7 Books by First-Time Authors You Should Read This New Year | The Republic
7 Books by First-Time Authors You Should Read This New Year
In our latest book recommendation, we have compiled a list of books by first-time authors you should read this new year. These books will introduce you to some of the best emerging talents in African literature.
It is a new year, and as always, the talk of new beginnings is very prominent. A new year gives one an opportunity to start afresh, to become a new person, but more than that, it is an opportunity to celebrate new things, highlighting the beauty of novelty. What better way to start your reading journey this year than by discovering some of the most exciting debut authors of recent times?
In our latest book recommendation, we have compiled a list of books by first-time authors you should read this new year. From Nigerian horror and speculative fiction author ’Pemi Aguda’s stunning debut short story collection to Kenyan author Dennis Mugaa’s politically astute collection, these books will introduce you to some of the best emerging talents in African literature.
Read our recommendations below.
GHOSTROOTS AUTHOR: ’PEMI AGUDA GENRE: FICTION
From Nigeria’s darling horror fiction writer, ’Pemi Aguda, comes a debut collection of stories set in a ‘hauntingly reimagined’ Lagos. Published in 2024 and shortlisted for the 2024 National Book Awards, Ghostroots testifies to the brilliance of Aguda’s imagination and the seriousness of her concerns.
In the opening story, ‘Manifest’, for example, a mother catches glimpses of her sinister mother in her own daughter’s life. Things take a serious turn when the daughter manifests the same capacity for violence as her grandmother, begging the question of whether evil can be passed down generations. Another story, ‘24, Alhaji Williams Street’, features a disease that spreads through a street in Lagos, mysteriously killing only the male children of each family. When a family sends their only male child far away forever to save him, one wonders whether this in itself is not some kind of death.
With the stories in this collection, Aguda makes a cogent point about the hold of the past on the present, and how the supernatural pervades human life.
TRUTH IS A FLIGHTLESS BIRD AUTHOR: AKBAR HUSSAIN GENRE: FICTION
Truth is a Flightless Bird is Akbar Hussain’s debut novel, which has been described as a ‘brutal love letter to the frontier town that is present-day Nairobi’. Set against the backdrop of President Barack Obama’s upcoming visit to Kenya, it features Nice, a young UN worker in Mogadishu on the run from her drug-dealer boyfriend. She reaches out to her old friend and onetime lover, Duncan, an American pastor living in Nairobi. Duncan picks Nice up from the airport when she arrives in Nairobi, but on their way back home, they suffer a car crash, and Nice is abducted by a corrupt immigration officer, Hinga. Duncan must get out of his middle-class bubble and explore the criminal underworld of Nairobi to rescue Nice. How deep is he willing to go to find his old love, and will he succeed?
SAND ROSES AUTHOR: HAMZA KOUDRI GENRE: FICTION
In his 2023 debut novel, Algerian author Hamza Koudri introduces readers to the culture of the country’s Ouled Nail dancers. We meet two sisters, Fahima and Salima, who arrive in Boussada in 1931 with the dream of becoming great Ouled Nail dancers. But the city is not kind to these dancers, especially under the command of the brutal French colonial army. All their hopes and dreams are dashed when Fahima and Salima kill a soldier in self-defence. Then, they must do all they can to hide their crime and escape punishment.
Runner-up for the 2022 Island Prize for Debut African Novels, Sand Roses has been described as an ‘extraordinarily immersive narrative’ that opens up the little-known world of these cultural dancers to readers.
HALF PORTRAITS UNDER WATER AUTHOR: DENNIS MUGAA GENRE: FICTION
Half Portraits Under Water is a 2024 debut collection of stories by Kenyan author Dennis Mugaa. In a series of ten ‘loosely interlinked’, politically charged stories, Mugaa highlights how human experiences can be interconnected. Set in different countries at periods of sociopolitical change, the stories in this collection explore themes such as love, grief, resistance, and scandal.
In one story, we meet a mother who will do anything to protect her freedom fighter son from the claws of a brutal government regime; in another, a sense of grief pervades as a group of boys living in a slum head to the football pitch for the last time before their country changes forever.
In Half Portraits Under Water, Mugaa gives us a politically astute book that brings to mind classics like Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel.
A KIND OF MADNESS AUTHOR: UCHE OKONKWO GENRE: FICTION
Published in 2024, A Kind of Madness is a debut collection of stories that marks Nigerian author Uche Okonkwo as a prodigious new talent. In this book, Okonkwo explores the theme of madness within the context of family and community. While the stories cover a wide range of topics, they all seem to grapple with a central question: why are the people we love most often the ones who drive us to madness?
Take Adanna in ‘Burning’, for example, a girl living with her mentally ill mother. Adanna has to grow up fast and learn to adjust to her mother’s rapidly changing moods. But imagine her befuddlement when her mother drags her from one healer to the next, claiming that she, Adanna, is mad. In another story, a teenage girl from a low-income family has to reconsider her obsession with her rich friend when the friend begins to become dangerously unstable.
In A Kind of Madness, Okonkwo shows us how madness can manifest in many different ways, and how all of us might just be mad.
THESE LETTERS END IN TEARS AUTHOR: MUSIH TEDJI XAVIERE GENRE: FICTION
In Cameroon, as in most other African countries, same-sex relationship is culturally and legally frowned upon. It is against this backdrop that Cameroonian author, Musih Tedji Xaviere, sets her 2024 debut novel. These Letters End in Tears is a story of young love and the impact of a hateful, intolerant society on it.
Bessem and Fatima meet on a football pitch and are soon in love. Where Bessem is Christian, Fatima is Muslim, with an over-religious brother. From the start, their love seems doomed, yet both girls ignore the challenges, secretly basking in each other’s affection. Soon after, a secret gay bar that Fatima and Bessem frequents is raided by Fatima’s brother and both girls are sent to the police. Subsequently, Fatima mysteriously disappears, leaving Bessem to grapple with the heartbreak and uncertainty of her lover’s fate.
Years later, Bessem, now a university lecturer, reconnects with an old friend and embarks on a journey to uncover what happened to Fatima and to find her lost love.
GIRLS AND THE SILHOUETTE OF FORM AUTHOR: STAR ZAHRA GENRE: FICTION
Publishedin2024,Girls and the Silhouette of Form is the most recent of the books on this list. It is a collection of poems by Nigerian poet and textile designer, Star Zahra. In this book, Zahra explores the realities of womanhood in precise, alluring language and vivid metaphors. The book has been described by fellow poet, Romeo Oriogun, as ‘a celebration of the mundane and the little moments that hold us together…through language.’⎈
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