Shop

Binyavanga Wainaina was a pioneering voice in African literature, an award-winning memoirist and essayist, and a gatherer of literary communities. Before his tragic death in 2019 at the age of forty-eight, he won the Caine Prize for African Writing and was named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People. His wildly popular essay “How to Write About Africa,” an incisive and unapologetic piece that exposed the harmfully racist ways Western media depicts Africa, with implicit bias and subjective clichés, changed the game for African writers and helped set the stage for a new generation of authors, from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Yaa Gyasi.

When Wainaina published a “lost chapter” of his 2011 memoir as an essay called “I Am a Homosexual, Mum,” in which he imagines coming out to his mother, he became a voice for the queer, African community as well, adding a new layer to how African sexuality is perceived.

How to Write About Africa celebrates this legacy in a collection of imaginative essays and short fiction about sexuality, art, history, and contemporary Africa. Wainaina’s writing is playful, robust, generous and full-bodied. He describes the modern world with sensual, emotional, and psychological detail, giving us a full-color view of a country and continent. These works present a portrait of a giant in African literature, who left a tremendous legacy.

Depicting one man’s transformation and descent into brutality, H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man is a riveting exploration of science’s power to corrupt

With his face swaddled in bandages, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses and his hands covered even indoors, Griffin – the new guest at The Coach and Horses – Is at first assumed to be a shy accident-victim. But the true reason for his disguise is far more chilling: he has developed a process that has made him invisible, and is locked in a struggle to discover the antidote. Forced from the village and driven to murder, he seeks the aid of his old friend Kemp. The horror of his fate has affected his mind, however – and when Kemp refuses to help, Griffin resolves to wreak his revenge. This edition includes a full biographical essay on Wells, a further reading list and detailed notes on the text. In his introduction, Christopher Priest considers the novel’s impact upon modern literature.