendants deal with its effects until the the novel’s conclusion, set in 2004. At the same time, it asks… [Read More]
