Binyavanga Wainaina’s breakout essay How To Write About Africa (published in Granta in 2006) made a sharp case against the stereotypes that invariably accompany Western writing about Africa.

His memoir One Day I Will Write About This Place is about his childhood and youth – Kenya where he grew up, South Africa where he went to college, and later on his travels through other parts of east Africa that went on to make him a “pan-Africanist” as he calls himself.

It could be dubbed the Kenyan version of the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and is filled with a vividness of imagery that is matched by its prose. Later, we’d know it as a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Gay Man, after he came out in a moving essay published on the internet, I am a Homosexual, Mum – what he called the “lost” chapter of his memoir.

Published in 2011

Angel Tungaraza has moved from her native Tanzania to the post-genocide Rwanda, with her professor-husband and five grandchildren – her son and daughter are both “late” – and she has turned her talent at baking into a day job (as “a professional somebody”). Birthdays, anniversaries, christenings, weddings – Angel has just the idea for the occasion, as well as all the ideas that might help her friends and neighbours manage their lives a little better.

This novel talks about virtually every single trouble that has plagued Africa – poverty, AIDS, mindless tribal wars, the politics of aid-giving, intelligence games, and even female circumcision – but with grace, humour and Angel’s trademark colourful icing.

Published in 2009, UK.

Nominated for the Man Booker Prize in 2013, Zimbabwe-born NoViolet Bulawayo’s novel We Need New Names is an account of the life and times of Darling, a young girl growing up in a shanty town called Paradise, where “NGO people” arrive with a lorry filled with useless provisions once every month and a Chinese factory named “Shanghai” seems to be a land of opportunities, in a country where violence simmers just beneath the daily currents of life and threatens to burst into spectacular flames.

Later on, Darling goes to the US and lives on illegally even after her visa expires, providing a rare , disconcerting, glimpse of the underbelly of America whose voice is seldom heard. Winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing (among other honours), Bulawayo’s prose is poetic enough to startle, yet restrained enough to tell of audacious erasures.

“And when they asked us where we were from, we exchanged glances and smiled with the shyness of child brides. They said, Africa? We nodded yes. What part of Africa? We smiled. Is it that part where vultures wait for famished children to die? We smiled. Where the life expectancy is thirty-five years? We smiled. Is it there where dissidents shove AK-47s between women’s legs? We smiled… Is it where the old president rigged the election and people were tortured and killed and a whole bunch of them put in prison and all, there where they are dying of cholera – oh my god, yes, we’ve seen your country; it’s been on the news.”

Published in 2013, USA.

Ifemelu and Obinze are childhood sweethearts. Their love story is set against the backdrop of Nigeria, changing rapidly in the last few decades, and as they navigate immigration, education, success, failures, race and longings across three continents.

The narrative of Americanah is cleverly broken by blog entries written by Ifemelu on her wildly popular blog with the unique title: Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-­American Black.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie uses the blog to offer a fresh and urgent commentary on race relations in America. From language to hair care (Ifemelu refers to a website named HappilyKinkyNappy.com to figure out the best ways to deal with her hair), the blog often makes the personal, political and the political, personal, and superbly complements the narrative arcs that traverse the lives of Ifemelu and Obinze, over the years, moving from different cities in the US and the UK, to the changing globalising landscapes of contemporary Lagos.

Published in 2013, USA.