African books on American Shelves

Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck.

I probably just found my best Barnes and Noble, the one in the Birdcage shopping center in Sacramento. Not only was I able to find the African literature titles I have been looking for, but they were merchandised face-out, to show that they are hot items. Even when I couldn't find one of the titles, a bookseller walked me to the shelf, and there, face-out, was Adoabi T. Nwaubani's novel, I Do Not Come to You by Chance.

Then what the bookseller said after that was just wonderful: "African fiction is the new hot product in the market, even the music department is seeing many new African titles, especially from Southern Africa."

I stood there smiling. I am happy that finally I can walk into a bookstore and find some of the latest African titles on the shelves. Ten years ago that was not the situation. I even worked for a bookstore myself as an inventory manager, and I remember how dismal my efforts to acquire African titles were. Not now; this is indeed Africa's time... and that counts for a lot because the talent coming out of the continent is breathtaking. This is not just a sense of nostalgia, but we are talking of big corporations reaching for a piece of the African cake....

So, of course, I took a few photos, following Paulo Coelo's example of posting bookstore displays of his books on his blog. These books were displayed under New Fiction:

Irene Sabatini's The Boy Next Door.

Petina Gappah's An Elegy for Easterly.

I knew I was going to do some impulsive purchases. Since I already own the books pictured here, I ended up buying Uwem Akpan's paperback edition of Say You Are One of Them, a winner of the Commonwealth Prize, Adoabi Tricia Nwaubani's I Do Not Come to You by Chance (I made the mistake of reading the prologue. I liked the , detail, voice, and humor), and my third copy of Things Fall Apart, which means that now I will have three copies on my shelf, but they are different editions signifying different printings. The one I got today satisfies the scholar in me--it is the Norton Critical Edition, which contains background information, critical essays and other documents that help a student of the book understand the criticism, content, and context of the novel. It's a good 590 pages.