Showing titles in Africa

The birth of an alliance that changed the course of history. From the bestselling author of Fortress Malta this is the second book in the Mediterranean war trilogy. This audiobook looks afresh at the conflict in Northern Africa, focusing for the first time on the involvement of the US and the...

CAPE TOWN’S POPULAR high-end night spots attract an array of clientele, from young partygoers to politicians, models to moguls. In parallel with this is a sleazy underworld where control of the lucrative nightclub-security scene is the ultimate prize, for which some are prepared to pay using extortion and murder as the main currencies. South Africa’s private-security sector is massive, an informal police force increasingly relied on as confidence in traditional policing wanes. But it’s an industry tainted by ties to underworld figures and events.

WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE WINNER OF IRISH BOOK OF THE YEAR SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE ‘The most important work of contemporary reporting I have ever read’ SALLY ROONEY The Western world has turned its back on refugees, fuelling one of the most devastating human rights...

Lidia Rauch was born at the crossroads of South Africa's past and present – the granddaughter of one of apartheid's longest-serving ministers, raised in a world constructed for her comfort, yet called to reckon with its cost. Her story moves between privilege and pain: from a childhood marked by fracture, to a career within the machinery of government, to the long, uneasy road of reckoning with what it means to be white, Afrikaans, and free in a country still carrying the weight of its past.

Pick up almost any book on early and medieval world history and empire, and where do you find West Africa? On the periphery. This pioneering book tells a different story. Interweaving political and social history and drawing on a rich array of sources, Michael Gomez unveils a new vision of how categories of ethnicity, race, gender, and caste emerged in Africa and in global history. 

Cleopatra VII Philopator was the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, nominally survived as pharaoh by her son Caesarion. She was also a diplomat, naval commander, polyglot, and medical author. As a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, she was a descendant of its founder, Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great.

The first part of this audiobook will explore Greek heroes, what they were like and what they accomplished. Furthermore, the audiobook will tackle Greek religion, and the gods and goddesses which establish the backdrop against which Greek legends were formed. We will also take a close look at the myths of Greek monsters. Listen to this audiobook now and discover captivating stories of Gods, Goddesses, Monsters, and Mortals.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2022 ‘Superb’ The Times ‘Engrossing and revelatory' Observer ‘Powerful, compelling and meticulously researched’ New Statesman A new book from the award winning author of In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz,Do Not Disturb explores the controversial career of...

The story of the intelligence war in South Africa during the Second World War is one of suspense, drama and dogged persistence. In 1939, when the Union of South Africa entered the war on Britain’s side, the German government secretly contacted the political opposition, and the leadership of the anti-war movement, the Ossewabrandwag. The Nazis’ aim was to spread sedition, undermine the Allied war effort, and - given the strategic importance of the Cape of Good Hope sea route - gain naval intelligence. Soon U-boat packs were sent to operate in South African waters, to deadly effect.

Sayyida Salme lived a remarkable life in remarkable times and told the tale more than a century ago in her Memoirs of an Arabian Princess, the first book published by an Arab woman. She was born in 1844 as a princess on the island of Zanzibar, daughter of the great Omani Sayyid Said bin Sultan and his Circassian slave Djilfidan. By the time she published her Memoirs in German in 1886, she had moved from Arab royalty amidst harem politics to the challenges of raising a family as a single mother in a foreign land, with her new Christian name, Emily Ruete.

As a scout, I needed all my five senses and every faculty of my mind at highest efficiency at all times. There is nothing that sharpens a man’s senses so acutely as to know that bitter and determined enemies are in pursuit of him night and day. In many lines of endeavor, errors may be repeated without fatal results, but in an Indian or savage war, or in a bitter feud, one little slip entails the “absent” mark forever against a man’s name. Solitude intensifies the perceptions. The herd with a thousand eyes trusts itself to a solitary sentinel with only two.

The Kebra Nagast stands as one of the most revered and spiritually potent works in the Christian world—a foundational text of Ethiopian identity and a testament to a lineage believed to descend from the union of King Solomon of Israel and Makeda, the Queen of Sheba. More than a historical chronicle, it is a sacred epic, preserved through centuries by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, weaving together divine providence, royal authority, and the unfolding destiny of a nation chosen to safeguard one of the holiest treasures of antiquity.

'[A] comprehensive and important history of black Britain . . . Written with a wonderful clarity of style and with great force and passion.' – Kwasi Kwarteng, Sunday Times In this vital re-examination of a shared history, historian and broadcaster David Olusoga tells the rich and revealing...

In winter of 1912, Henri Matisse was struggling. Once the vanguard leader, the Parisian avant-garde now considered him passé. His important early collectors had stopped buying his work and were fully championing Picasso, and he had exhibited little in the last few years. In the face of Cubism...

History is written by the victors, and Rome had some very eloquent historians. Those the Romans regarded as barbarians left few records of their own, but they had a tremendous impact on the Roman imagination. Resisting from outside Rome's borders or rebelling from within, they emerge vividly in Rome's historical tradition, and left a significant footprint in archaeology.

Known in the Dominican Republic and Togo as Vodu, in Benin as Vodún, and in Haiti as Vodou, West African religion has, for hundreds of years, served as a repository of sacred knowledge while simultaneously evolving in response to human experience and globalization. Spirit Service: Vodún and Vodou in the African Atlantic World explores this dynamic religion, its mobility, and its place in the modern world.

Mastering the West offers a thoroughly engrossing narrative of this century of battle in the western Mediterranean, while treating a full range of themes: the antagonists' military, naval, economic, and demographic resources; the political structures of both republics; and the postwar impact of the conflicts on the participants and victims.

The Boer War was the defining conflict of South African history and one of the most important conflicts in the history of the British Empire. Naturally, complicated geopolitics underscored it, going back centuries. In fact, the European history of South Africa began with the 1652 arrival of a small Dutch flotilla in Table Bay, at the southern extremity of the African continent, which made landfall with a view to establishing a victualing station to service passing Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) ships.

Ten million people had been murdered. For 15 years, atrocities had been perpetrated by King Leopold II of Belgium and his Force Publique in the Congo Free State. By 1909, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle could stand it no longer and felt the need to speak out and inform the general public of exactly what was going on. This new edition of his passionate plea for action includes contemporary newspaper reports and an introduction by Tim Dalgleish. His book is a classic in the annals of genocide and remains a shocking portrayal of humanity’s "heart of darkness".

In A Long Way Gone Ishmael Beah tells a riveting story in his own words: how, at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was...