As a continuation of our celebration of Women’s History Month, we have another spectacular booklist consisting of must-read historical fiction titles written by our favorite African women writers.

History has not been kind to African women. However, these writers have penned powerful female characters who resist the patriarchy and fight to have better lives amidst incredibly difficult circumstances in the pages of history.

Many of these novels feature coming-of-age stories amidst civil wars of independence in African postcolonial nations such as Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. Still others like Scholastique Mukasonga’s Kibogo and Hemley Boum’s Days Come and Go are about the clash between traditional beliefs and modern values. But the common thematic connection between all these stories is that they are about untold women’s histories that have been erased by the West such as the brave women soldiers who fought during Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia in Maaza Mengiste’s The Shadow King and the complex lives of enslaved women in Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and Victoria Princewill’s In the Palace of Flowers.

We hope you are as proud of these feminist role models in African history as we are!