Happy New Year Brittle Paperians!

As you’re settling into your new year schedules and routines, we are happy to share our anticipated African books of 2024! Every year, the number of exciting titles to look forward to grows and grows, and we couldn’t be more thrilled. On the list below, you will find some outstanding novels, exciting debuts from promising authors, and more you can expect in 2024.

There are a number of books that are much-loved and talked about online on the way. Akwaeke Emezi’s 8th book, Little Rot, tells the tale of five friends trying to outrun and outmatch a powerful, underground world. The storyline, title, and cover of Damilare Kuku’s novel, Only Big Bumbum Matters Tomorrow, has already gone viral on social media. Lastly, Ailah Ahmed, publishing director of Hutchinson Heinemann, wrote that Chigozie Obioma’s upcoming novel The Road to Country, is “sure to become a modern classic.”

2024 will also be the year of sequels and finale for some of our favorite fantasy and speculative fiction books and series. Children of Anguish and Anarchy, the final book in Tomi Adeyemi’s groundbreaking fantasy trilogy Legacy of Orisha, will hit shelves this summer. South African writer Nikhil Singh’s sequel to their fascinating cyperpunk novel Club Ded, titled Dakini Atoll, is an exploration the genre of cyberpunk through an Eastern lens. Another major finale coming our way is the end of The Gilded Ones series by Namina Forna with the third book, The Eternal Ones.

For an opportunity to discover titles you may not have had access to, there are some phenomenal African book reissues and translations on the way. Chinenye Emezie’s 2021 novel Glass House is getting a reissue and is titled Born in a House of Glass. Ere Roosevelt Came is a short novel by early pan-Africanist Dusé Mohamed Ali from 1934 reissued by editors Marina Bilbija and Alex Lubin. The Imaginative Vision of Abdilatif Abdalla’s Voice of Agony contains extraordinary poems by Abdilatif Abdalla translated from Swahili by Ken Walibora Waliaula.

Speaking of poetry, we’re always wow-ed by the moving, poetic voices coming from the continent, and this year is no different. We look forward to diving into the poetry collections of Yalie Saweda Kamara (Besaydoo), Tares Oburuma (Origins of the Syma Species), and Dzifa Benson (Monster).

There are just a few snippets of what’s in store for the African literary community this year. Explore and share the list below and let us know what books you are most excited to read this year!

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NOTE:

  • This list is not exhaustive. There are tons of books that we could not include because we didn’t have all the publishing info. The best way to stay up to date with new books throughout the year is by subscribing to our newsletter and following us on Instagram here.
  • All book descriptions are excerpted from the publisher’s synopsis.
  • Not all the “BUY” links are live or go to pre-order or buy pages. This is because this info is simply not available. We will update as pre-order and buy links become available.