October is
Black History Month its aim is to recognise the contributions of African, Asian and Caribbean people to the economic, cultural and political life in the UK.
We join in the celebrations with a look at a few of the great books written by black authors:
Things fall apart by Chinua Achebe. Braille 3v; TB 5461
Towards the end of the nineteenth century the Ibo tribes of Nigeria met Western "civilisation". The story of one village and its greatest man, brave and strong Okonkwo, catches the reverberating echoes of the old way of life falling apart.
The consequences of love by Sulaiman Addonia. TB 16985
Naser is an outsider in Saudi and he's struggling to adjust to a world that puts so many barriers between men and women. A splash of colour arrives in Naser's world when, unexpectedly, a small piece of paper is dropped at his feet. It is a love note, from a woman whose face he has never seen and whose voice he has never heard. She tells him that she will wear a pair of pink shoes the next time she passes so that he can pick her out from the other women in their identical black abayas. It's not long before their real, but illicit, love must face the hardest test of all.
The famished road by Ben Okri. Braille 11v; Giant print 6v; TB 9219
Azaro is a spirit-child. The spirit-child is one who has not severed his links with the spirit world that most children abandon at birth, his memory of that idyllic life remains strong and he yearns to return, has promised to return to his spirit companions and to leave behind the world of the living. But Azaro decides to stay.
A mercy by Toni Morrison. Braille 3v; Giant print 2v; TB 18110
A Mercy reveals what lies under the surface of slavery but at its heart this is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother and a daughter in a violent ad-hoc world - a world where acts of mercy, like everything else, have unforeseen consequences.