Books like Martha Quest
Martha Quest, a restless, bookish girl on a farm in British Central Africa in the 1930s, leaves for the colonial town to find a life of her own.
Explore books like this on the map12 books for readers of Martha Quest
Weep Not, Child
Njoroge, a boy in colonial Kenya, is the first in his family to go to school, and dreams of education as the Mau Mau rising tears his family apart.
Paradise
Yusuf, a twelve-year-old boy in East Africa early in the twentieth century, is handed over by his father to the merchant Aziz to pay a debt, and travels with his caravans into the interior.
God's Bits of Wood
In 1947 and 1948 the African workers on the Dakar to Niger railway go on strike against their French employers, and the women of their towns hold the strike together.
Onitsha
In 1948, twelve-year-old Fintan sails with his Italian mother from France to join the English father he has never met in Onitsha, a trading town on the Niger.
The Grass Is Singing
In Southern Rhodesia, Mary Turner, a town woman married to a failing farmer, is found murdered on the farm, and the novel goes back to show how she came there.
In the Castle of My Skin
G., a boy growing up in a village in colonial Barbados in the 1930s and 40s, watches the old order of the landlord in the big house start to break.
Lives of Girls and Women
Del Jordan grows up in the small Ontario town of Jubilee in the 1940s, among the women of her family and the town, and wants to be a writer.
Desert
Two stories braided together: the Blue Men of the Sahara driven north by French colonial troops in 1909 and 1910, and Lalla, a girl descended from them, growing up decades later in a shantytown on the Moroccan coast.
Annie John
Annie John grows up in Antigua adored by her mother, until at twelve she begins to grow up and the love turns into a war.
Arrow of God
A priest in colonial Nigeria tries to maintain his authority and his faith as the British administration systematically dismantles the structures that gave both meaning.
Desertion
In 1899 an Englishman, Martin Pearce, stumbles out of the desert into a small town on the East African coast, is nursed back to health by a shopkeeper's family, and falls in love with the shopkeeper's sister.
Lucy
Lucy, nineteen, leaves Antigua to work as an au pair for a wealthy white family in New York, and is in no mood to be grateful.