Bay of Tigers
by Pedro Rosa Mendes
Granta £12.99
In 1997, Mendes — a prodigiously talented young Portuguese writer — arrived in Luanda, on Angola’s Atlantic coast, with the intention of passing through Zambia and Mozambique to the Indian Ocean. Crossing some of the most troubled countries in a troubled continent was always going to be a difficult and bloody experience.

Mendes relates his journey by combining the tense reportage of an experienced journalist and the imaginatively charged language of a creative writer. At times, this mix spills over into pretension, at others into challenging passages.

But as a complete work, it succeeds in conveying some of the impossibility of life in a part of Africa that has long been a byword for suffering and disaster.

A British writer would have found this a difficult, perhaps an impossible book to write — as one small-town official puts it, “If you were American, South African, English or French, how could you understand us?” Thanks to Mendes’s extraordinary debut, and the services of an excellent translator, we can do just that.

Kabul, the Bradt Mini Guide
by Dominic Medley & Jude Barrand
Bradt £9.95
This is a guidebook that puts something back into the city it describes: Kabul, ruled by the Taliban until November 2001, when it was famously “liberated” by the BBC veteran John Simpson, and which even now is on the Foreign Office’s list of places to be visited only on essential business.

Last year, the energetic Kabulis celebrated the dawn of the post-Taliban era by reopening their city, helped by thousands of foreign- aid workers. The authors were among this influx: Medley arrived to set up a journalism training project, while Barrand was press officer for Caritas Internationalis. Both were well placed to collect information on everything from security and travel to hotels and restaurants, and they collated it into a 16-page pamphlet, The Survival Guide to Kabul. Then they had the bright idea of getting the city’s street-kid newspaper vendors to sell it. The guide was popular, especially with the many new aid workers, and put much-needed cash into the pockets of impoverished children.

With the help of Bradt, the original pamphlet has now grown into a mini-book that, in its scope, shows just how far the city has come since the days of banned schools and hidden women. This, too, is being sold by children on the dusty streets of Kabul. Of course, it might be worth waiting for Afghanistan to drop off the FO’s warning list before you book the plane tickets — but at least now there’s a guide to take when it does.

To buy Bay of Tigers and Kabul, the Bradt Mini Guide for the reduced prices of £10.39 and £8.46 respectively, excluding p&p, or any travel guides, call The Sunday Times Books Direct on 0870 165 8585