4 must-read books from East Africa before the year ends

Detail from the cover of Peponi, the Kiswahili translation of Tanzanian Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novel Paradise. PHOTO | MKUKI NA NYOTA

East African literature continues to grow and reshape itself in exciting new ways – and 2023 was no exception. The world really did take notice of the region when Tanzanian-British author Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021. Interest in Gurnah’s work continued last year when he made a homecoming to east Africa.

But it is in Tanzania that Gurnah made a proper homecoming in 2023 – through the first ever Kiswahili translation of Paradise, now out as Peponi.