Alexandra Fuller picks her top 10 African memoirs

African fiction gets a fair amount of attention from reviewers and anthologists, but the continent has produced some extraordinary memoirs too. Alexandra Fuller’s Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is one of these, and in the Guardian she lists ten of her own favorites.

It’s a good list, and I second her choices of One Day I Will Write About This Place, This Child Will Be Great, What Is the What, and The Devil That Danced on the Water. I have not read Mandela’s Conversations with Myself, but his Long Walk to Freedom would make my own personal list. I’ve read other works by Zakes Mda and Albie Sachs, and look forward to reading the memoirs she mentions.

Putting together my top ten list would be tough, but here are a few of my favorite memoirs from Africa:

Algerian White by Assia Djebar
Out of Egypt by André Aciman
The Dark Child by Camara Laye
Aké: The Years of Childhood by Wole Soyinka
Of Water and the Spirit by Malidoma Patrice Somé
An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie
Notes from the Hyena’s Belly by Nega Mezlekia
Dreams in a Time of War by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
Unbowed by Wangari Maathai
My Traitor’s Heart by Rian Malan