Five books that put you in the Central African Republic. Two are by writers from the Central African Republic and set there: Co-Wives, Co-Widows and Daba's Travels from Ouadda to Bangui. The other three are wider picks: books by long-time residents and outsiders who know the place well.
Very little writing from the Central African Republic is available in English. French and Sango are the official languages, and much of the country's music and storytelling has traditionally been passed on aloud rather than written down.
Start with Adrienne Yabouza's Co-Wives, Co-Widows, which its publisher calls the first adult book by a Central African writer translated into English: two co-wives in Bangui band together against their late husband's grasping relatives, amid crooked elections. Makombo Bamboté's Daba's Travels from Ouadda to Bangui, written for young readers, follows a boy from the north-east to the capital. René Maran, a colonial official from the Caribbean, won the 1921 Prix Goncourt with Batouala, a novel of village life under French rule. African Tales, translated by Polly Strong, collects folk tales, and Louis Sarno, an American who lived among the BaAka for decades, writes of their songs and rainforest life in Song from the Forest.
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When their husband dies suddenly after his first taste of erectile-dysfunction pills, two co-wives in Bangui band together against his grasping relatives, in a wry, warm comedy set against crooked elections and courts.
Follows a young man's journey from the remote northeast town of Ouadda to the capital Bangui, showing late-colonial Ubangi-Shari life and its social tensions.
By long-time residents and outsiders who know the place well, or folk tales, poetry and history with a strong feel for the Central African Republic.
An intimate account of daily life, music and forest survival among the BaAka in the Bayanga rainforest of southwestern Central African Republic.
A short illustrated collection of traditional folk tales from the Central African Republic, retold in English for young and general readers.
Depicts village life of the Banda people in colonial Ubangi-Shari, and sharply exposes the brutality and hypocrisy of French colonial rule in the 1910s–20s.
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