Everyone has an opinion about Africa. Lions, pyramids, starving children, maybe Bob Marley if you’re feeling cultured. But scratch beneath the clichés and you’ll find a continent far stranger, richer, and more complicated than the postcards and charity concerts ever admit. This book takes you on a fast-paced, witty tour of Africa’s past, present, and imagined futures — dismantling lazy stereotypes along the way. Why do maps of Africa look like a geometry exercise gone wrong? Why are some African states thriving while others implode? Was ancient Egypt “really African”? Who decided Africans couldn’t build cities? Why do African-Americans romanticize a homeland they’ve never seen, and why does Hollywood keep fighting over who gets to play Cleopatra? From the grandeur of Mali and Ethiopia to the disasters of colonization, from slave ships to reggae beats, from Rastafarians to Afrofuturists, this is Africa told without pity, without propaganda, and without sugarcoating. You’ll meet cannibal dictators, forgotten intellectuals, misplaced borders, White Africans, Black metalheads (yes, they exist), and entire nations outside Africa that are still unmistakably African. Smart, funny, and unapologetically direct, Africa and the Myths of History is for readers who want answers without slogans, context without condescension, and a glimpse of Africa as it really is — not as the world prefers to imagine it.
