I am using the definition of Central Africa that consists of Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and São Tomé and Principe. I will be listing the language that each book was translated from; the colonial and imperialist histories of these countries has influenced the main languages that authors are writing in and using. Particularly, there is a dearth of books by Central African women that have been translated into English. This is always especially painful because I can see that the books exist, I can read about books I would love to read myself, but I can’t access them, and so can’t include them. Just as examples, I was frustrated by the inability to read works by Olinda Beja, Nadia Origo, Calixthe Beyala, Marie Claire Matip, and María Nsué Angüe. Many of the introductions and forwards to the books I was able to access referred to this issue as the “empty canon”: while there is an established canon of works by African women authors, they tend to be unreferenced, ignored, and untranslated, creating the illusion of a lack of texts. But despite all the frustrating online searching, library hold attempts, and bookshelf wanderings, I did in fact manage to put a fantastic list of book recommendations together. Here, I have given you 12 books in translation that hail from Central Africa. Please note that while I took great care to list content warnings where I could, sometimes things fall through the cracks. Please do additional research on the recommended titles if needed. Want more books in translation content? I have lists for you of books in translation from Catalonia, Argentina, France, and Mexico. If you have recommendations or requests for future lists of books in translation, or if you want me to know about a book I might have missed, let me know on Twitter. Content warnings for infertility, sex shaming, torture, sexual assault and coercion, and colorism. Content warnings for ethnicity-based prejudice, infanticide, colorism, grooming, rape, necrophilia, animal cruelty, deportation, and use of the R-slur. Content warnings for sexual assault, homophobia, and corrective rape. Content warnings for rape, sexual assault of minors, blackmail, false accusations, suicide mentions, violence. Content warnings for infertility and prejudice against infertile women. Content warnings for drug addiction, anti-Asian sentiment, animal cruelty, homophobic language, shooting, violence. *Readers should skip the introduction by Terese Svoboda if their edition includes it, as the author is firmly opposed to its conclusions and does not consider it at all representative of her text. Content warnings for stillbirth, racism, imperialism, rape, body horror, suicide, violence, cannibalism. Content warnings for torture, shooting, violence, graphically depicted rape, use of the R-slur. Content warnings for agoraphobia, trauma and PTSD, rape and shame, violence, death, animal death. Content warnings for homophobia, suicide, and sexual harassment, coercion, and assault. Content warnings for fatphobia, infertility and prejudice against infertile women, tribalism, miscarriage depiction, child’s death, AIDS fear, disordered eating, alcoholism, homophobia.
