African Studies Portal - UW-Madison Libraries : Award Winning Literature and Film

South Africa
Memorial Library

Sipho is a “young blood”, a young man of the school-going generation caught up in a world of money, booze and greed. He lives in Umlazi, Durban – he is seventeen, has dropped out of school and helps out at his father’s mechanic shop during the day. But odd jobs underneath the bonnets of wrecked cars do not provide the lifestyle his friends have...

South Africa
Memorial Library
An important rumination on youth in modern-day South Africa, this haunting debut novel tells the story of two extraordinary young women who have grown up black in white suburbs and must now struggle to find their identities. The rich and pampered Ofilwe has taken her privileged lifestyle for granted, and must confront her swiftly dwindling sense of culture when her soulless world falls apart. Meanwhile, the hip and sassy Fiks is an ambitious go-getter desperate to leave her vicious past behind for the glossy sophistication of city life, but finds Johannesburg to be more complicated and unforgiving than she expected. These two stories artfully come together to illustrate the weight of history upon a new generation in South Africa.

Nigeria
Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
In the Ooni Kingdom, children born dada—with vines growing in their hair—are rumored to have special powers. Zahrah Tsami doesn’t know anything about that. She feels normal. Others think she’s different—they fear her. Only Dari, her best friend, isn’t afraid of her. But then something begins to happen—something that definitely marks Zahrah as different—and the only person she can tell is Dari. He pushes her to investigate, edging them both closer and closer to danger. Until Dari’s life is on the line. Only Zahrah can save him, but to do so she’ll have to face her worst fears alone, including the very thing that makes her different.

Nigerian
Memorial Library
In the Shadow of Silence introduces an important new voice in contemporary fiction. With insight and a lyrical wisdom reminiscent of Edwidge Danticat, Nigerian-born Sefi Atta has written a powerful and eloquent story set in her African homeland. It is 1971, a year after the Biafran War, and Nigeria is under military rule, though the politics of the state matter less than those of her home to Enitan Taiwo, an eleven-year-old girl tired of waiting for school to start. Will her mother, who has become deeply religious since the death of Taiwo's brother, allow her friendship with the new girl next door, the brash and beautiful Sheri Bakare? This novel charts the fate of these two African girls, one born of privilege and the other, a lower class half-caste; one who is prepared to manipulate the traditional system while the other attempts to defy it. Written in the voice of Enitan, the novel traces this unusual friendship into their adult lives, against the backdrop of tragedy, family strife, and a war-torn Nigeria. In the end, In the Shadow of Silence is Enitan's story; one of a fierecely intelligent, strong young woman coming of age in a culture that still insists on feminine submission. The novel evokes the sights and smells of Africa while imparting a wise and universal story of love, friendship, prejudice, survival, politics, and the cost of divided loyalties.

Cameroon
Memorial Library
Né dans l’Hexagone, Antoine Kingué, dit Snow, n’arrive pas à surmonter la rancoeur qu’il nourrit envers sa mère, coupable de ne l’avoir pas assez aimé. Elle l’a laissé en pension alors qu’il n’avait que sept ans et envoyé passer les grandes vacances seul au Mboasu, ce pays subsaharien où il ne s’est jamais senti à sa place. Par ailleurs, il est persuadé que son frère Maxime a reçu plus d’affection que lui.

Republic of the Congo
Memorial Library
Si ton itinéraire te désavoue accepte de tomber sans précaution. La chute est humaine. Ne pleure pas. Elle est le témoin de la traversée des sentiers. Ne pleure pas. L'expérience est au prix de la marche éternelle. Verse des larmes si ton coeur mordu par la douleur te le réclame mais ne pleure pas.

Democratic Republic of the Congo
Memorial Library
Dans un Kinshasa secoué de remous de toutes sortes, Célio aurait pu traîner sa galère encore longtemps, n'eût été sa rencontre avec le directeur d'un bureau aux activités très confidentielles, attaché à la présidence de la République. La faim tenaille suffisamment les ventres pour que le débat sur bien et mal puisse être sérieusement envisagé. La ville ne fait pas de cadeau, le jeune homme le sait, et il tient là l'occasion de rejoindre le cercle très fermé des sorciers modernes qui manipulent les êtres et la vie quotidienne. Orphelin depuis l'une des guerres qui ravagent le pays, Célio conserve comme une bible un vieux manuel scolaire, retrouvé dans le sac de son père tué au hasard d'une route de fuite. C'est grâce à des théorèmes et à des définitions que Célio Mathématik espère influer sur le destin dont il dit n'être que le jouet. Un moment emporté dans la spirale sympathique de la vie facilitée, Célio Mathématik n'a cependant pas oublié la mort suspecte de Baestro, un vieux copain qui gagnait quelques sous en participant à des manifs arrangées par l'éminence grise du pouvoir, mais qui un jour y a laissé sa vie. Avec humour et gravité, connaissant son monde et pour cause, In Koli Jean Bofane campe d'une plume aussi acerbe qu'exotique ses personnages et dresse des tableaux d'un Congo que le lecteur s'approprie vite parce qu'il sent les rues, palpite au rythme des musiques et des images livrées avec justesse et énormément d'empathie.

Verona Shelving Facility
The complex dynamics between those blacks who remained in South Africa and risked their lives to lead the struggle against apartheid and those who returned victoriously after living in exile.

Verona Shelving Facility
Tells the story of Ezra, a young boy kidnapped and forced to become a soldier with a rebel faction in the Sierra Leone Civil War. Ten years later, he is brought before a truth and reconciliation commission and made to revisit and understand his crimes so as to begin the process of psychological healing.

LSS Media Collection
Drum tells the story of Henry Nxumalo, South Africa's leading investigative reporter [in the 1950's], exposing the apartheid regime's darkest secrets in the pages of the first magazine aimed at a black readership.

Memorial Library
This hypnotic tone poem confirms Sissako's talent for capturing the essence of a place through evocative imagery, Tatiesque comedy, and close observation of everyday life. Abdallah returns to his homeland, a seaside town of Nouadhibou in Mauritania, for an indeterminate amount of time. Now a stranger to his own community and language, the young man tries to absorb as much local color (literally and figuratively) before embarking for Europe.

Verona Shelving Facility
Félicité is a proud, free-willed woman working as a singer in a bar in the Congo's capital Kinshasa. Her life is thrown into turmoil when her fourteen-year-old son gets into a terrible car accident. To raise the money to save him, she sets out on a breakneck race through the streets of electric Kinshasa.
Nominated for the Golden Bear at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival and winner of the Festival's Jury Grand Prix. Winner of six Africa Movie Academy Awards.

LSS Media Collection
A cattle herder and his family who reside in the dunes of Timbuktu find their quiet lives, which are typically free of the Jihadists determined to control their faith, abruptly disturbed when they are forced to follow the new laws of their foreign occupants.
Nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival and winner of the Festival's Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and the François Chalais Prize. Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards.

LSS Media Collection
A young man running with a criminal gang on the streets of Johannesburg, Tsotsi - a nickname meaning thug - is immersed in a world of violence that seems to leave him unaffected, until he discovers an infant in the backseat of a car he has stolen.
Winner of the 2006 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006.