May Library Display: Africa

by Liz Caldwell

Africa has long fascinated Westerners, and with its May book display,  the Library celebrates that fascination.

May Library Display

RVM residents have lived in Africa as children and adults, some working and serving there, some just writing about it. Resident Jean Dunham describes the East African safari she and resident Maggie Honegger took in”>Two Women in Africa: The Ultimate Adventure, a humorous, fast-moving account.

Residents Asifa Kanji and David Drury describe their Peace Corp Service in Three Hundred Cups of Tea; and The Toughest Job You’ll Ever Love: Riding the Peace Corps Roller Coaster in Mali, West Africa, which includes vampire cats and a 2012 Evacuation.

Resident Anita Sumariwalla’s novel The Discovery of the Tomb for an Unknown Egyptian Princess, written after she moved to RVM, is set in Africa.

Among works by non-RVM authors, the display features Explorers of the Nile; The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Age, by award winning author Tim Jeal. He describes the separate expeditions of six men and one woman who discover the source of the Nile, risking their very lives. It uses unpublished sources, previously censored.

An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa 1942-1943 (The Liberation Trilogy; v.1) is written by Pulitzer Prize Winner Rick Atkinson.

White Mischief, by James Fox, depicts the scandalous life and 1941 unsolved shooting death of the notorious philanderer, the penniless Earl of Erroll, in Happy Valley, Kenya. This was made into a British movie.

Dream Birds is a New York Time notable book by Rob Nixon. Part memoir and part travelogue, and subtitled “The Strange History of the Ostrich in Fashion, Food and Fortune,” it describes South African Karroo ostrich ranchers who sought to make their fortunes with ostrich feathers, a Victorian era fad. 

There is a rich selection of fiction, especially adventure and Victorian. One of my favorite mystery series features the iconoclastic Victorian Amelia Peabody, working alongside her archaeologist husband in Egypt, with some of their political situations foreshadowing current politics there.

Come to the Library and explore for yourself.