Contemporary Voices, Memoir and Testimony
The generation that came of age after 2000, writing across continents about migration, memory and return, alongside the first-person witnesses who testify to war, imprisonment and survival.
Americanah
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A Nigerian woman blogs about race in America, then goes home.
Read why it mattered →One Day I Will Write About This Place
Binyavanga Wainaina
A Kenyan childhood recalled in the fractured rhythm of memory itself.
Read why it mattered →A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Ishmael Beah
A boy conscripted at twelve recalls the war that took his childhood.
Read why it mattered →We Need New Names
NoViolet Bulawayo
From a Zimbabwean shantytown called Paradise to a cold American city.
Read why it mattered →The Shadow King
Maaza Mengiste
The women who fought Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia, written back into history.
Read why it mattered →Open City
Teju Cole
A psychiatrist walks New York, and the walking becomes the story.
Read why it mattered →Woman at Point Zero
Nawal El Saadawi
On death row, a woman tells the doctor why she killed a man.
Read why it mattered →Paradise
Abdulrazak Gurnah
A boy pawned to settle his father's debt, in East Africa before colonial rule tightens.
Read why it mattered →More from the library