Books

Veerapen Prendrapen – half Jewish, half Tamil – is the fastest runner in his school

Book Reviews

The Shadow of Imana by Véronique Tadjo; Mema by Daniel Mengara; The Cry of Winnie Mandela by Njabulo S Ndebele; Conversing with Africa by Mukoma wa Ngugi

Filed in: Africa

Thanks to the combination of specialization and production chains that span the globe, we consumers rarely get to see the whole picture. This book joins the dots, showing the impacts of resource extraction on local communities and the environment, making the link between games consoles, civil war, rape and rainforest destruction.

By Tomoyuki Hoshino

By Ngugi Wa Thiong’o

Lierre Keith has written a passionately argued, highly personal, and deeply informative book about the destructive and unsustainable nature of modern day agriculture – but disguised it as an argument against vegetarianism.

Anyone who offers a diagnosis of the current economic malaise and prescribes a cure, but has not read this book, doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World. By Wade Davis.

Part memoir, part social commentary, part philosophical inquiry, US writer Nick Flynn’s book builds on his earlier autobiography, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City.

This book provides some amusing and insightful analysis of the way in which knee-jerk fundamentalism mixes with the celebrity sell to provide a personal narrative on which the hopes of the Republican Right have come to reside.