Africa has been known as "the cradle of mankind", and its recoverable history stretches back to the Pharaohs. But the idea of studying African history is itself new, and the authors show why it is still contested and controversial. This VSI, the first concise work of its kind, will prove essential for anyone interested in the African continent and the diversity of human history. 

Scholastique Mukasonga’s five autobiographical stories rend a glorious Rwanda from the obliterating force of recent history, conjuring the noble cows of her home or the dew-swollen grass they graze on. In the title story, five-year-old Colomba tells of a merciless overlord, hunger or “igifu,” gnawing away at her belly. She searches for sap at the bud of a flower, scraps of sweet potato at the foot of her parent’s bed, or a few grains of sorghum in the floor sweepings. Igifu becomes a dizzying hole in her stomach, a plunging abyss into which she falls. 

The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.

In 1994, Jeanne Celestine, a young Rwandan schoolgirl, was living a quiet life in the countryside when the death of Rwanda’s president provoked a 100-day extermination of over one million ethnic Tutsis. She survived by hiding from violent militiamen all the while caring for her three-year-old twin sisters, Teddy and Teta.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” whispers secrets from its peeling edges, a silent witness to a woman’s descent into madness. In the dim light of her secluded room, she grapples with more than just faded wallpaper; it’s her sanity that unravels thread by thread. As the moon casts eerie shadows, the yellow hue takes on a life of its own, revealing cryptic patterns—a dance of confinement and rebellion.