Books published by James Currey

Ngugi wrote his first novels and plays in English but was determined, even before his detention without trial in 1978, to move to writing in Gikuyu.

Innovative study of state politics, identity and buildings that sheds new light on the links between the material and the ideational realms of contemporary life in Africa.

The image of the corridor, a central pathway of road and rail carving its way through Africa's interior, has guided the coordination of transport and trade developments on the continent in recent decades. Existing analysis of the "Corridor" - a label with a great capacity to change shape, guiding funding and infrastructural priorities at different times and in different settings - tends to be presentist, technical, and conveyed in the language of transport economics. The chapters collected here showcase a more varied approach, offering perspectives from academics and policy-makers coming from a range of disciplinary backgrounds. They capture the varied forms of the corridor concept (developmental, transport, and trade corridors), the multiplicity of actors (including China and the European Union), as well as the different permutations of the infrastructure itself, in corridors linking coastal states and in others that link coastal states with the hinterland. The breadth of cases allows for a comparative perspective of East, West, and Southern Africa, as well as the basis of comparisons outside of the continent in Europe, South Asia, and elsewhere. The motivations behind corridor initiatives in Africa range enormously, from resource extraction to urban development and poverty reduction. A lot depends on scale, and this collection places the grand designs thrashed out at continental and regional economic forums alongside the individual concerns of drivers and cross-border traders hauling goods across the continent's checkpoints. What emerges are a number of central tensions in the study of transport corridors: between short-term optics and long-term durability; between road and rail as modes of transportation; between regional integration and national interest; between the facilitation of trade and the generation of corridor revenue; between different port configurations; and between local dynamics and the dynamics of long-distance transportation.This book is available as Open Access under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.

Investigates the production, trade and consumption of the bouquets sold in European supermarkets and the consequences of this for the globalised economy.

Timely examination of sustainability partnerships, their effectiveness and the forms of sustainability they produce.

This volume lists all the important work produced on anglophone black African literature between 1992 and 1996.

This volume lists the work produced on anglophone black African literature between 1997 and 1999.

A study of gult from the 13th century to 1910 revealing much about the history of highland Christian Ethiopia.

Brenda Cooper examines the work of the new generation of African writers who have placed migration as central to their writing.

The author argues for the continued importance of NGOs, social movements and other 'civil society' actors in creating new forms of citizenship and democracy in South Africa.

A comparative, whole-of-society approach to the Boko Haram insurgency that offers a more nuanced understanding of the risks, resilience and resolution of violent radicalization in Nigeria and beyond.

Re-envisages what we know about African political economies through its examination of one of the key questions in colonial and African history, that of commercial agriculture and its relationship to slavery.

Explores the ways in which African writers have approached speculative fiction through in-depth articles on the use of language, terminology and the genealogy of the works.

Examines how pastoral peoples imagine, or even design, their futures under the pressure of changing environments and large-scale government projects.

Winner of the 2021 ALA Book of the Year Award - ScholarshipThe author uses the image of blood under the skin as a way of understanding cultural and literary forms in contemporary South Africa. Chapters deal with the bloodied histories of apartheid and blood as trope for talking about change.

Gives voice to the conscripts who are forced to serve indefinitely without remuneration under the ENS in a powerful critical survey of its effect from the Liberation Struggle to today.

Definitive and gripping narrative history of the Communist Party of South Africa.

Innovative study of the role of sports in modernity in Africa.

Innovative and challenging study that provides fresh insights on the anthropology of death and postcolonial politics.

A unique historical and linguistic resource for those in anthropology, art, folklore, history, linguistics, literature, psychology, religion, sociology, and environmental studies, as well as performers and poets.

Key book in Whiteness Studies that engages with the different ways in which the last white minority in Africa to give way to majority rule has adjusted to the arrival of democracy and the different modes of transition from "settlers" to "citizens".

Pioneering study of the role of the Christian churches in the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi; a key work for historians, memory studies scholars, religion scholars and Africanists.

A groundbreaking analysis of 21st century labour practices in the mining industry and the new scramble for industrial power on the African continent.

A reinterpretation of the history of Sokoto that provides a new assessment of its leaders and their visions for the Muslim state.

The first full-length examination of the archaeology and history of the Namib Desert.

Of interest to linguists, artists, ma-youth, scholars of urban studies, educationalists, policy makers and language planners who are grappling with the challenges of multilingualism and language of education in Kenya.

An invaluable insight into the narrative politics and theologies of LGBTQ+ life-storytelling, a key text for those in African Humanities, Queer Studies, Religious Studies, and Refugee Studies.