What to Read for African Literature: Where to Start, Reading Order & Free Books

African literature is written in English, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Swahili, Yoruba, Zulu and more, across a whole continent. These books are a starting point, chosen from Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century and beyond. This guide gives you a simple path: four books for your first month, four for next, and four of the great ones. Every title links to where you can read it — 1 are free right here in Pagine — and every author links to a short biography. For the full 114-book list, see our African Literature hub.

Step 1: start here (your first month)

1. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958) — Nigeria. (borrow free)
2. So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ (1979) — Senegal — Une si longue lettre. (borrow free)
3. Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih (1966) — Sudan. (borrow free)
4. Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2003) — A modern classic for teens and adults. (borrow free)

Step 2: next steps

1. A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1967) — Kenya. (borrow free)
2. Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga (1988) — Zimbabwe. (borrow free)
3. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton (1948) — South Africa. (borrow free)
4. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano (1789) — One of the first slave narratives. Read free →

Step 3: the great ones (when you are hooked)

1. The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz (1956) — Egypt — Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street. (borrow free)
2. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006) (borrow free)
3. The Famished Road by Ben Okri (1991) — Nigeria — Booker Prize 1991. (borrow free)
4. Life & Times of Michael K by J. M. Coetzee (1983) — South Africa. (borrow free)

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Meet the great African authors

Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745–1797) — Olaudah Equiano wrote that he was born in the Igbo region of what is now Nigeria, kidnapped as a child and sold into slavery across the Atlantic. He served on ships, taught himself to read and write, bought his freedom in 1766, and settled in London. Start with: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano.

Sol Plaatje (1876–1932) — Sol Plaatje was a journalist, linguist and politician — a founding member and the first general secretary of the South African Native National Congress, which became the ANC. His Native Life in South Africa (1916) exposed the devastating 1913 Natives Land Act, and Mhudi, published in 1930, was one of the first novels in English by a Black South African. Start with: Native Life in South Africa.

Chinua Achebe (1930–2013) — Chinua Achebe is often called the father of modern African literature. Things Fall Apart (1958) — the story of the proud Igbo wrestler Okonkwo and the coming of British missionaries and colonial rule, its title taken from a poem by W. Start with: Things Fall Apart.

Wole Soyinka (born 1934) — Wole Soyinka became the first African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1986. A playwright, poet, novelist and fearless critic of dictatorship, he was imprisoned for nearly two years during the Nigerian Civil War (The Man Died). Start with: Aké: The Years of Childhood.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1938–2025) — Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was East Africa’s greatest novelist. Weep Not, Child (1964) was the first major English-language novel by an East African; A Grain of Wheat (1967) explores betrayal and heroism in a Kenyan village on the eve of independence. Start with: Weep Not, Child.

Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006) — Naguib Mahfouz, a civil servant who wrote every evening, made the Arabic novel modern. His Cairo Trilogy — Palace Walk, Palace of Desire and Sugar Street (1956–57) — follows three generations of a Cairo family from the 1919 revolution to World War II. Start with: Palace Walk.

Mariama Bâ (1929–1981) — Mariama Bâ was a Senegalese teacher and campaigner for women’s rights. Her short novel So Long a Letter (Une si longue lettre, 1979) — a widow’s long letter to her best friend after her husband takes a second wife — won the first Noma Award for Publishing in Africa and is one of the most widely taught African books. Start with: So Long a Letter.

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) — Nadine Gordimer spent half a century writing about apartheid South Africa — and several of her books were banned there. The Conservationist won the Booker Prize in 1974; Burger’s Daughter (1979), about the daughter of an anti-apartheid activist, and July’s People (1981) are her best known. Start with: July’s People.

J. M. Coetzee (born 1940) — J. M. Start with: Waiting for the Barbarians.

Bessie Head (1937–1986) — Bessie Head was born in a South African psychiatric hospital to a white mother and a Black father — a union illegal under the country’s laws — and raised by a foster family. In 1964 she left for Botswana on a one-way exit permit and lived as a refugee in the village of Serowe for fifteen years. Start with: When Rain Clouds Gather.

Tsitsi Dangarembga (born 1959) — Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions (1988) — the story of Tambudzai, a girl in 1960s Rhodesia fighting for an education — was the first novel published in English by a Black Zimbabwean woman, and was named one of Africa’s twelve best books of the 20th century. She continued Tambu’s story in The Book of Not and This Mournable Body, shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020. Start with: Nervous Conditions.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born 1977) — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nsukka, Nigeria, in a house once lived in by Chinua Achebe. Purple Hibiscus (2003) is a coming-of-age story under a strict, devout father; Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), set during the Nigeria–Biafra war, won the Orange Prize; Americanah (2013) follows a Nigerian woman in America. Start with: Purple Hibiscus.

Read free, listen free, borrow free

1 of the 114 books on our list are free to read now in the Pagine library — look for “Read free.” For everything else, the African Literature hub links each title to free sources: Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks, Wikisource and Internet Archive for public-domain texts, LibriVox for free audiobooks, and Open Library or WorldCat to borrow newer books from a library.

The complete 114-book African Literature list

Our full list is sorted by era:

• Africa’s 12 best books of the 20th century — 12 books
• Africa’s 100 best: novels, stories, poetry & plays — 62 books
• Africa’s 100 best: history, memoir & ideas — 22 books
• Earlier African classics (free to read) — 3 books
• More modern African classics — 15 books

See it on the African Literature hub, or print it, save it as a PDF, email it to yourself or share it as a checklist.

Explore the full African Literature list, author guides and free books.

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