South Africa

Age of Iron, by J.M. Coetzee (1990). A tramp moves onto the land of a dying white woman in 1980s Cape Town, forcing her to examine life and liberty in South Africa.

Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, by Nelson Mandela (1995). One of history's most remarkable leaders recounts his life story and the story of his land and people. Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years for his efforts to end apartheid; upon his release in 1990 he became South Africa's first democratically elected president.

My Mother's Lovers, by Christopher Hope (2007). In Hope's extraordinary novel, narrator Alex Healey tries to get out of South Africa—but he can't get South Africa out of himself, any more than he can refuse the last request of his mother, a large-living aviatrix and huntress who roamed the continent from Cape Town to Cairo.

The Reader's Companion to South Africa, edited by Alan Ryan (1999). "If you came to a herd of elephant, you stopped, turned off the engine, and waited until the last beast had gone by," writes Alan Moorhead about Kruger National Park in this evocative anthology, with 19 tales from Michael Palin, Mark Twain, P.J. O'Rourke, and other writers.