Books like Petals of Blood
Four suspects in a murder reveal the story of a Kenyan village devoured by postcolonial capitalism.
Explore books like this on the map12 books for readers of Petals of Blood
A Grain of Wheat
In a Kenyan village in the days before independence in 1963, the villagers want to honour Mugo, a quiet man they believe was a hero of the Mau Mau struggle.
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
A nameless railway clerk resists corruption in post-independence Ghana.
A Bend in the River
Salim, from an Indian Muslim family long settled on the East African coast, takes over a shop in a town at the bend of a great river in the African interior, in the years after independence.
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.
No Longer at Ease
Obi Okonkwo, grandson of the Okonkwo of Things Fall Apart, comes home to Lagos from England full of ideals, takes a government job and ends up on trial for taking a bribe.
The Interpreters
Five young Nigerian intellectuals home from study abroad, a journalist, an engineer, a lecturer, a painter and a civil servant, meet in the bars of Lagos and Ibadan and try to make sense of the new country.
In a Free State
Linked stories of people adrift in foreign places; in the title novella, two English expatriates drive across an East African country in the middle of a coup.
Season of Migration to the North
A young Sudanese man, back in his Nile village after seven years studying in England, finds a stranger living there, Mustafa Sa'eed, who has his own story of London.
Nostromo
In the South American republic of Costaguana, the San Tomé silver mine becomes the prize in a revolution, and the incorruptible dockworker Nostromo is trusted to hide its silver.
Maps
Askar, an orphan raised by Misra, an Ethiopian woman in the Ogaden, grows up as war comes between Somalia and Ethiopia, and between him and the woman who raised him.
Nervous Conditions
A Shona girl pursues education in 1960s Rhodesia, confronting colonial and patriarchal barriers.
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.