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If anyone`s interested, I`ve started an LT group for admirers of W E B Du Bois. Feel free to join/join in.

Mysteries and thrillers set in Africa:

Matthew Head wrote several mysteies set in Central Africa, such as The Congo Venus and The Cabinda Affair, they have a nice Anglo-American vibe as the narrator is English, but two other recurring characters are American ladies, a doctor and a missionary. I have enjoyed them a lot.

Elspeth Huxley of The Flame Trees of Thika fame, wrote three mysteries set in colonial East Africa -- Murder on Safari, The African Poison Murders and Murder at Government House.

Robert Wilson, who has had recent success with mysteries and thrillers set in Portugal, wrote an earlier series set in West Africa, starting with Instruments of Darkness and followed by The Big Killing. The stories are pretty good, but quite violent. The first was notable for the elaborate and sometimes showstopping metaphors the author liked to use. "The Hotel Le Benin looked as refreshed as if it had just flown in from a short holiday in the Cote d' Azur.'"

I'm doing a Chapter-by-Chapter Read-Along of A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali on The Reading Corner. Although the author is French-Canadian, the setting is Kigali, Ruanda.

Please join me.

I'm reading " The Beautiful Things That Heaen Bears by Dinaw Mengestu".The book is very beautifully written by an Ethiopian and takes place in Washington DC. The hero " fled the Ethiopian revolution for a new start in the United States. His only companions two fellow African immigrants who share his bittter nostalgia and longing for his home continent." So far I am enjoying the book.

I just finished Bill Bryson's African Diary. That's not much of a feat; it covers an 8-day trip with CARE International in Kenya, in a mere 49 pages. It was excellent though. Too short.

Over on Reading Globally we currently have a theme read: Literature from Sub-Saharan Africa. It will run from January to March 2014.

Lots of really good Africa BB's here. TY!

I am leading the third quarter theme on Reading Globally, titled The Lusophone World: writing from countries where Portuguese is or was an important language, which will include books written by authors from Angola, Cabo Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe. Please feel free to join us!