Popular Malawi Books

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba , Bryan Mealer

William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi, a country where magic ruled and modern science was mystery. It was also a land withered by drought and hunger, and a place where hope and opportunity were hard to find. But William had read about windmills in a book called Using Energy, and he dreamed of building one that would bring electricity and water to his village and change his William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi, a country where magic ruled and modern science was mystery. It was also a land withered by drought and hunger, and a place where hope and opportunity were hard to find. But William had read about windmills in a book called Using Energy, and he dreamed of building one that would bring electricity and water to his village and change his life and the lives of those around him. His neighbors may have mocked him and called him misala—crazy—but William was determined to show them what a little grit and ingenuity could do. Enchanted by the workings of electricity as a boy, William had a goal to study science in Malawi's top boarding schools. But in 2002, his country was stricken with a famine that left his family's farm devastated and his parents destitute. Unable to pay the eighty-dollar-a-year tuition for his education, William was forced to drop out and help his family forage for food as thousands across the country starved and died. Yet William refused to let go of his dreams. With nothing more than a fistful of cornmeal in his stomach, a small pile of once-forgotten science textbooks, and an armory of curiosity and determination, he embarked on a daring plan to bring his family a set of luxuries that only two percent of Malawians could afford and what the West considers a necessity—electricity and running water. Using scrap metal, tractor parts, and bicycle halves, William forged a crude yet operable windmill, an unlikely contraption and small miracle that eventually powered four lights, complete with homemade switches and a circuit breaker made from nails and wire. A second machine turned a water pump that could battle the drought and famine that loomed with every season. Soon, news of William's magetsi a mphepo—his "electric wind"—spread beyond the borders of his home, and the boy who was once called crazy became an inspiration to those around the world. Here is the remarkable story about human inventiveness and its power to overcome crippling adversity. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind will inspire anyone who doubts the power of one individual's ability to change his community and better the lives of those around him.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller

In Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with candor and sensitivity. Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, it is suffused with Fuller’s endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. Fuller’s debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and In Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with candor and sensitivity. Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, it is suffused with Fuller’s endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. Fuller’s debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time.

The Lower River by Paul Theroux

Ellis Hock never believed that he would return to Africa. He runs an old-fashioned menswear store in a small town in Massachusetts but still dreams of his Eden, the four years he spent in Malawi with the Peace Corps, cut short when he had to return to take over the family business. When his wife leaves him, taking the family home, he realizes that there is one place for hi Ellis Hock never believed that he would return to Africa. He runs an old-fashioned menswear store in a small town in Massachusetts but still dreams of his Eden, the four years he spent in Malawi with the Peace Corps, cut short when he had to return to take over the family business. When his wife leaves him, taking the family home, he realizes that there is one place for him to go: back to Malawi on the remote Lower River, where he can be happy again.   Arriving at the dusty village, he finds it transformed: the school he built is a ruin, the church and clinic are gone, and poverty and apathy have set in among the people. They remember him — the White Man with no fear of snakes — and welcome him. But is his new life, his journey back, an escape or a trap?   Interweaving memory and desire, hope and despair, salvation and damnation, this is a hypnotic, compelling, and brilliant return to a terrain no one has ever written better about than Theroux.

The Heaven Shop by Deborah Ellis

"There is a lion in our village, and it is carrying away our children." At her father's funeral, Binti's grandmother utters the words that no one in Malawi wants to hear. Binti's father and her mother before him, dies of AIDS. Binti, her sister, and brother are separated and sent to the home of relatives who can barely tolerate their presence. Ostracized by their extended f "There is a lion in our village, and it is carrying away our children." At her father's funeral, Binti's grandmother utters the words that no one in Malawi wants to hear. Binti's father and her mother before him, dies of AIDS. Binti, her sister, and brother are separated and sent to the home of relatives who can barely tolerate their presence. Ostracized by their extended family, the orphans are treated like the lowest servants. With her brother far away and her sister wallowing in her own sorrow, Binti can hardly contain her rage. She, Binti Phirim, was once a child star of a popular radio program. Now she is scraping to survive. Binti always believed she was special, now she is nothing but a common AIDS orphan. Binti Phiri is not about to give up. Even as she clings to hope that her former life will be restored, she must face a greater challenge. If she and her brother and sister are to reunited, Binti Phiri will have to look outside herself and find a new way to be special. Compelling and uplifting, The Heaven Shop, is a contemporary novel that puts a very real face on the African AIDS pandemic, which to-date has orphaned more than 11 million African children. Inspired by a young radio performer the author met during her research visit to Malawi, Binti Phiri is a compelling character that readers will never forget.

Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller

In this sequel to Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller returns to Africa and the story of her unforgettable family. In Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, Alexandra Fuller braids a multilayered narrative around the perfectly lit, Happy Valley-era Africa of her mother's childhood; the boiled cabbage grimness of her father's English childhood; and In this sequel to Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller returns to Africa and the story of her unforgettable family. In Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, Alexandra Fuller braids a multilayered narrative around the perfectly lit, Happy Valley-era Africa of her mother's childhood; the boiled cabbage grimness of her father's English childhood; and the darker, civil war-torn Africa of her own childhood. At its heart, this is the story of Fuller's mother, Nicola. Born on the Scottish Isle of Skye and raised in Kenya, Nicola holds dear the kinds of values most likely to get you hurt or killed in Africa: loyalty to blood, passion for land, and a holy belief in the restorative power of all animals. Fuller interviewed her mother at length and has captured her inimitable voice with remarkable precision. Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is as funny, terrifying, exotic, and unselfconscious as Nicola herself. We see Nicola and Tim Fuller in their lavender-colored honeymoon period, when East Africa lies before them with all the promise of its liquid equatorial light, even as the British Empire in which they both believe wanes. But in short order, an accumulation of mishaps and tragedies bump up against history until the couple finds themselves in a world they hardly recognize. We follow the Fullers as they hopscotch the continent, running from war and unspeakable heartbreak, from Kenya to Rhodesia to Zambia, even returning to England briefly. But just when it seems that Nicola has been broken entirely by Africa, it is the African earth itself that revives her. A story of survival and madness, love and war, loyalty and forgiveness, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is an intimate exploration of the author's family. In the end, we find Nicola and Tim at a coffee table under their Tree of Forgetfulness on the banana and fish farm where they plan to spend their final days. In local custom, the Tree of Forgetfulness is where villagers meet to resolve disputes and it is here that the Fullers at last find an African kind of peace. Following the ghosts and dreams of memory, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is Alexandra Fuller at her very best.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba , Bryan Mealer , Elizabeth Zunon (Illustrator)

When fourteen-year-old William Kamkwamba's Malawi village was hit by a drought, everyone's crops began to fail. Without enough money for food, let alone school, William spent his days in the library . . . and figured out how to bring electricity to his village. Persevering against the odds, William built a functioning windmill out of junkyard scraps, and thus became the lo When fourteen-year-old William Kamkwamba's Malawi village was hit by a drought, everyone's crops began to fail. Without enough money for food, let alone school, William spent his days in the library . . . and figured out how to bring electricity to his village. Persevering against the odds, William built a functioning windmill out of junkyard scraps, and thus became the local hero who harnessed the wind. Lyrically told and gloriously illustrated, this story will inspire many as it shows how -- even in the worst of times -- a great idea and a lot of hard work can still rock the world.

Laugh with the Moon by Shana Burg

Laugh with the Moon is on the Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List.   Thirteen-year-old Clare Silver is stuck. Stuck in denial about her mother’s recent death. Stuck in the African jungle for sixty-four days without phone reception. Stuck with her father, a doctor who seems able to heal everyone but Clare. Clare feels like a fish out of water at Mzanga Full Primary School, whe Laugh with the Moon is on the Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List.   Thirteen-year-old Clare Silver is stuck. Stuck in denial about her mother’s recent death. Stuck in the African jungle for sixty-four days without phone reception. Stuck with her father, a doctor who seems able to heal everyone but Clare. Clare feels like a fish out of water at Mzanga Full Primary School, where she must learn a new language. Soon, though, she becomes immersed in her new surroundings and impressed with her fellow students, who are crowded into a tiny space, working on the floor among roosters and centipedes.    When Clare’s new friends take her on an outing to see the country, the trip goes horribly wrong, and Clare must face another heartbreak head-on. Only an orphan named Memory, who knows about love and loss, can teach Clare how to laugh with the moon.    Told from an American girl’s perspective, this story about how death teaches us to live and how love endures through our memories will capture the hearts of readers everywhere.

Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town by Paul Theroux

In Dark Star Safari the wittily observant and endearingly irascible Paul Theroux takes readers the length of Africa by rattletrap bus, dugout canoe, cattle truck, armed convoy, ferry, and train. In the course of his epic and enlightening journey, he endures danger, delay, and dismaying circumstances. Gauging the state of affairs, he talks to Africans, aid workers, missionar In Dark Star Safari the wittily observant and endearingly irascible Paul Theroux takes readers the length of Africa by rattletrap bus, dugout canoe, cattle truck, armed convoy, ferry, and train. In the course of his epic and enlightening journey, he endures danger, delay, and dismaying circumstances. Gauging the state of affairs, he talks to Africans, aid workers, missionaries, and tourists. What results is an insightful mediation on the history, politics, and beauty of Africa and its people. In a new postscript, Theroux recounts the dramatic events of a return to Africa to visit Zimbabwe.

The Jive Talker: An Artist's Genesis by Samson Kambalu

What do you do when it looks like the odds were stacked against you before you were even born, when you're having trouble feeding a family that just keeps growing, when you've got a little too much of an affection for Carlsberg Brown and when the life president of your country, Malawi, keeps shuffling around the public health system that employs you, forcing you and your f What do you do when it looks like the odds were stacked against you before you were even born, when you're having trouble feeding a family that just keeps growing, when you've got a little too much of an affection for Carlsberg Brown and when the life president of your country, Malawi, keeps shuffling around the public health system that employs you, forcing you and your family into perpetual nomadism? You catch up on your reading, adding I'm OK, You're OK and Nietzsche to the bathroom library. Holding on to your dignity, you keep dressing up in threadbare three-piece suits you ordered from London back when you could afford them. You raise your head high like a giraffe and call yourself a philosopher, not a civil servant. With a bottle of beer in hand you philosophize before your mystified kids at night -- on anything from football to Shakespeare -- and you look to the future with boundless optimism. In short, and most important, you talk jive. The father of Samson Kambalu is the "Jive Talker" of this vivacious and warm, bristling and hilarious memoir. Kambalu Senior died of AIDS in 1995, bequeathing to his son a passion for words and an imagination that transcended all limitations. Described by The Guardian newspaper as "one of the artists to color the future," Samson Kambalu is one of the most successful young conceptual artists on the contemporary art scene: he has been featured in Bloomberg New Contemporaries and he has won a Decibel Award; he has exhibited around the world, including at the Liverpool Biennial with Yoko Ono and the FIFA World Cup in Germany in 2006. He is currently on a five-year artist residency funded by the Arts Council England. In this utterly original, often subversive book, Samson Kambalu introduces us to his country of birth, Malawi, an impoverished nation in which no dissent is tolerated, where political opponents are "disappeared" and where a portrait of Life President Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda is always guaranteed to be watching. It's also a place in which a little boy obsessed with Michael Jackson, Footloose, Nietzsche, girls, fashion and football can move beyond his station to become a rising star in international pop culture, creating a life-affirming expressionist philosophy, "Holyballism," along the way. Narrated with sass and charisma, The Jive Talker is a love letter to an Africa that is hardly understood, and it's a coming-of-age story that takes its place among the finest work by Tobias Wolff, Mary Karr and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Smouldering Charcoal by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza

Chronicles the lives of two families in post-colonial Africa, the first - poor, working-class and ill-educated - is compared to the young politically aware college student and her journalist fiance. The middle-class pair become victims of the same brutal violence that the poor and powerless suffer.

No Easy Task by Aubrey Kachingwe

I Will Try by Legson Kayira

In 1958, inspired by the life of Abraham Lincoln and the motto of his secondary school, a 16-year-old Malawian village boy, named Legson Kayira, decided to travel on foot to America to further his education. Walking barefoot and carrying food, an axe and two books, he travelled more than 2,500 miles through the African bush crossing four countries in search of an education. In 1958, inspired by the life of Abraham Lincoln and the motto of his secondary school, a 16-year-old Malawian village boy, named Legson Kayira, decided to travel on foot to America to further his education. Walking barefoot and carrying food, an axe and two books, he travelled more than 2,500 miles through the African bush crossing four countries in search of an education. Most people would have given up, but not Legson. Braving lions, hyenas, snakes, elephants and language differences, he kept going reaching Khartoum in the Sudan, where American consular officials, amazed by his remarkable walk, helped him to travel to the United States to take up a scholarship at Skagit Valley College in Washington State. I Will Try records his early life and the details of his epic journey in his quest to realise his seemingly impossible dream. Published in 1965, while Legson was studying at the University of Washington, it became a best seller in the United States and England, and was translated into numerous other languages. Legson went on to study history at Cambridge University in England. He wanted to return to Malawi to help build a post-colonial state, but was prevented from doing so by the despotic Dr Hastings Banda. Instead, he remained in England where he pursued a career in the British Home Office, and wrote four more books. This volume contains the original text, photographs, as well as a memoir by Legson’s widow, Julie Kayira, written after his sudden death in England in October 2012. At the time of his death Legson was working with Rivonia Media Group on a feature film of I Will Try. As vivid as the day it was first published some 50 years ago, it continues to teach young people in Africa and the world over that, if they are determined enough, there is nothing they cannot achieve.

Venture to the Interior by Laurens van der Post

An account of a journey on foot across the mountains to the two lost worlds of Central Africa. Adventure, discovery, and tragedy teem in this famous account of a trek into the sinister, primeval heights of Mount Mlanje and the cloud veiled uplands of Myika.

A History of Malawi, 1859-1966 by John McCracken

This is the first comprehensive history of Malawi during the colonial period. Using a wide range of primary and secondary sources, it places this history within the context of the pre-colonial past. The book examines the way in which British people, starting with David Livingstone, followed by the pioneer Scottish Presbyterian missionaries and including soldiers, speculato This is the first comprehensive history of Malawi during the colonial period. Using a wide range of primary and secondary sources, it places this history within the context of the pre-colonial past. The book examines the way in which British people, starting with David Livingstone, followed by the pioneer Scottish Presbyterian missionaries and including soldiers, speculators, colonial officials and politicians, played an influential part in shaping Malawi. But even more important is the story of how Malawian people responded to the intrusion of colonialism and imperialism and the role they played in the dissolution of the colonial state. There is much here on resistance to colonial occupation, including religious-inspired revolt, on the shaping of the colonial economy, on the influence of Christian missions and on the growth of a powerful popular nationalism that contained within it the seeds of a new authoritarianism. But space is also given to less mainstream activities: the creation of dance societies, the eruption of witchcraft eradication movements and the emergence of football as a popular national sport. In particular, the book seeks to demonstrate the interrelationship between environmental and economic change and the impact these forces had on a poverty-stricken yet resilient Malawian peasantry. John McCracken is Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Stirling University. He has taught at University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, University College of Dar es Salaam and was Professor and Head of the Department of History at Chancellor College, University of Malawi from 1980-83 and returned as Visiting Professor in 2009. John McCracken was awarded ASAUK's Distinguished Africanist Award in 2008.

The Detainee by Legson Kayira