What do you think?
Rate this book
African Stories
A Pocket Classics hardcover collection of 36 terrific stories by major writers from across Africa, selected by the Booker Prize–winning Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri
Award-winning writer Ben Okri, author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The Famished Road, curates this one-volume overview of the best of African literature. Here is a pantheon of enormous talents from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, hailing from a wide variety of countries and cultures and including multiple winners of the Nobel Prize in literature, the Booker Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. The writers include Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Tayeb Salih, Doris Lessing, J. M. Coetzee, M. G. Vassanji, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and many more.
The short story form has a rich history on the African continent, drawing on a deep well of traditional oral tales, fables, and legends as well as a vital and ongoing engagement with the forces of history and modernity. Subjects range from the vicissitudes of daily life to sweeping social commentary, with such varied characters as a shopkeeper yearning for love in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s “Cages,” a faith-healing priest in Bessie Head’s “Jacob,” a freedom fighter facing apartheid in Nadine Gordimer’s “Amnesty,” and invading aliens overcome by music in Emmanuel Boundzéki Dongala’s “Jazz and Palm Wine.” Whether they touch on the spirit world, the urban experience, colonialism, politics, humor, or love, these stories are both dazzling and moving.
Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket.
Award-winning writer Ben Okri, author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The Famished Road, curates this one-volume overview of the best of African literature. Here is a pantheon of enormous talents from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, hailing from a wide variety of countries and cultures and including multiple winners of the Nobel Prize in literature, the Booker Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. The writers include Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Tayeb Salih, Doris Lessing, J. M. Coetzee, M. G. Vassanji, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and many more.
The short story form has a rich history on the African continent, drawing on a deep well of traditional oral tales, fables, and legends as well as a vital and ongoing engagement with the forces of history and modernity. Subjects range from the vicissitudes of daily life to sweeping social commentary, with such varied characters as a shopkeeper yearning for love in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s “Cages,” a faith-healing priest in Bessie Head’s “Jacob,” a freedom fighter facing apartheid in Nadine Gordimer’s “Amnesty,” and invading aliens overcome by music in Emmanuel Boundzéki Dongala’s “Jazz and Palm Wine.” Whether they touch on the spirit world, the urban experience, colonialism, politics, humor, or love, these stories are both dazzling and moving.
Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket.
560 pages, Hardcover
Published February 18, 2025
About the author
Ben Okri
90 books1,019 followersPoet and novelist Ben Okri was born in 1959 in Minna, northern Nigeria, to an Igbo mother and Urhobo father. He grew up in London before returning to Nigeria with his family in 1968. Much of his early fiction explores the political violence that he witnessed at first hand during the civil war in Nigeria. He left the country when a grant from the Nigerian government enabled him to read Comparative Literature at Essex University in England.
He was poetry editor for West Africa magazine between 1983 and 1986 and broadcast regularly for the BBC World Service between 1983 and 1985. He was appointed Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College Cambridge in 1991, a post he held until 1993. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1987, and was awarded honorary doctorates from the universities of Westminster (1997) and Essex (2002).
His first two novels, Flowers and Shadows (1980) and The Landscapes Within (1981), are both set in Nigeria and feature as central characters two young men struggling to make sense of the disintegration and chaos happening in both their family and country. The two collections of stories that followed, Incidents at the Shrine (1986) and Stars of the New Curfew (1988), are set in Lagos and London.
In 1991 Okri was awarded the Booker Prize for Fiction for his novel The Famished Road (1991). Set in a Nigerian village, this is the first in a trilogy of novels which tell the story of Azaro, a spirit child. Azaro's narrative is continued in Songs of Enchantment (1993) and Infinite Riches (1998). Other recent fiction includes Astonishing the Gods (1995) and Dangerous Love (1996), which was awarded the Premio Palmi (Italy) in 2000. His latest novels are In Arcadia (2002) and Starbook (2007).
A collection of poems, An African Elegy, was published in 1992, and an epic poem, Mental Flight, in 1999. A collection of essays, A Way of Being Free, was published in 1997. Ben Okri is also the author of a play, In Exilus.
In his latest book, Tales of Freedom (2009), Okri brings together poetry and story.
Ben Okri is a Vice-President of the English Centre of International PEN, a member of the board of the Royal National Theatre, and was awarded an OBE in 2001. He lives in London.
He was poetry editor for West Africa magazine between 1983 and 1986 and broadcast regularly for the BBC World Service between 1983 and 1985. He was appointed Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College Cambridge in 1991, a post he held until 1993. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1987, and was awarded honorary doctorates from the universities of Westminster (1997) and Essex (2002).
His first two novels, Flowers and Shadows (1980) and The Landscapes Within (1981), are both set in Nigeria and feature as central characters two young men struggling to make sense of the disintegration and chaos happening in both their family and country. The two collections of stories that followed, Incidents at the Shrine (1986) and Stars of the New Curfew (1988), are set in Lagos and London.
In 1991 Okri was awarded the Booker Prize for Fiction for his novel The Famished Road (1991). Set in a Nigerian village, this is the first in a trilogy of novels which tell the story of Azaro, a spirit child. Azaro's narrative is continued in Songs of Enchantment (1993) and Infinite Riches (1998). Other recent fiction includes Astonishing the Gods (1995) and Dangerous Love (1996), which was awarded the Premio Palmi (Italy) in 2000. His latest novels are In Arcadia (2002) and Starbook (2007).
A collection of poems, An African Elegy, was published in 1992, and an epic poem, Mental Flight, in 1999. A collection of essays, A Way of Being Free, was published in 1997. Ben Okri is also the author of a play, In Exilus.
In his latest book, Tales of Freedom (2009), Okri brings together poetry and story.
Ben Okri is a Vice-President of the English Centre of International PEN, a member of the board of the Royal National Theatre, and was awarded an OBE in 2001. He lives in London.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 22, 2025
I loved this selection of short stories by African writers. Short stories are magical - they take the reader to a new place in such a short number of pages. This collection covers brilliant writers from all over Africa and covers cultures and legends and people in a way that had me relating to a continent I have never been. This book would be an amazing gift for someone heading to college - it made me dream a little deeper and broadened by world. Heartfelt thanks to the publisher for the copy.
October 5, 2025
A mixed bag for me. Some stories were deeply moving and insightful and showed me the amazing kinship of post-colonial writing, others were steeped heavily in a context that I understood little about as if I needed the storyteller to join me over a fireside for a chat on some aspects. But overall super refreshing the writing style, themes and the closeness to rural Indian settings
May 20, 2026
Dat heb je met een bundel van verschillende schrijvers: een aantal sterke verhalen, zeer Afrikaans, een aantal mindere, ook al zijn ze van grote namen in de Afrikaanse literatuur die wij kennen in het Westen. Ik heb zeker genoten van de Nigeriaanse vertellers, naaste een aantal andere, voor mij, minder bekende schrijvers.
August 9, 2025
A terrific anthology providing a very broad overview.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews