Africa Audiobooks | History

Forged On The Frontier (1818-1849): The Emperor’s youth as an 1820 Settler, cockney farmer, brother

A wryly humorous telling of the British colonialisation in South Africa, told from the point of view of a not-very-successful family and the child that would become Emperor, thousands of miles away.Long before he became Emperor of the United States, Joshua Norton won his place in history as one of the 1820 Settlers, in the British colonialisation of the Cape Colony, in today's South Africa.Many think the patron saint of Discordianism a myth, or his life absurdly exaggerated, but they are wrong. Reality is far stranger than fiction could ever be, and Joshua Norton is the absolute proof, a real-life Don Quixote formed in tragedy and triumph, scarred into a delusion of a better world by the violence of this one. This volume covers Joshua's upbringing as an 1820 settler in the newly-formed Albany region, in what would become the Eastern Cape. It brings to life one of history's most turbulent periods, as Dutch, British, Xhosa, Khoi and Fingo all try to build a life on a land riven by constant war. Read on for a tale of heroes and villains, but mostly of people trying to survive where they can when all the odds are stacked against them and great political winds tear through their desperate lives. The first volume of the definitive history of Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. Told with with a wry dramatisation, it contains the most accurate and complete information on Joshua's early life in any book to date.

Chirag Patel (Author), Chirag Patel (Narrator)

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Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad

A powerful investigation into a grisly political murder and the authoritarian regime behind it: Do Not Disturb upends the narrative that Rwanda sold the world after one of the deadliest genocides of the twentieth century. We think we know the story of Africa's Great Lakes region. Following the Rwandan genocide, an idealistic group of young rebels overthrew the brutal regime in Kigali, ushering in an era of peace and stability that made Rwanda the donor darling of the West, winning comparisons with Switzerland and Singapore. But the truth was considerably more sinister. Vividly sourcing her story with direct testimony from key participants, Wrong uses the story of the murder of Patrick Karegeya, once Rwanda's head of external intelligence and a quicksilver operator of supple charm, to paint the portrait of a modern African dictatorship created in the chilling likeness of Paul Kagame, the president who sanctioned his former friend's assassination.

Michela Wrong (Author), Michela Wrong (Narrator)

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Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad

A new book from the award winning author of In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz, Do Not Disturb explores the controversial career of Paul Kagame and the legacy of the Rwandan genocide Do Not Disturb is a dramatic recasting of the modern history of Africa's Great Lakes region, an area blighted by the greatest genocide of the twentieth century. This bold retelling, vividly sourced by direct testimony from key participants, tears up the traditional script. In the old version, an idealistic group of young rebels overthrows a genocidal regime in Kigali, ushering in an era of peace and stability that makes Rwanda the donor darling of the West, winning comparisons with Switzerland and Singapore. The new version examines afresh questions which dog the recent past: Why do so many ex-rebels scoff at official explanations of who fired the missile that killed the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi? Why didn't the mass killings end when the rebels took control? Why did those same rebels, victory secured, turn so ruthlessly on one another? Michela Wrong uses the story of Patrick Karegeya, once Rwanda's head of external intelligence and a quicksilver operator of supple charm, to paint the portrait of a modern African dictatorship created in the chilling likeness of Paul Kagame, the president who sanctioned his former friend's murder.

Michela Wrong (Author), Michela Wrong (Narrator)

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Tip and Run: The Untold Tragedy of the First World War in Africa

Controversial and groundbreaking account of the infamous East African campaign during the First World War 'Superb' Sunday Times 'Masterful' Daily Mail 'Gripping' Daily Telegraph The Great War's East Africa campaign was, and remains, of huge importance. A 'small war', consisting of a few 'local affairs', was all that was expected in August 1914 as Britain moved to eliminate the threat to the high seas of German naval bases in Africa. But two weeks after the Armistice was signed in Europe British and German troops were still fighting in Africa after four years of what one campaign historian described as 'a war of extermination and attrition without parallel in modern times'. The expense of the campaign to the British Empire was immense, the Allied and German 'butchers bills' even greater. But the most tragic consequence of the two sides' deadly game of 'tip and run' was the devastation of an area five times the size of Germany, and civilian suffering on a scale unimaginable in Europe. Includes the real stories behind the classic Bogart/ film THE AFRICAN QUEEN, William Boyd's Booker shortlisted novel AN ICE-CREAM WAR, Wilbur Smith's thriller SHOUT AT THE DEVIL and two of the Young Indiana Jones films

Edward Paice (Author), Edward Paice, Jonathan Keeble (Narrator)

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Democracy and Delusion: 10 Myths in South African Politics

South African politics is riddled with delusions. Many common political arguments come pre-packaged in an old and dusty box - but the self-evident truths are not, in fact, so indisputable. Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh sets out to dismantle that box. He argues that free education is far from impossible, the ANC's liberation narrative is too idyllic to swallow, land reform is not the first step to chaos, and the media is not free... In this incisive, informed book we find not only challenges to commonly held opinions, but optimism about South Africa's future, and solutions to old problems. A fresh perspective on South African politics.

Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh (Author), Hangwi Lephatsi (Narrator)

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War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East

Rommel's army is a day from Cairo, a week from Tel Aviv. The SS is ready for action. Espionage brought the Nazis this far. Espionage can stop them - if Washington wakes up to the danger. As World War II raged in North Africa, General Erwin Rommel was guided by an uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In the summer of 1942, he led his Axis army swiftly and terrifyingly toward Alexandria, with the goal of overrunning the entire Middle East. Each step was informed by detailed updates on British positions. The Nazis, somehow, had a source for the Allies' greatest secrets. Yet the Axis powers were not the only ones with intelligence. Brilliant Allied cryptographers worked relentlessly at Bletchley Park, breaking down the extraordinarily complex Nazi code Enigma. From decoded German messages, they discovered that the enemy had a wealth of inside information. On the brink of disaster, a fevered and high-stakes search for the source began. War of Shadows is the cinematic story of the race for information in the North African theater of World War II, set against intrigues that spanned the Middle East. Years in the making, this book is a feat of historical research and storytelling, and a rethinking of the popular narrative of the war. It portrays the conflict not as an inevitable clash of heroes and villains but a spiraling series of failures, accidents, and desperate triumphs that decided the fate of the Middle East and quite possibly the outcome of the war.

Gershom Gorenberg (Author), Fred Berman (Narrator)

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The Garden of Mars: Madagascar, an Island Story

A journey - both historical and contemporary - among the fantastical landscapes, beguiling creatures and isolated tribes of the world's fourth island: Madagascar. An improbable world beckons. We think we know Madagascar but it's too big, too eccentric, and too impenetrable to be truly understood. If it was stretched out across Europe, the islands would reach from London to Algiers, and yet its road network is barely bigger than tiny Jamaica's. There is no evidence of any human life until about 10,000 years ago, and, when eventually people settled, it was migrants from Borneo - 3,700 miles away - who came out on top. As well as visiting every corner of Madagascar, John Gimlette journeys deep into its past in order to better understand how Madagascar became what it is today. Along the way, he meets politicians, sorcerors, gem prospectors, militiamen, rioters, lepers and the descendants of seventeenth-century pirates. 2020 Head of Zeus Ltd

John Gimlette (Author), Mark Elstob (Narrator)

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The Regeneration of Africa: From the Colored American Magazine of New York (June, 1906)

P. Ka Isaka Seme (Author), Leighton Harris (Narrator)

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UMangethe kaMafu

Sibahle Cebekhulu (Author), Sibahle Cebekhulu (Narrator)

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UMzimba Iqhawe Lenkosi uShaka

Sibahle Cebekhulu (Author), Sibahle Cebekhulu (Narrator)

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African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa

A groundbreaking book that puts early and medieval West Africa on the map of global history 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. Focusing on the Savannah and Sahel region, Gomez traces how Islam's growth in West Africa, along with intensifying commerce that included slaves, resulted in a series of political experiments unique to the region, culminating in the rise of empire. A radically new account of the importance of early Africa in global history, African Dominion will be the standard work on the subject for years to come.

Michael Gomez (Author), David Sadzin (Narrator)

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The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, and Other East African Adventures

During the construction of a railway line from Kenya to Uganda in 1898, the project was interrupted by two man-eating lions that targeted the workers. At the Tsavo River in Kenya where a bridge needed to be built. Over a period of about nine months, the lions killed scores of people at the site of the Tsavo River bridge. These lions were deliberately hunting humans, preferring them over any other prey. They seemed to have supernatural abilities in the way they evaded all attempts to stop them until Colonel JH Patterson, the chief engineer in charge of the project, finally managed to kill them. ‘The Man-Eaters of Tsavo’ tells the story of the events, in the first part of the book. Following the death of the lions, the book describes the bridge's completion despite additional challenges such as a flood, as well as many tales on local wildlife (including other lions) local tribes, and various hunting expeditions. The story of the man-eating lions has been adapted to film three times, the most recent being ‘The Ghost and the Darkness’ of 1996.

J.H. Patterson (Author), Andrew Tarrant (Narrator)

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Africa Audiobooks in History