Four books by writers from Lesotho, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with Singing Away the Hunger and How We Buried Puso.
Lesotho's literature begins with oral poetry, especially lithoko, praise poems for chiefs. Written Sesotho arrived with French Protestant missionaries in the 1830s. Their press at Morija printed Thomas Mofolo's Traveller to the East (1907), the first novel in Sesotho, in which a man from a pre-Christian village travels east to look for God. Few books by Basotho writers are available in English.
Start with Mpho 'M'atsepo Nthunya's Singing Away the Hunger, the autobiography of a Basotho woman in rural Lesotho from the 1930s onwards. It's full of village customs, hardship and women's friendships. Morabo Morojele brings things up to date: in How We Buried Puso (2006), a man comes home for his brother's funeral. Three Egg Dilemma (2023) is set in an unnamed country closely based on Lesotho.
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A Basotho woman's autobiography of rural Lesotho life from the 1930s onward, showing village customs, hardship, storytelling and women's friendships.
A man returns home to Lesotho for his brother's funeral and has to face family, politics and his own past.
A lonely narrator, followed by a ghost, gets through ordinary life in a country hit by civil unrest and violence.
Fekisi, a good man in a pre-Christian Basotho village, leaves home and travels east looking for the true God; it was the first novel written in Sesotho.
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