Books like Aké: The Years of Childhood
Soyinka's memoir of growing up in a parsonage compound in Abeokuta in western Nigeria in the 1930s and 40s, up to the age of eleven.
Explore books like this on the map12 books for readers of Aké: The Years of Childhood
The Dark Child
Camara Laye remembers growing up in Kouroussa in French Guinea, the son of a goldsmith with magical gifts, until he leaves for school in Conakry and then for Paris.
Living to Tell the Tale
The first volume of García Márquez's memoirs, from his childhood in his grandparents' house in Aracataca to his years as a young journalist in Cartagena and Barranquilla, up to 1955.
One Writer's Beginnings
Welty's Harvard lectures on growing up in Jackson, Mississippi, on her parents and her reading, and on the habits of listening and watching that made her a writer.
Istanbul: Memories and the City
Pamuk's memoir of growing up in Istanbul in the 1950s and 60s, of his family, and of the melancholy of the city, which Turks call hüzün.
Boyhood
Coetzee's account, written in the third person, of a boy growing up in Worcester, a provincial town in the Cape, in the late 1940s and early 50s.
Speak, Memory
Nabokov remembers his St. Petersburg childhood and émigré youth, from butterfly summers on the family estate to Cambridge and Berlin, in prose built like a chess problem.
The Tongue Set Free
Canetti remembers his childhood from 1905 to 1921, in a Sephardic Jewish family in Bulgaria, Manchester, Vienna and Zurich, and the mother who taught him German.
A Child's Christmas in Wales
Dylan Thomas remembers the Christmases of his boyhood in a Welsh seaside town: the snow, the presents, the uncles and the aunts.
An Angel at My Table
Janet Frame's autobiography, from a poor childhood in Oamaru through eight years in mental hospitals to her escape into writing and to Europe.
Shame
Ernaux begins from a Sunday in June 1952 when her father tried to kill her mother, and reconstructs the world of the twelve-year-old girl she was.
Chronicles: Volume One
Dylan's memoir, which skips from his arrival in Greenwich Village in 1961 to the making of New Morning and Oh Mercy, and back to his Minnesota boyhood.
On Writing
Stephen King's memoir of the craft: his childhood, his early struggles and drinking, the toolbox of grammar and habit he swears by, and the 1999 accident that nearly ended his life while he was writing the book.