Sustainable Good

Development in Fiction

I have often found works of fiction explore the complexities of poverty and development in much richer detail than technocratic and sterile policy reports put out by thinktanks, the World Bank and UN. Books like the Poisonwood Bible, Acts of Faith, The Song of Lawino, The Quiet American and Cause Celeb seem to capture the moral dilemmas, politics, psychology and cultural clashes that infuse change in the developing world. No Human Development Report could ever match the descriptive power of Graham Greene or Barbara Kingsolver.

It turns out that I am not alone in preferring a good novel to the latest Famine Early Warning System report. A group of scholars associated with the Institute for Development Policy and Management at Manchester University have come up with a list of works of fiction they believe provide a rich and sophisticated portrait of poverty and development.

Five Works of African Literature You Should Read

1. "Things Fall Apart," by Chinua Achebe. This profound reflection on rural life in Nigeria and the impact of colonialism was the first novel written by an African to be widely read outside the continent. If you read no other African literature, you should at least read this book.

2. "The Song of Lawino," by Okot P'Bitek. This epic poem is a relatively quick read (I got through it in an afternoon) but is a rich, funny and insightful look at the tension between tradition and modernity in rural northern Uganda. The lamenting and biting song of the protagonist, Lawino, skewers her well-educated husband's decision to leave her for a "modern women."

Five Good Non-Fiction Books on Africa

1. “Africa: A Biography of the Continent,” by John Reader. A wide-reaching and sweeping look at trends and broader explanations for the way things are, covering history, geography, anthropology, biology and politics. While it is a thick tome (some 700 pages) it manages to be engaging, interesting and easy to read. This would be a good place to start for the interested newcomer to African issues.

2. “Africa Works: Disorder as a Political Instrument,” by Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz. A lucid and theoretically-rich exposition of African politics. Describing how systems of patronage operate within the context of modern states, Chabal and Daloz provide powerful explanations for conflict, corruption and poor economic development. It also introduces English-speakers to the rich seam of francophone research and literature about Africa.

Books You Must Read

This post comes from guest writer, Diane Sadler who works in the Communications Department at Outreach International:

Wednesday night on Charlie Rose (KCPT), he interviewed 2 amazing women who have written books about development & poverty, and also Peter Singer and his new book.

Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa
by Dambisa Moyo

The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World
by Jacqueline Novogratz

The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty
by Peter Singer

You can watch the segments from these links:
Peter Singer, Dambisa Moyo, Jacqueline Novogratz 

Dambisa Moyo has a brilliant insight into aid. Jacqueline Novogratz has a story you must hear – The Blue Sweater.

Beginners' Books on Poverty, Aid and Development

Do you want to learn more about poverty, aid and international development without getting bogged down in technical social scientific literature? There are many interesting books (including the one reviewed here by Karyn this week) written for interested laypersons but the following are some of the best non-fiction and fiction choices:

Non-Fiction:

One of the best introductions to development issues is Development as Freedom by Nobel Economics Laureate Amartya Sen.  He has been influential voice calling for an understanding of poverty and development that goes beyond simple measures of income. In a similar vein, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by E.F. Schumacher is a classic in the field. First published in 1973, Schumacher provided a critique of the classical Western approach to economics.

Summer Reading

Because I’ve had the whole summer off, I’ve been reading incessantly. My mother just sent me a book called Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. It’s about a man (Mortenson) who decides to build much needed schools for remote villages in the mountainous regions of Pakistan. Mortenson raises the funds, buys the materials, and gets the village to commit to building the small school. But the project moves at a snail’s pace and Mortenson gets more and more anxious about reaching his self-determined deadlines and line iteming the budget – accounting for every rupee. The leader of the village finally takes him aside and gives Mortenson the most important lesson of his life: