africa fiction

Softcover. Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, reprint, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 309 pages. A major contribution to the cultural and literary history of the Victorian age, Rule of Darkness maps the complex relationship between Victorian literary forms, genres, and theories and imperialist, racist ideology. Critics and cultural historians have usually regarded the Empire as being of marginal importance to early and mid-Victorian writers. Patrick Brantlinger asserts that the Empire was central to British culture as a source of ideological and artistic energy, both supported by and lending support to widespread belief in racial superiority, the need to transform "savagery" into "civilization," and the urgency of promoting emigration.Rule of Darkness brings together material from public records, memoirs, popular culture, and canonical literature. Brantlinger explores the influence of the novels of Captain Frederick Marryat, pioneer of British adolescent adventure fiction, and shows the importance of William Makepeace Thackeray's experience of India to his novels. He treats a number of Victorian best sellers previously ignored by literary historians, including the Anglo-Indian writer Philip Meadows Taylor's Confessions of a Thug and Seeta. Brantlinger situates explorers' narratives and travelogues by such famous author-adventurers as David Livingstone and Sir Richard Burton in relation to other forms of Victorian and Edwardian prose. Through readings of works by Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad, H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, John Hobson, and many others, he considers representations of Africa, India, and other non-British parts of the world in both fiction and nonfiction. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Johannesburg, Tafelberg , 1st thus, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. The South African edition of Sara Whitcher's Story, SIGNED BY YATES on title page. Dutch text. B&W illustrations by Nora S. Unwin.

Hardcover. London, Chapman & Hall, 1st, 1938, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, publisher's red and black marble-patterned cloth, lettered in gilt to spine. Scoop is a humorous novel in which Waugh satirizes foreign correspondence and sensational journalism. Specifically, it tells the story of William Boot, an inexperienced journalist and author of a nature column for The Beast. This real life reporter was identified as Lord Deeds. Boot is mistakenly identified as his novelist cousin and sent to the fictional East African country of Ishmaelia to cover its socialist insurrection. Ironically, Boot's naivete allows him to get the real "scoop" not reported by more experienced journalists. Notably, Scoop is based on Waugh's own experiences working as a journalist for the British Daily Mail during Mussolini's 1935 invasion of Ethiopia. Clean, square copy.

Hardcover. NY, Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1st US, 1950, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering, 260 pages. Originally entitled ADEPTS OF AFRICA, SHADOWS OF ECSTACY, which was written in seven weeks in 1925, was the first novel Williams wrote but the fifth to be published in 1933. Follows the story of Nigel Constantine, an evangelical preacher who discovers the ability to cheat death. The charismatic occult leader stirs up an African revolt against Western Europe, with predictably devastating results. An unusual work on the occult and spiritualism, dealing with themes of colonialism, power, and global politics. Charles Williams, 1886-1945, was an English writer and theologian. He was a friend of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and was a member of their informal Oxford literary group, the Inklings. Clean copy, no dust jacket.

Hardcover. Alburquerque, University of New Mex, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Conversations w/ Walter Satterthwait & Ernie Bulow. Hardcover in a bright, unclpped dust jacket. In addition to the fun of eavesdropping on the unmistakable camaraderie of these two friends, readers will enjoy the several Satterthwait short stories included here--one of his African series, one featuring his latter-day version of Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op in a New Mexico setting, and one previously unpublished masterpiece of comic horror that, as Ernie Bulow points out, was influenced by nothing so much as E-C comics, the popular horror books of the early 1950s.

Hardcover. NY, Harper and Row, 1st US, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn and yellowing dust jacket. Tromp Kramer, Africaner police detective, and Mickey Zondi, Bantu police sergeant, in Trekkersburg, South Africa, are featured in this fourth detective novel by McClure. Exotic dancer Eve?'s sensual act features a five-foot royal python. When she is discovered in her dressing room dead of strangulation, her dancing partner turns out to be the murder weapon.

Hardcover. East Aurora NY, The Roycrofters; Elbert Hubbard, 1st, 1901, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, publisher's brown suede spine and printed gray boards with title in gilt to spine. Ribbon marker, 82 pages, Initials, borders and ornaments designed by St. Gerome [Jerome Conner]. Top edge gilt, other sides deckle edge. So Here Then Are Dreams is a collection of poetic short stories that deal with the fundamental issues of life such as freedom, justice, and love. Olive Shreiner (1855-1920) South African author, suffragist, and political activist. White title on cover is partially faded, otherwise a sharp, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, The Viking Press, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 203 pages. A long novella and a collection of short stories by this South African Nobel Prize lauriate. Clean copy.

New York , Crowell, 2nd pr., 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Multi-color woodcut illustrations by Leo and Diane Dillon. A small African boy helps his father locate the right tree to make a new canoe to replace the one broken by an alligator. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Random House, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 406 pages. Gilt lettering on front cover and spine. Decorative stain to top edge. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. New York, Henry Z. Walck, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 144 pages, illustrated in b&w by Tom Feelings. Black cloth covers with gilt snake drawing on front. Dust jacket with edgewear, chipping. Spine slightly cocked, clean copy.

NY, Grosset & Dunlap, reprint, 1928, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth covers stamped in black. Four b&w plates by J. Allen St. John. "Imaginative and exciting tale recounts the remarkable exploits of young Lord Greystoke, who is raised by a family of apes in the African jungle and becomes the worthy opponent of the jungle's most feared predators." Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar Straus Giroux, 2nd pr., 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A PEN/Faulkner Award nominated novel. The story of a woman's life on the island of Dominica - the daughter of a Carib mother and a half-Scottish, half African father, abandoned as an infant. INSCRIBED BY KINCAID on the half-title page. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, One World/Ballantine, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A fictional narrative base on the life of America's first black female millionaire. Born to former slaves on a Louisiana plantation in 1867, Madam C.J. Walker rose from poverty and indignity to become America's first black female millionaire, the head of a hugely successful company, and a leading philanthropist in African American causes. Renowned author Alex Haley became fascinated by the story of this extraordinary heroine, and before his death in 1992 he embarked on the research and outline of a major novel based on her life. Now with The Black Rose, critically acclaimed writer Tananarive Due brings the work to inspiring completion. "I got my start by giving myself a start," Madam C.J. was fond of saying as she recounted her transformation from the uneducated laundress Sarah Breedlove to a woman of wealth, culture, and celebrity. Madam C.J. was nearing forty and married to a maverick Denver newspaperman when the wonder-working hair care method she discovered changed her life. Seemingly overnight, she built a marketing empire that enlisted more than twenty thousand bright young African American women to demonstrate and sell her products door-to-door. By the time she died in 1919, Madam C.J. Walker had constructed her own factory from the ground up, established a training school, and built a twenty-room mansion at Irvington on the Hudson, New York, called Villa Lawaro.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st US, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Dust jacket art, b&w illustrations by Victor Ambrus. Children's adnture story set in Africa. Clean copy.

Softcover. Ann Arbor MI, University of Michigan Press, reprint, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 316 pages. The first known mystery written by an African-American, set in 1930s Harlem. Rudolph Fisher, one of the principal writers of the Harlem Renaissance, weaves an intricate story of a native African king, who, after receiving a degree from Harvard University, settles into Harlem in the 1930s. He becomes a "conjure-man," a fortune-teller, a mysterious figure who remains shrouded in darkness while his clients sit directly across from him, singly bathed in light. It is in this configuration that one of these seekers of the revelation of fate discovers he is speaking to a dead man. Thus a complex mystery begins, involving suspects and characters who are vividly and richly portrayed, and who dramatically illuminate for the reader a time, a place, and a people. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Scholastic, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. "Those shackles didn't rob us of being black, son, they robbed us of being human."This is the story of one family. A family whose history saw its first ancestor captured, shackled, and brought to this country from Africa. A family who can still see remnants of the shackles that held some of its members captive -- even today. It is a story of pride, determination, struggle, and love. And of the piece of the land that holds them together throughout it all. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1st, 1957, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 115 pages illustrated in b&w line by Enrico Arno. This entertaining collection of twenty-one folk tales from the Ashanti people of Ghana in West Africa takes its title from the wild 'dance' the spider Anansi performed when he tried to hide some burning hot beans under his hat. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper and Row, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 309 pages. Library Edition with spine sticker (NOT EX-LIB). Complete number row. Horn Book review, 1983: "The author interweaves black folklore with her own family history in a tale remarkable for its total integration of the novel with the imaginative possibilities of legend." An African god-child and her older brother travel as albatrosses on a slave ship to Georgia, witnessing two centuries of history in two god-days! Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Little Brown, 1st, 1960, Hardcover, 336 pages, b&w drawings by Lea. Dust jacket with light edgewear, chipping. Novel about Hank Spurling, a Marine hero of the war in the Pacific, who returned to the Cloudrock Mountains in Wyoming. In the early days of World War II, Lea became a war correspondent for Life magazine, executing paintings of action in the North Atlantic, the South Pacific, China, North Africa, and Europe. Lea's career thereafter involved both painting and writing, on a variety of subjects but generally reflective of his roots in the Southwest. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Faber & Faber, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 281 pages. South African mystery featuring Afrikaner Tromp Kramer and Bantu Sergeant Zondi, set in a small town in northern Zululand in 1962. This book is a prequel to the other Kramer and Zondi mysteries - the story of how they first met each other.

Hardcover. NY, Grove Press, 1st, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 154 pages, in a lightly worn and price-clipped dust jacket. A novel by the African American poet and essayist set in the American South.

Hardcover. NY, Harper and Brothers, 1st, 1905, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, small volume (4 X 6 1/4"), blue cloth designed and lettered in white. Frontispiece and 5 plates in b/w by Frank Nankivell. Comical theatrical play the scene of which is "a summer hotel in mid-August, where a group of summer-girls, longing for masculine companionship, construct a large worsted man from an old afghan, stuffing him with cotton. He comes to life, and proves to be one of the worst flirts ever created. Exceedingly funny to read, and is suitable for amateur theatricals." Includes a depreciating African-American character, Sambo Front, and use of music borrowed from Gilbert and Sullivan. Inscription on front fly leaf dated 1905, otherwise clean, bright copy. Plate at page 6 is loose.

Hardcover. NY, Rand McNally, 1st US, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 48 pages, illustrated in b&w by Dugald MacDougall. The story of 6-year-old Zulu girl who has many adventures when she goes to the store for the first time. Clean copy.