Black Shame offers a detailed analysis of the recruitment and deployment of - and reactions to - African soldiers in the WWI European theatre of war. In so doing, the book paints a vivid picture of the wider debates of race and national identity provoked by the use of African troops within the main actors on the WWI scene: France, Britain, Germany and even the US. Drawing on war-time attitudes, Dick van Galen Last explores the reality and long-term consequences of the participation of African regiments in the post-war occupation of the German territories. Wide-ranging, both geographically and thematically, the first publication of its kind, Black Shame adds a fresh, truly comparative perspective to the scholarship in the fields of imperial and military history, as well as war studies and postcolonial studies, and will appeal to academics and postgraduate students alike.

Electra vs Oedipus explores the deeply complex and often turbulent relationship between mothers and daughters. In contrast to Sigmund Freud's conviction that the father is the central figure, the book puts forward the notion that women are in fact far more (pre)occupied with their mother. Drawing on the author's extensive clinical experience, the book provides numerous case studies which shed light on women's emotional development. Topics include: love and hate between mothers and daughters, the history of maternal love, childbirth and depression, and rejected mothers. Electra vs Oedipus will be a valuable resource for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and all those with an interest in the dynamics of the mother-daughter relationship.

Electra vs Oedipus explores the deeply complex and often turbulent relationship between mothers and daughters. In contrast to Sigmund Freud 's conviction that the father is the central figure, the book puts forward the notion that women are in fact far more (pre)occupied with their mother.

Drawing on the author 's extensive clinical experience, the book provides numerous case studies which shed light on women 's emotional development. Topics include:

• love and hate between mothers and daughters
• the history of maternal love
• childbirth and depression
• rejected mothers.

Electra vs Oedipus will be a valuable resource for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and all those with an interest in the dynamics of the mother daughter relationship.

Not all men vie with their fathers for the love of their mothers. In some families the mother becomes the central figure for her son - the father is excluded (or excludes himself) and does not come between mother and son. The main thesis of this book - using clinical vignettes and quotes from the work of Marcel Proust to illustrate the author's points - is that in these cases fantasies of matricide replace patricide. Men develop their male gender identity by being permitted to separate from their mother early on, but when a man does not resolve his infantile tie to his mother he risks remaining in a passive and/or dependent position towards her. Over-identification with the mother might ensue, hampering masculine development. Mothers who seek emotional support by binding their sons too closely can become seductive towards them. The child is inclined to try to satisfy the emotional needs of his mother, and he fears rejection if he asserts his independence instead of complying.

To the sound of machine gun fire and the smell of burning flesh, award-winning author In Koli Jean Bofane leads readers on a perilous, satirical journey through the civil conflict and political instability that have been the logical outcome of generations of rapacious multinational corporate activity, corrupt governance, widespread civil conflict, human rights abuses, and environmental degradation in Africa. Isookanga, a Congolese Pygmy, grows up in a small village with big dreams of becoming rich. His vision of the world is shaped by his exploits in Raging Trade, an online game where he seizes control of the world's natural resources by any means possible: high-tech weaponry, slavery, and even genocide. Isookanga leaves his sleepy village to make his fortune in the pulsating capital Kinshasa, where he joins forces with street children, warlords, and a Chinese victim of globalization in this blistering novel about capitalism, colonialism, and the world haunted by the ghosts of Bismarck and Leopold II. Told with just enough levity to make it truly heartbreaking, Congo Inc. is a searing tale about ecological, political, and economic failure.

This elegant, haunting novel takes us deep into the world of bookstore owner Boualem Yekker. He lives in a country being overtaken by the Vigilant Brothers, a radically conservative party that seeks to control every element of life according to the laws of their stringent moral theology: no work of beauty created by human hands should rival the wonders of their god. Once-treasured art and literature are now despised. Silently holding his ground, Boualem withstands the new regime, using the shop and his personal history as weapons against puritanical forces. Readers are taken into the lush depths of the bookseller's dreams, the memories of his now-empty family life, his passion for literature, then yanked back into the terror and drudgery of his daily routine by the vandalism, assaults, and death warrants that afflict him. story that reveals how far an ordinary human being will go to maintain hope. Tahar Djaout (1954-93) was an Algerian novelist, poet, and journalist, and the author of twelve books, including Les vigiles, winner of the Prix Mediterranee. by an Islamic fundamentalist group. The manuscript of this novel was found among his papers after his death.

In 1941, Theo Coster was a student at the Amsterdam Jewish Lyceum,1 in a class of 28 Jewish children that the Nazis had segregated from the rest of the Dutch population. Among Theo's fellow students was a young Anne Frank, whose diary would later become one of the most important documents of the Holocaust. In this remarkable group portrait, Coster and five of his fellow classmates gather their personal stories and memories of Anne. The accounts collected here do not just help us to rediscover Anne Frank. They also stand on their own as remarkable stories of ingenuity and survival during the Holocaust - from Albert Gomes de Mesquita, who hid in ten different towns across Europe - to Hannah Goslar, whoexperienced the horrors of Bergen-Belsen but also made a miraculous reconnection with Anne days before her death.

The subject of intense admiration--and not a little shock, when it was first published-- "The Abandoned Baobab" has consistently captivated readers ever since. The book has been translated into numerous languages and was chosen by QBR Black Book Review as one of Africa's 100 best books of the twentieth century. No African woman had ever been so frank, in an autobiography, or written so poignantly, about the intimate details of her life--a distinction that, more than two decades later, still holds true.

Abandoned by her mother and sent to live with relatives in Dakar, the author tells of being educated in the French colonial school system, where she comes gradually to feel alienated from her family and Muslim upbringing, growing enamored with the West. Academic success gives her the opportunity to study in Belgium, which she looks upon as a "promised land." There she is objectified as an exotic creature, however, and she descends into promiscuity, alcohol and drug abuse, and, eventually, prostitution. (It was out of concern on her editor's part about her candor that the author used the pseudonym Ken Bugul, the Wolof phrase for "the person no one wants.") Her return to Senegal, which concludes the book, presents her with a past she cannot reenter, a painful but necessary realization as she begins to create a new life there.

As Norman Rush wrote in the "New York Times Book Review, " "One comes away from "The Abandoned Baobab" reluctant to take leave of a brave, sympathetic, and resilient woman." Despite its unflinching look at our darkest impulses, and at the stark facts of being a colonized African, the book is ultimately inspirational, for it exposes us to a remarkable sensibility and a hard-won understanding of one's place in the world.

CARAF Books: Caribbean and African Literature Translated from French

The West African writer, painter, playwright, and director Werewere Liking is considered one of the best literary interpreters of the postcolonial condition in Africa. Her first work to be translated into English, these two novels spare nothing in their satirical portraits of the patriarchal view of African society as they experiment radically with the novel form.

At once dramatic, lyrical, satirical, and epistolary, It Shall Be of Jasper and Coral (Journal of a Misovire), subtitled "A Song-Novel", introduces the "misovire" -- literally defined as a man-hater but seen by Liking as the figure of a time when gender differentiation will be irrelevant to discovering the fullness of what it means to be human. The misovire recounts the story of the inhabitants of Lunai, a squalid fictional village in Africa. The novel's action occurs on two levels, as the misovire contemplates writing a journal, and through that heralds the creation of a new race.

Instead of holding the daily entries of a conventional diary, this journal is to be composed of nine "pages", each dedicated to a specific theme, from creativity and art criticism to friendship and the importance of raising children to be balanced human beings. The musings of the misovire, interspersed with the dialogue of two comical characters named Babou and Grozi, bring together a powerful polyphony of modern Africa. While bitterly critical, the journal ends on a hopeful note, as the misovire prophesies the birth from the sea of a new African who "shall be made of jasper and coral".

In Love-across-a-Hundred-Lives, the narrator tells the story of Leto, her brother, who is preparing to hang himself when his grandmother Madjo appears. Hesecretly expects her to dissuade him from suicide, but instead she encourages him, urging him to make his final action a success that will make up for all his earlier failures. As he continues to knot the rope that will be his noose, Madjo tells Lem stories of their ancestors, of legendary and historical African figures; interwoven are the voices of Lem himself, of the narrator, and of her sister Gol. When Lem is finally ready to conclude his act, he no longer wants to die. Madjo has accomplished her mission to make Leto a man in the most complete and most noble sense of the word, whole and strong enough not only to survive but to give of himself to others.

In addition to illustrating the formal innovations for which Liking is increasingly known and celebrated in Africa and the francophone world, these two novels establish a discourse with icons of African literature such as Leopold Sedar Senghor and Cheikh H. Kane, debunking many myths about the continent that produced them. With Liking's refreshingly iconoclastic writing driving their message, It Shall Be of Jasper and Coral and Love-across-a-Hundred-Lives introduce a fascinating African literary voice to the English-speaking world.

Translated for the first time into English, this collection of short fiction by one of the leading writers of North Africa details the plight of Algerian women and raises far-reaching issues that speak to us all. Women of Algiers quickly sold out its first printing of 15,000 in France and was hugely popular in Italy, but the book was denounced in Algeria for its criticism of the postcolonial socialist regime, which denied and subjugated women even as it celebrated the liberation of men. It was the first work to do so openly. These stylistically innovative, lyrical stories address the cloistering of women, the implications of reticence, and the significance of language and its connection to oppression (Djebar calls official Arabic "an authoritarian language that is simultaneously the language of men"). Mixing newly written pieces with older ones, Djebar attempts "to bring the past into a dialogue with the present". The stories raise issues surrounding this passage from colonial to postcolonial culture - national literature, cultural authenticity, and the impact of war on both men and women. The book's title comes from a Delacroix painting that depicts a unique glimpse of the harem, an emblem of the dual violation of Algerian women, both colonial and gendered.

The cloth edition of Assia Djebar's Women of Algiers in Their Apartment, her first work to be published in English, was named by the American Literary Translators Association as an ALTA Outstanding Translation of the Year. Now available in paperback, this collection of three long stories, three short ones, and a theoretical postface by one of North Africa's leading writers depicts the plight of urban Algerian women who have thrown off the shackles of colonialism only to face a postcolonial regime that denies and subjugates them even as it celebrates the liberation of men. Denounced in Algeria for its political criticism, Djebar's book quickly sold out its first printing of 15,000 copies in France and was hugely popular in Italy. Her stylistically innovative, lyrical stories address the cloistering of women, the implications of reticence, the connection of language to oppression, and the impact of war on both women and men. The Afterword by Clarisse Zimra includes an illuminating interview with Djebar.

Black Shame offers a detailed analysis of the recruitment and deployment of - and reactions to - African soldiers in the WWI European theatre of war. In so doing, the book paints a vivid picture of the wider debates of race and national identity provoked by the use of African troops within the main actors on the WWI scene: France, Britain, Germany and even the US. Drawing on war-time attitudes, Dick van Galen Last explores the reality and long-term consequences of the participation of African regiments in the post-war occupation of the German territories. Wide-ranging, both geographically and thematically, the first publication of its kind, Black Shame adds a fresh, truly comparative perspective to the scholarship in the fields of imperial and military history, as well as war studies and postcolonial studies, and will appeal to academics and postgraduate students alike.