I know what I read this summer

It’s been winter in Johannesburg, but never mind.
In the style of Books 2015 and Books 2016, this is a list of what I actually read, June-July, 2017.
Segu (Maryse Condé)
Epic novel of the decline of the Bambara empire (in what’s now Mali) as Islam and European slavers arrive in West Africa. Couldn’t put it down.
Defeat into Victory (Field Marshal Viscount Slim)
The Burma campaign should have been this year’s Christopher Nolan film.
Civilwarland in Bad Decline (George Saunders)
The first short stories I’ve read of Saunders.
Stamped from the Beginning (Ibram X. Kendi)
If you read only one book on American history this year — this one, told through the history of its antiblack racist ideas and the struggle between segregationists, assimilationists and antiracists.
The River Between (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o)
Quietly powerful exploration of saviours and salvation (and post-colonial politics) in the Kenyan uplands as empire dawned.
Citizen: An American Lyric (Claudia Rankine)
“Come on. Let it go. Move on.”
The Republic of Gupta (Pieter-Louis Myburgh)
Investigative journalism laying out the rise of the South African business dynasty that either broke the ANC, or came in to capture the state as the ANC was busy tearing itself apart. Won’t be the last book on the family.
Incarnations: India in 50 Lives (Sunil Khilnani)
A lot more than fifty potted biographies from the Buddha to Dhirubhai Ambani — exploring caste politics, the role of women, hagiography and censorship among other themes.
Ghachar Ghochar (Vivek Shanbhag, translated by Srinath Perur)
An oblique story — it nearly tells more in the unsaid than the said — about the insularity of a Bangalore family. One of my favourite novels this year.
The Merchant of Prato (Iris Origo)
Nosing around the letters of a C14th Italian businessman and slave trader.
Twitter and Tear Gas (Zeynep Tufekci)
Every journalist/editor/correspondent who has thought about how to cover protest movements should read this. Really interesting ideas on how protests, socially networked or not, do or don’t signal a movement’s underlying capacity to bring about broader change.
Classics: The Gallic Wars by Julius Caesar, Discourses on Livy by Machiavelli.
Comics: Prophet Vols. 1–4, Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet Vols. 1–3, Head Lopper Vol.1, X-Factor: Genesis and Apocalypse (Apocalypse’s first ever appearance is so lame), Habitat by Simon Roy.
