Five Books to Read before Going on Tanzania Trip

 

 

Before visiting Tanzania, do you want to learn more about the country, its history, people, and traditions? We have prepared a list of our favorite books for you to dive into the Tanzania of yesterday and today. 

Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah

We start with a must-read book before leaving for Tanzania, whose author, a native of Zanzibar, received the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature.

It tells the story of Yusuf, a twelve-year-old boy who lives in a village in Tanzania and is thinking of staying with his uncle in town. If his parents made him believe they were sending him on a family visit, the young man would discover a completely different truth. He was sold as a slave to a wealthy merchant to repay a family debt.

The Lioness by Katherine Scholes 

The story begins when Angel, a 7-year-old girl, finds herself alone in the Tanzanian desert when her mother dies from a snakebite. Promised to certain death, the little girl will then meet a lioness. Meanwhile, an Australian biologist sees the mother's camels and her daughter returning alone from the desert. She then sets out to find them, getting help from a Maasai doctor and a man nicknamed the Lion Man. An adventure that will take them much further than they thought.

This book offers a real immersion in the heart of the landscapes of Tanzania, from the Lengaï volcano and its white peaks to the desert and the bush. The book is a true hymn to nature and wildlife. We discover, in particular, the incredible links that a man has with the lions. In addition to these Tanzanian discoveries, Katherine Scholes offers, above all, a novel on self-discovery.

 Zanzibar's Clove Trees by Adam Shafi Adam

What better than literature to learn and have another look at history? This is what Adam Shafi Adam proposes with his book Zanzibar's Clove Trees. And for a good reason, this story relates to a little-known event in contemporary history in Tanzania: the revolution of January 1964. This marked the brutal break with the feudal sultanate of Zanzibar and the establishment of a people's republic.

To carry out his story, the author stages the January 1964 revolution through the story of Kijakazi, a woman born in Zanzibar into a family of slaves. The latter is the most faithful servant of Lord Malik, whose family lives handsomely by exploiting slaves to cultivate and harvest plantations of cloves until Marxist theories from the city turn everything upside down on the farm.

Kilimanjaro Paradise by Joseph Kessel

In his book Kilimanjaro Paradise, Joseph Kessel retraces his African journey and takes us to Tanzania in the 1950s. Although the book is short, we discover a series of reports as moving as they are captivating, which take us to the essential places of Tanzania, from Lake Victoria to Kilimanjaro. He details some unforgettable experiences, such as meeting a tribe of pygmies, crossing the Nile by motorboat, an evening in the heart of the bush, and the incredible bond of friendship between a lioness and a little girl.

No doubt, this giant of 20th-century literature offers us here a magnificent journey through Tanzania and gives us only one desire: to pack our bags and leave immediately to discover this multifaceted country.

Black Museum by Alexandre Kauffmann 

We end with Black Museum, a book that should make you see things differently about the ethnic peoples of Tanzania. Indeed, this book was written by the journalist Alexandre Kauffmann who was sent to Tanzania to investigate a travel magazine. His goal? Go to meet the Hadzabe (or Hadza), a nomadic people who are known to be the country's first inhabitants and considered the ultimate representatives of the hunter-gatherer peoples of the dawn of humanity. 

During his stay, the journalist quickly realizes the limits of tourism. He then discovers that certain tourist attractions around these people are similar to folkloric stagings intended to feed the fantasies of visitors around the hunter-gatherers of the African savannah. He thus demonstrates behind-the-scenes and delves into the daily life of these people who hunt but who, contrary to what many believe, know nothing about the Western world. The whole thing offers a poignant travelogue that turns into social irony!

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