Two books by writers from the Comoros, set there, that give a real sense of the place: A Girl Called Eel and The Kaffir of Karthala.
Almost no writing by Comorian authors has been translated into English, so readers usually meet the islands through history and memoir. Comoros has three official languages: Comorian, a Bantu language related to Swahili, plus French and Arabic. Swahili trade, sultanates, French rule and coups shape most of what is available in English.
Iain Walker's Islands in a Cosmopolitan Sea: A History of the Comoros, by an anthropologist with long fieldwork there, traces the islands from Swahili and Arab trading networks to independence. Malyn Newitt's The Comoro Islands: Struggle Against Dependency in the Indian Ocean covers the post-independence years of coups and mercenaries. In Old Fourlegs: The Story of the Coelacanth, the South African ichthyologist J. L. B. Smith recounts the 1950s Anjouan coelacanth affair.
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A teenager's breathless monologue from Mutsamudu on Anjouan shows island family life, schooling, the sea and the pressures on young women.
A satire of post-independence Comorian politics, showing a society under mercenary-backed authoritarian rule, with Islamic custom and island life on Grande Comore.
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