It’s #SummerSoLit Reading Challenge Suggestion Time again. We have been suggesting books for you to read and to win this. And we know you are in it to win it. Here are the previous posts of square suggestions:
#SUMMERSOLIT: 5 BOOKS PUBLISHED IN 2019
#SUMMERSOLIT: 5 BOOKS BY DEBUT AUTHORS IN 2019
#SUMMERSOLIT: 5 BOOKS WITH “SUMMER” IN THE TITLE
#SUMMERSOLIT: 5 BOOKS ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH
#SUMMERSOLIT: 5 HISTORICAL ROMANCE BOOKS
Mocha Girls are you doing our #SummerSoLit Book Bingo Reading Challenge. You didn’t get the amazing book bingo card yet. Well, let’s fix that first. Click here for the Book Bingo card and to sign up. Let us know you are joining us. Cause 2019 #SummerSoLit is so perfect for reading.
THE INFORMATION
The reading challenge is a general challenge starting on Summer Solstice and ends on the first day of Fall Equinox aka June 6/21/19 to (Ending soon) 9/23/19! For all the rules go to #SummerSoLit
Today we are going to do another square on the bingo card. This one is for Historical Romance.
~ 5 Books by African Authors ~
CHIGOZIE OBIOMA
Chigozie Obioma (born 1986) is a Nigerian writer and assistant professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He has been called, in a New York Times book review, “the heir to Chinua Achebe.” In 2015, he was named one of “100 Global Thinkers” by Foreign Policy magazine
A contemporary twist on the Odyssey, An Orchestra of Minorities is narrated by the chi, or spirit of a young poultry farmer named Chinonso. His life is set off course when he sees a woman who is about to jump off a bridge. Horrified by her recklessness, he hurls two of his prized chickens off the bridge. The woman, Ndali, is stopped in her tracks.
Chinonso and Ndali fall in love but she is from an educated and wealthy family. When her family objects to the union on the grounds that he is not her social equal, he sells most of his possessions to attend college in Cyprus. But when he arrives in Cyprus, he discovers that he has been utterly duped by the young Nigerian who has made the arrangements for him. Penniless, homeless, we watch as he gets further and further away from his dream and from home.
An Orchestra of Minorities is a heart-wrenching epic about destiny and determination.
TENDAI HUCHU
Tendai Huchu (born 1982) is a Zimbabwean author, best known for his novels The Hairdresser of Harare (2010) and The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician (2014).
Tendai Huchu’s first novel, The Hairdresser of Harare, was released in 2010 to critical acclaim and has been translated into German, French, Italian, and Spanish. His short fiction in multiple genres and nonfiction have appeared in Enkare Review, The Manchester Review, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Gutter, Interzone, AfroSF, Wasafiri, Warscapes, The Africa Report and elsewhere. In 2013 he received a Hawthornden Fellowship and a Sacatar Fellowship. He was shortlisted for the 2014 Caine Prize.
He is now a podiatrist in Edinburgh.
The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician
Three very different men struggle with thoughts of belonging, loss, identity and love as they attempt to find a place for themselves in Britain. The Magistrate tries to create new memories and roots, fusing a wandering exploration of Edinburgh with music. The Maestro, a depressed, quixotic character, sinks out of the real world into the fantastic world of literature. The Mathematician, full of youth, follows a carefree, hedonistic lifestyle, until their three universes collide.
A. IGONI BARRETT
Adrian Igonibo Barrett (born 1979) is a Nigerian writer of short stories and novels. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature.
Furo Wariboko, a young Nigerian, awakes the morning before a job interview to find that he’s been transformed into a white man. In this condition, he plunges into the bustle of Lagos to make his fortune. With his red hair, green eyes, and pale skin, it seems he’s been completely changed. Well, almost. There is the matter of his family, his accent, his name. Oh, and his black ass. Furo must quickly learn to navigate a world made unfamiliar and deal with those who would use him for their own purposes. Taken in by a young woman called Syreeta and pursued by a writer named Igoni, Furo lands his first-ever job, adopts a new name, and soon finds himself evolving in unanticipated ways.
A. Igoni Barrett’s Blackass is a fierce comic satire that touches on everything from race to social media while at the same time questioning the values society places on us simply by virtue of the way we look. As he did in Love Is Power or Something Like That, Barrett brilliantly depicts life in contemporary Nigeria and details the double-dealing and code-switching that are implicit in everyday business. But it’s Furo’s search for an identity–one deeper than skin–that leads to the final unraveling of his own carefully constructed story.
FISTON MWANZA MUJILA
Fiston Mwanza Mujila (born in 1981) in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo, where studied Literature and Human Sciences at Lubumbashi University. He now lives in Graz, Austria and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Romance Languages. His writing has been awarded numerous prizes, including the Gold Medal at the 6th Jeux de la Francophonie in Beirut as well as the Best Text for Theater (State Theater, Mainz) in 2010.
His poems, prose works, and plays are reactions to the political turbulence that has come in the wake of the independence of the Congo and its effect on day-to-day life. His debut novel Tram 83 was a French Voices 2014 grant recipient and won the Grand Prix du Premier Roman des SGDL, and was shortlisted for numerous other awards, including the Prix du Monde. Tram 83 has drawn comparisons to Fitzgerald, Céline, García Márquez, Hunter S. Thompson and even a painting by Hyeronimous Bosch or a piece by Coltrane. (from aalbc.com)
In an African city in secession, which could be Kinshasa or Lubumbashi, land tourists of all languages and nationalities. They have only one desire: to make a fortune by exploiting the mineral wealths of the country. They work during the day in mining concession and, as soon as night falls, they go out to get drunk, dance, eat and abandon themselves in Tram 83, the only night-club of the city, the den of all the outlaws: ex children-soldiers, prostitutes, blank students, unmarried mothers, sorcerers’ apprentices …
Lucien, a professional writer, fleeing the exactions and the censorship, finds refuge in the city thanks to Requiem, a youth friend. Requiem lives mainly on theft and on swindle while Lucien only thinks of writing and living honestly. Around them gravitate gangsters and young girls, retired or runaway men, profit-seeking tourists and federal agents of a non-existent State.
Tram 83 plunges the reader into the atmosphere of a gold rush as cynical as, sometimes, comic and colorfully exotic. It’s an observation of human relationships in a world that has become a global village. It could be described as an African-rap or rhapsody novel or puzzle-novel hammered by rhythms of jazz.
ROLAND RUGERO
Roland Rugero (born 1986) is a Burundian author, journalist, and director. His second work Baho! is the first Burundian novel to be translated to English. His work on promoting Burundian culture has led him to be recognized internationally in such programs as the University of Iowa‘s International Writing Program.
Baho!
When Nyamugari, an adolescent mute, attempts to ask a young woman in rural Burundi for directions to an appropriate place to relieve himself, his gestures are mistaken as premeditation for rape. To the young woman’s community, his fleeing confirms his guilt, setting off a chain reaction of pursuit, mob justice, and Nyamugari’s attempts at explanation. Young Burundian novelist Roland Rugero’s second novel Baho!, the first Burundian novel to ever be translated into English, explores the concepts of miscommunication and justice against the backdrop of war-torn Burundi’s beautiful green hillsides.
If you haven’t signed up for the challenge yet, don’t fret you still have time. Just sign up here!
Let us know in the comment section below about any Historical Romance books to help your fellow book peeps.
Mocha Girl Alysia
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