Our Africa editor chooses five books, and one album, as an introduction to the great continent

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Our Africa editor chooses five books, and one album, as an introduction to the great continent
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Want to better understand Africa? We recommend these books (and music) to kick off your holiday reading list

peak of Africa

as a single entity, and many of its inhabitants will say testily that it is no such thing. Rightly so: lazy outsiders often lump together the 1.2bn people who live in Africa’s vast landmass, who speak perhaps 2,000 distinct languages and who are more culturally, politically and genetically diverse than people on any other continent. Doing justice to this richness could easily take a lifetime of reading, listening and watching.

Africa’s most populous country was neatly summed up in the decades before its independence in 1960 from British colonial rule by Obafemi Awolowo, a leading Nigerian politician of the era. “Nigeria,” he said, “is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression.” When European powers drew up maps dividing Africa between them, they arbitrarily paid no heed to those already living there. With a stroke of a pen they jammed together more than 250 ethnic groups and called them a country.

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