WRITERS
A hand-filed catalogue of African writers and their books, filed under the traditions they write from.
The Market →
SOURCE
20 Lore Universes across the continent: the origin stories, beliefs and storytelling of the peoples who share them.
The Lore Universes →AfricanBookMarket
We stand on the shoulders of the past to see into the future.
AfricanBookMarket is the African literary catalogue: the continent’s writers and the books they made, with a magazine built around it. Every book is chosen and filed by hand, under its people and tradition, its region, its form and the language it was first written in.
The catalogue runs across the continent (West, East, Central, Southern and North Africa and the Horn) and across time, beginning with the griots’ epics and the Timbuktu and Ge’ez manuscripts and reaching the new titles of the current season. It concentrates on African writers writing from and about their own peoples, including books first written in African languages and in Arabic, French and Portuguese.
West Africa
Akan / Ashanti
Golden Stool, Anansi trickster tradition, matrilineal succession, Adinkra symbols, Kente cloth cosmology.
West Africa
Yoruba / Fon / Ewe
400+ Orishas, Ifa divination system, survival in diaspora (Candomblé, Santería, Vodou), mythology of extraordinary depth.
West Africa
Mandé empires (Mali, Songhai)
Griot oral historians, Sundiata epic, Mali Empire at its height, Timbuktu as intellectual centre, praise-song tradition.
West Africa
Dogon
Sirius knowledge, Nommo creation beings, Hogon priests, 8-day cosmological calendar, extraordinary astronomical sophistication.
West Africa
Hausa states
Hausa city-states, Bori spirit possession tradition, Hausa women traders, Islamic synthesis, Sokoto Caliphate.
West Africa
Fulani / Fulbe
40M+ people, largest nomadic group in the world, Pulaaku code of honour, Wodaabe male beauty competitions (Gerewol), Fulani jihads, cattle-centred cosmology, across 20 African nations.
Central Africa
Aka, Baka, Mbuti
Forest as deity, polyphonic communal singing, hunter-gatherer cosmology, reciprocal consciousness with the forest.
Central Africa
Congo River (Kongo, Luba, Lunda)
Kongo cosmogram (four moments of the sun), Luba Lukasa memory boards, Nkisi power figures, Lunda diaspora, BaKongo survival in Americas.
Central Africa
Proto-Bantu expansion
Iron as sacred, Bantu expansion across the continent, ancestor veneration, Ubuntu philosophy.
East Africa
Great Lakes kingdoms (Buganda, Rwanda, Burundi)
Interlacustrine kingdoms, Kabaka divine kingship, Imandwa spirit possession, sophisticated court cultures, Great Lakes oral poetry.
East Africa
Nilotic pastoralists (Maasai, Dinka, Nuer)
Cattle as currency and cosmology, Nuer segmentary lineage, Dinka song-oxen, Maasai age-grade warriors (moran), pastoralist resistance to colonialism.
East Africa
Indian Ocean traders (Swahili)
Swahili as African-Arab synthesis (150M+ speakers), monsoon trade routes, Zanzibar sultanate, dhow navigation, coastal city-state architecture, Kiswahili oral literature.
East Africa
Madagascar (Austronesian-African fusion)
Unique Austronesian-Bantu-Arab synthesis, Fady taboo system, Famadihana turning-of-the-bones ancestor ceremony, Vazimba original spirits, radically different from continental Africa.
Southern Africa
San/Khoisan
World's oldest continuous culture. Trance dance, rock art, animal transformation, tracking as epistemology.
Southern Africa
Zimbabwe plateau (Shona, Rozvi)
Great Zimbabwe (11th-15th century), Mwari/Murenga supreme deity, Nehanda spirit medium, Shona mbira music as spirit communication, gold trade routes.
Southern Africa
Southern African kingdoms (Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele)
Zulu military state (Shaka), Xhosa ubuntu philosophy, Ndebele mural art, Mfecane diaspora, Xhosa click language, Zulu oral praise poetry (izibongo).
North Africa
Nile Valley / Nubian / Beja
Ma'at, cosmic balance, resurrection, the weighing of the heart, pharaonic divine kingship.
North Africa
Amazigh / Tuareg
Tuareg indigo-veiled warriors, Tifinagh script (world's oldest still-used alphabet), matrilineal Tuareg structure, Saharan trans-continental trade, Berber resistance to Arab and Roman conquest.
Horn of Africa
Cushitic / Oromo
Gadaa democratic age-grade system, Waaqeffanna indigenous religion, Siiqqee women's institution, coffee origin culture.
Horn of Africa · Today
Horn pastoralists (Somali, Afar)
Camel-centred pastoralism, oral poetry (gabay) as high art, xeer customary law, clan as total social structure, Somali heroic tradition.
The Lore · Source
The origin stories and traditions of African peoples. The Lore Universes cover the continent’s regions, from the Kalahari to the Swahili coast; each Lore Universe is one body of African lore, the origin stories, beliefs and storytelling of the peoples who share it.
The Market · The Library
Writers and books filed under the traditions they write from, with new titles added as they appear.
