Reviewed by The Complete Review

While I’ve been recuperating from minor surgery, it was a treat to see Michael Orthofer’s review of my book A Basket of Leaves in The Complete Review:

The clever and simple idea behind Geoff Wisner’s A Basket of Leaves is to give readers a sense of Africa by introducing them to 99 Books that Capture the Spirit of Africa ... He does a very good job, and it is what he writes in A Basket of Leaves — and not the ninety-nine excerpts he offers — that make this a good and useful overview of and introduction to Africa ... he packs an enormous amount of variety and information into such a manageable book.

Orthofer zeroes in on some of the hurdles I faced in writing this book: the difficulty of finding literature in English from countries like Chad and Equatorial Guinea, the challenge of dealing with the embarrassment of riches in countries like Nigeria and South Africa, and my desire to include books that shed light on what is distinctive about a particular country. (I thought Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was a fine novel, for instance, but one that didn’t have to take place in Nigeria, and therefore I didn’t include it.)