Search
Explore African Literature
Search
November 10, 2021
This list is for readers who love long and immersive novels. These 33 novels curated for your reading pleasure range between 400 and 575 pages. We made sure that they covered a range of genres and styles. There is crime fiction, detective stories, boarding school sagas, travel adventures, sci-fi/fantasy, magical realism, and, of course, delicious family dramas. Enjoy!
400 pages
Amid the turmoil of modern Zimbabwe, Abednego and Agnes Mlambo’s teenage son has gone missing. Zamani, their enigmatic lodger, seems to be their only hope for finding him. (W. W. Norton and Company/2018)
400 pages
Tarisai has always longed for the warmth of a family. She was raised in isolation by a mysterious, often absent mother known only as The Lady. The Lady sends her to the capital of the global empire of Aritsar...[to] kill the Crown Prince once she gains his trust.
400 pages
Esso is caught in a deadly feud when he realizes he has the ability to access a world where he can see glimpses of the past and the future. A generation away, Rhia is walking to football practice in 2035, unaware that the mysterious stranger she’s about to meet desperately needs her help to avert a bullet fired fifteen years ago. (Penguin Random House, August 19)
400 pages
New York, My Village is a daring first novel in the great picaresque tradition—both buoyant comedy and devastating satire—by the author of the best-selling story collection Say You’re One of Them. Haunted by the devastating darkness of civil war and searingly observant about the myriad ways that tribalism defines life everywhere from the villages of Africa to the villages within New York City. (W. W. Norton/2021)
414 pages
Three students are brutally murdered in a Nigerian university town. Their killers are caught on social media, but what no one knows is why they were killed. As the trial begins, investigative psychologist Philip Taiwo is contacted by the father of one of the boys, desperate for answers. But Philip is not a detective, and he soon feels out of his depth. (Mulholland Books/2021)
416 pages
After battling the impossible, Zélie and Amari have finally succeeded in bringing magic back to the land of Orïsha. But the ritual was more powerful than they could've imagined, reigniting the powers of not only the maji, but of nobles with magic ancestry, too. (Henry Holt & Co/2019)
416 pages
Twelve-year-old Miles is one of the last boys alive, and his mother, Cole, will protect him at all costs. On the run after a horrific act of violence-and pursued by Cole's own ruthless sister, Billie—all Cole wants is to raise her kid somewhere he won't be preyed on as a reproductive resource or a sex object or a stand-in son. Someplace like home. (Mulholland Books/2020)
416 pages
Deka, a 16-year-old, lives in Otera, a patriarchal kingdom where a woman's worth is tied to her purity, and she must bleed to prove it. When Deka bleeds gold, the color of impurity, she faces a consequence worse than death. She is saved by a stranger who tells Deka that she is a near-immortal with exceptional gifts, and offers her a choice: fight for the Emperor or be destroyed. (UK: Usborne; US: Delacorte/2021)
416 pages
This is a collection of 64 short stories, 36 of which appear in English for the first time. They include early stories that reflect the harshness of life under Portuguese colonialism; to magical tales of rural Africa; to contemporary fables of the fluidity of race and gender, environmental disaster, and the clash between the countryside and the city. (Biblioasis, US February 23/ UK March 11)
417 pages
Life in the newly independent city-state of Rosewater isn't everything its citizens were expecting. The Mayor finds that debts incurred during the insurrection are coming back to haunt him. Nigeria isn't willing to let Rosewater go without a fight. And the city's alien inhabitants are threatening mass murder for their own sinister ends. (Orbit/2019)
421 pages
When her dreams of rising through the Accra police ranks like her late father crash around her, 26-year-old Emma Djan is unsure what will become of her career. Through a sympathetic former colleague, Emma gets an interview with a private detective agency that takes on cases of missing persons, theft, and infidelity. It’s not the future she imagined, but it’s her best option. (Soho Crime/2020)
431 pages
Her Name Is Knight revolves around Nena Knight, codename Echo, a highly trained assassin for The Tribe – a clandestine international organization dedicated to the protection and advancement of the peoples and countries of Africa around the world. (Thomas and Mercer/2021)
432 pages
The king is dead. Deep cracks are forming throughout the kingdom of Nri with whispers of deadly successors. Despite having the same face, it seems the deepest crack is between Naala and Sinai, reunited twin goddesses, who must put their differences aside as they travel through a broken Nri. (Onwe Press/2021)
432 pages
When two Niveus Private Academy students, Devon Richards and Chiamaka Adebayo, are elected as class prefects, it looks like their year is off to an amazing start. But someone named Aces begins using text messages to reveal secrets that threaten their carefully planned futures. (Feiwel and Friends/2021)
433 pages
Thirteen-year-old Ugwu is employed as a houseboy for a university professor full of revolutionary zeal. Olanna is the professor’s beautiful mistress... Richard is a shy young Englishman in thrall to Olanna’s twin sister...As Nigerian troops advance and the three must run for their lives, their ideals are severely tested, as are their loyalties to one another. (Knopf/2006)
446 pages
Divided into six sections, the novel begins in 1750, when Kintu Kidda sets out for the capital to pledge allegiance to the new leader of the Buganda Kingdom. Along the way, he unleashes a curse that will plague his family for generations. In an ambitious tale of a clan and a nation, Makumbi weaves together the stories of Kintu’s descendants as they seek to break from the burden of their shared past. (Transit/2017)
448 pages
A gripping novel set during Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, The Shadow King takes us back to the first real conflict of World War II, casting light on the women soldiers who were left out of the historical record. (W. W. Norton & Company/2019)
452 pages
The Zaroga Chronicles details a saga within the wealthiest family in the world with the most influential company born out of crises from World War II. (Self-Published/ 2021)
463 pages
It's been five years since the Biafran War ended. Ify is now nineteen and living where she's always dreamed--the Space Colonies. She is a respected, high-ranking medical officer and has dedicated her life to helping refugees like herself rebuild in the Colonies. (Razorbill/2020)
464 pages
Set on the outskirts of Umuahia, Nigeria and narrated by a chi, or guardian spirit, An Orchestra of Minorities tells the story of Chinonso, a young poultry farmer whose soul is ignited when he sees a woman attempting to jump from a highway bridge. (Little Brown and Company/2019)
464 pages
A history-making book, Girl, Woman, Other won Bernadine Evaristo the coveted Booker Prize, making her the first black woman to do so. Dripping with poetry and experimental flair, the novel presents a series of portraits that reflect the textured lives of black women in Britain. (Grove Atlantic/2019)
464 pages
A narrative tour de force, this novel has got everything— friendship and betrayal; faith and treachery; hope and cynicism; murder; mayhem and no shortage of drama, all set against the backdrop of contemporary Nigeria. (Pantheon/2021).
480 pages
Stories about serial killers make for great TV, but Lauren Beukes's The Shining Girls adds a twist: this serial killer time travels too. The book is being adapted for Apple TV by MRC Television and Appian Way (Leonardo DiCaprio's production company). And Elizabeth Moss is set to star! (Mulholland Books/2013)
490 pages
Against all odds, Cara has been reunited with her brother, Frank. But at what cost to her companions? At what cost to herself? Collinefort is a place of intrigue and lies, where menace lurks in the shadows. (Yolandie Horak, 2020)
496 pages
In the thriving city of Bassa, Danso is a clever but disillusioned scholar who longs for a life beyond the rigid family and political obligations expected of the city's elite. A way out presents itself when Lilong, a skin-changing warrior, shows up wounded in his barn. Danso and Lilong set out on a journey that reveals histories violently suppressed and magic only found in lore. (Orbit/2021)
512 pages
Owour's lyrical novel introduces readers to the rhythm of life on Pate island through the eyes of Ayaana, a young girl of partial Chinese ancestry. Even as she travels away from the island across the Indian Ocean, Ayaana learns of the manifold geographical connections that form her heritage — the island being an historically important trading site in ancient Persian, Arab, Indian, and Chinese maritime routes.
512 pages
The narrator, Azaro, is an abiku, a spirit child, who in the Yoruba tradition of Nigeria exists between life and death…Nearly called back to the land of the dead, he is resurrected. But in their efforts to save their child, Azaro's loving parents are made destitute. (Anchor/1993)
533 pages
Iziegbe - Patience is a virtue. But how much is too much? Tireni - Ashamed and ridden with guilt, she must lose her way to find herself. Noruwa and Osayi - Praying for the sound of young laughter... But will they ever dance to that tune? Choices that make and break, with twists and turns that force lives to follow suit. (Moving Message/2020)
544 pages
Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls. But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope. (Henry Holt & Co/2018)
544 pages
A century ago, an astronomer discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star. She predicted that one day humans would travel there to build a utopia. Today, ten astronauts are leaving everything behind to find it. Four are veterans of the twentieth century’s space-race. And six are teenagers who’ve trained for this mission most of their lives. (Gallery/Saga Press/2019)
544 pages
A terrible virus has decimated human life. Thirteen-year old Nico Storm and his father, Willem, attempt to found a community for survivors. But after such a global disaster, what does civilization even mean any more? Narrated by Nico after the murder of his father, South African author Deon Meyer's thriller is at once a coming-of-age narrative and a tale of survival. (Atlantic Monthly Press/2017)
560 pages
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi returns us to the myths and folklore of Uganda in her second novel, A GIRL IS A BODY OF WATER. But this time, she weaves these ancient tales with indigenous and so-called "modern" feminist ideas. You won't want to miss a single step of Kirabo's (very long) coming-of-age journey. (Tin House Books/2020)
576 pages
1904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there is a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. In a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. (Hogarth/2019)
COMMENTS -
Reader Interactions