While we focus on global reads written by native authors, we also found a wide variety of highly regarded books about Mozambique written by authors from other countries who were just as fascinated by the country as we were. While these books can’t be included in our official global reading list, they provide an interesting viewpoint. Check out our list of 14 books below which span a variety of genres.
Happy reading!
Written by an author from the US:
“Powerful... A magnificent book.”
—The Wall Street Journal
A probing examination of Western conservation efforts in Africa, where our feel-good stories belie a troubling reality
The stunningly beautiful Gorongosa National Park, once the crown jewel of Mozambique, was nearly destroyed by decades of civil war. It looked like a perfect place for Western philanthropy: revive the park and tourists would return, a win-win outcome for the environment and the impoverished villagers living in the area. So why did some researchers find the local communities actually getting hungrier, sicker, and poorer as the project went on? And why did efforts to bring back wildlife become far more difficult than expected?
In pursuit of answers, Stephanie Hanes takes readers on a vivid safari across southern Africa, from the shark-filled waters off Cape Agulhas to a reserve trying to save endangered wild dogs. She traces the tangled history of Western missionaries, explorers, and do-gooders in Africa, from Stanley and Livingstone to Teddy Roosevelt, from Bono and the Live Aid festivals to the American benefactor of Gorongosa. And she examines the larger problems that arise when Westerners try to “fix” complex, messy situations in the developing world, acting with best intentions yet potentially overlooking the wishes of the people who live there. Beneath the uplifting stories we tell ourselves about helping Africans, she shows, often lies a dramatic misunderstanding of what the locals actually need and want.
A gripping narrative of environmentalists and insurgents, poachers and tycoons, elephants and angry spirits, White Man’s Game profoundly challenges the way we think about philanthropy and conservation.
Written by an author from Australia:
The eagerly awaited latest title from this bestselling thriller writer is set in South Africa and Mozambique.
Alex Tremain is a pirate in trouble. The two women in his life—one of them his financial adviser, the other his diesel mechanic—have left him. He’s facing a mounting tide of debts and his crew of modern-day buccaneers, a multi-national band of ex-military cutthroats, are getting restless. They don’t all share his dream of going legit, but what Alex really wants is to re-open the five-star resort hotel which once belonged to his Portuguese mother and English father on the Island of Dreams, off the coast of Mozambique.
A chance raid on a wildlife smugglers’ ship sets the Chinese triads after him and, to add to his woes, corporate lawyer Jane Humphries lands, literally, in his lap. Another woman’s the last thing Captain Tremain needs right now—especially one whose lover is a ruthless shipping magnate backed up by a deadly bunch of contract killers. What Alex really needs is one last, big heist—something valuable enough to fulfill his dreams and set him and his men up for life.
When the South African government makes a controversial decision to re-institute the culling of elephants in its national parks, Alex finds the answer to his prayers, but at what cost? Before he knows it, Alex is embroiled in two separate and equally risky pursuits―one takes him to South Africa's Kruger National Park and will pay enough for him to reopen his hotel, and the other involves the love of a lifetime. Can Alex pull off this one last heist and walk away with both prizes?
“Clearly, Park knows and loves Africa. A thrill ride that won’t disappoint.” —Kirkus Review of Books
Written by an author from the US:
Go to Africa right now without a 21-hour plane ride or even a passport. Kathryn takes you there with her.
She took the ultimate leap of faith, in less than one year going from single, successful, stateside executive to married, mystified and moving to a place she'd never heard of! Her three-year journey in Africa included trials and triumphs, sorrow and celebration, and a single event that changed her family's life forever.
Whether you've lived in or visited Africa or just wanted to go, Kathryn's experiences and stories of the bizarre, funny, heartwarming and heartbreaking will make you feel like you've added a stamp to your passport!
“Compelling, authentic, eye-opening and educational—with heart. I thoroughly enjoyed going on this journey. The perfect weekend read.” —Megan DuBois
Written by an author from the US:
Many of the economic transformations in Africa have been as dramatic as those in Eastern Europe. Yet much of the comparative literature on transitions has overlooked African countries.
This study of Mozambique's shift from a command to a market economy draws on a wealth of empirical material, including archival sources, interviews, political posters and corporate advertisements, to reveal that the state is a central actor in the reform process, despite the claims of neo-liberals and their critics. Alongside the state, social forces—from World Bank officials to rural smallholders—have also accelerated, thwarted or shaped change in Mozambique.
M. Anne Pitcher offers an intriguing analysis of the dynamic interaction between previous and emerging agents, ideas and institutions, to explain the erosion of socialism and the politics of privatization in a developing country. She demonstrates that Mozambique's political economy is a heterogenous blend of ideological and institutional continuities and ruptures.
“An important book which all those interested in modern Mozambique will want to read … a fascinating book which tells a largely new story.” —Journal of African History
Written by an author from the US:
As a 38-year old woman who had never traveled abroad or even learned a foreign language, Amy Gillespie beat the odds. Working on the ground in Mozambique, she started a nonprofit with $150 and the idea that all children deserve the right to keep themselves and their siblings alive. Her programs with children and her work for greater HIV awareness/prevention were successful; she was nominated as a finalist for CNN Heroes and received accolades from embassies and aid organizations. But Amy’s most difficult trials were yet to come. The hand-off of the programs to local teachers tested her very being. Now, nearly ten years after her arrival in Mozambique, Gillespie tells the full story of her experience answering a Divine call. She reveals the secret that much of her mission and her success were guided by mysterious messages, chance encounters and nebulous symbols. She speaks of her own lack of preparation and failures, and how ultimately, her lack of experience and education became her greatest gift.
She could not have imagined all that she would witness and experience on her journey… beauty, inspiration, humor; as well as corruption, unimaginable suffering, and shadowy threats from unlikely sources. Six Years in Mozambique explores one woman’s experience of the gritty reality of aid work, sexuality, and spirituality in Sub-Saharan Africa. It takes a raw look at what it’s like to be a single woman, on the edge of forty years of age, setting off to chase down her dream, and how that incredible journey led her to universal truths and surrender.
Written by an author from Portugal who spent summer holidays in Mozambique:
Winner of the Calouste Gulbenkian Portuguese Translation Prize
Teolinda Gersão paints an extraordinarily evocative picture of childhood in Africa and the stark contrast between warm, lush, ebullient Mozambique and the bleak, poor, priggish Portugal of Salazar.
“Salazar's forty-year dictatorship in Portugal and that country's colonial wars in Africa cast their long shadow over The Word Tree. Laureano's wife Amelia had come to the country from Portugal in search of a better life, but mentally never leaves her homeland, whereas her daughter Gita loves the country and grows up to resent the colonial presence. There are lush descriptions of the country, while the racial order is starkly spelt out: Amelia “clings to the belief that fair-skinned people are the very top of the racial hierarchy, and that dark-skinned Portuguese people are almost at the bottom, just above the Indians and the blacks.” —The Times Literary Supplement
“Above all, The Word Tree is an atmospheric novel, which evokes a time and a place in impressive detail. The contours and topography of the city are precisely mapped, and there are myriad references to neighbourhoods, streets, squares, shops, cafés and beaches, which lend the narrative greater authenticity.” —The Macau Daily Times
Written by an author from the US:
National Indie Excellence Award Finalist & winner of the IndieBRAG medallion
“A chilling historical fiction story of child soldiers in Africa.” —Kirkus Reviews
Ten-year-old Aderito has been brought from the United States to the banks of a beautiful river in Homoine, Mozambique. There, he befriends a young girl named Victoria, and for a brief time, their childhood is promising. Soon, the violence that is raging across the country makes its way to Aderito’s doorstep, and both children are abducted by rebels and forced to learn the ways of trained killers in a war they barely understand.
With only each other for support, Victoria and Aderito struggle to remain unnoticed among their peers. But the more Aderito kills, the more he needs killing, channeling all his rage into war and becoming a valuable weapon. And Victoria, growing older and prettier by the day, begins to attract unwanted attention from their captors. Caught in a battle that ravages villages and tears families apart, Aderito knows he cannot expect a happy ending. And yet he and Victoria make brave plans to escape—only to find themselves facing torments that no adult, let alone child, should ever have to face. As Mozambique struggles through its defining crisis, Aderito too must find a way to survive the childhood that will come to define him as a man.
Written by an author from the US:
An unforgettable exploration of the trials of daily life in Mozambique, long heralded as Africa’s “rising star.”
Go Tell the Crocodiles explores the efforts of ordinary people to provide for themselves where foreign aid, the formal economy, and the government have fallen short. Moore Gerety tells the story of contemporary Mozambique through the heartbreaking and fascinating lives of real people, from a street kid who flouts Mozambique’s child labor laws to make his living selling muffins, to a riverside community that has lost dozens of people to crocodile attacks. Moore Gerety introduces us to a nation still coming to grips with a long civil war and the legacy of colonialism even as it wrestles with the toll of infectious disease and a wave of refugees, weaving stories together into a stunning account of the challenges facing countries across Africa.
“Overflows with fantastically close reporting, cool and subtle judgments, and characters that absolutely leap to life. Rowan Moore Gerety gets next to all sorts of Mozambicans—street vendors, poor farmers, a people smuggler, the hapless leader of the political opposition—and then takes us deep into lives that illuminate the dark, pitiless dynamics of profound underdevelopment.” —The New Yorker
Written by an author from the US:
"A week before my college graduation, I sat at my computer searching once again for entry-level journalism jobs. I didn't like what I found. There's no euphemistic way to look at it—I was arrogant and impatient to do exactly what I eventually saw myself doing. I wanted to travel the world that I didn't know and had only seen during a short summer study abroad, and write big stories about all those fascinating places I would visit that would change the way people saw them. In a moment that I can only ascribe to divine intervention, I decided to Google that program I could vaguely remember hearing about from a visitor to my seventh grade history class so long ago: Peace Corps. Within half an hour of scanning through the web site, I'd started the application.”
And so begins this entertaining and sometimes humorous look at life in the Peace Corps in sub-Saharan Africa. From problems at the airports, to hiking through the back country, to encounters with goats, these are the first hand experiences of Peace Corps Volunteer Valerie Cooper while working and living in Mozambique.
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Written by an author from South Africa:
An unforgettable memoir about driving through Africa's most treacherous roads during the Mozambican civil war. They called it the “Hell Run.”
Miguel Mitras weaves a story of friendships, human vulnerability and navigating through emotions that come at you. In this candid account of trucking through Mozambique in 1991, you might even find a little laugh bubbling out as you read of the shenanigans of the author and his friends. He relives harrowing tales of running the gauntlet through the bandit-infested countryside with humor and vivid imagery.
It's a compelling read that offers new insights into the conflict, including the chaotic Portuguese departure from Africa in 1974-75. A brutal yet complex civil war followed, where danger lurked everywhere. Especially on the transport corridors which became a battleground.
Written by an author from the US:
Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing Honorable Mention
According to the people of the Mueda plateau in northern Mozambique, sorcerers remake the world by asserting the authority of their own imaginative visions of it. While conducting research among these Muedans, anthropologist Harry G. West made a revealing discovery—for many of them, West’s efforts to elaborate an ethnographic vision of their world was itself a form of sorcery. In Ethnographic Sorcery, West explores the fascinating issues provoked by this equation.
A key theme of West’s research into sorcery is that one sorcerer’s claims can be challenged or reversed by other sorcerers. After West’s attempt to construct a metaphorical interpretation of Muedan assertions that the lions prowling their villages are fabricated by sorcerers is disputed by his Muedan research collaborators, West realized that ethnography and sorcery indeed have much in common. Rather than abandoning ethnography, West draws inspiration from this connection, arguing that anthropologists, along with the people they study, can scarcely avoid interpreting the world they inhabit, and that we are all, inescapably, ethnographic sorcerers.
Written by an author from Sweden:
Shortlisted for the Nordic Council Prize for Literature & nominee for the Swedish Publishers Association’s August Prize
From the bestselling author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries, an “uplifting yet grittily realistic” fable about war-torn Africa and a mystical orphan boy. —The NY Times
World famous for his Kurt Wallander mysteries, Henning Mankell has been published in 35 countries, with more than 25 million copies of his books in print. In Chronicler of the Winds, he gives us something different: a beautifully crafted novel that is a testament to the power of storytelling itself. On the rooftop of a theater in an African port, a ten-year-old boy lies slowly dying of bullet wounds. He is Nelio, a leader of street kids, rumored to be a healer and a prophet, and possessed of a strangely ancient wisdom.
One of the millions of poor people “forced to eat life raw,” Nelio tells his unforgettable story over the course of nine nights. After bandits cruelly raze his village, he joins the legions of abandoned children living in the city’s streets. An act of the imagination, an effort to prove to his comrades that life must be more than mere survival, cuts short Nelio’s life.
Written by an author from the US:
The remarkable story of how one of the most biologically diverse habitats in the world was destroyed, restored, and continues to evolve—with stunning, full-color photographs by two of the world’s best wildlife photographers.
A Window on Eternity is a stunning book of splendid prose and gorgeous photography about one of the biologically richest places in Africa and perhaps the world. Gorongosa in Mozambique was nearly destroyed in a brutal civil war, then was reborn and is now evolving back to its original state. Wilson’s luminous descriptions are beautifully complemented by extraordinary photographs of the park’s exquisite natural beauty.
Wilson takes readers to the summit of Mount Gorongosa, sacred to the local people and the park’s vital watershed. From the forests of the mountain he brings us to the deep gorges on the edge of the Rift Valley, previously unexplored by biologists, to search for new species and assess their ancient origins. He describes amazing animal encounters from huge colonies of agricultural termites to specialized raider ants that feed on them to giant spiders, a battle between an eagle and a black mamba, “conversations” with traumatized elephants that survived the slaughter of the park’s large animals, and more. He pleads for Gorongosa—and other wild places—to be allowed to exist and evolve in its timeless way uninterrupted into the future. The wildlands in which these ecosystems flourish gave birth to humanity, and it is this natural world, still evolving, that may outlast us and become our legacy, our window on eternity.
“A lyrical ode to biodiversity. . . . Wilson speaks with passion throughout. . . . This volume’s visual content [is] as remarkable as the stories.” —Publishers Weekly
Written by an author from the UK:
Inspired by stories of war-torn Mozambique, bestselling author Terence Strong set his sights on this land for his latest thriller
For 14 years Mike Branagh has kept the demons at bay. The former SAS sergeant from Ulster has renounced the gun—with a little help from the bottle and a beautiful village girl who has become his lover.
He now devotes his life to others in war-torn land of Mozambique in south-east Africa. Here is the real cockpit of the Cold War, where East and West test each others’ metal without regard to the loss of innocent human life. As the terror spreads Branagh must fight again, plunged into the savage cauldron that the nation’s killing fields have become. To his surprise he must confront not just one, but two pitiless enemies.
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