Discover Well-Read Black Girl Books and the projects reshaping publishing →

Handpicked recommendations to other books that have a similar writing style or theme to My First Coup d'Etat

My First Coup d'Etat by John Mahama

My First Coup d'Etat

And Other True Stories from the Lost Decades of Africa

by John Mahama
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • Readers' Rating (2):
  • First Published:
  • Jul 3, 2012, 336 pages
  • Paperback:
  • May 2013, 288 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Beyond the Book:
  A Brief History of Ghana

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full read-alike results are for members only

If you liked My First Coup d'Etat, try these:

  • Scale Boy jacket

    Scale Boy

    by Patrice Nganang

    Published Jan 2026

    More about this book

    Read Reviews

    An extraordinary chronicle of youth that evokes the paradoxes of modern Africa―complex, contradictory, and full of conflict, tragedy, and joy.

  • Homegoing jacket

    Homegoing

    by Yaa Gyasi

    Published May 2017

    More about this book

    Read Reviews

    Winner of the 2016 BookBrowse Debut Author Award

    A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape ...

  • All Tomorrow's Parties jacket

    All Tomorrow's Parties

    by Rob Spillman

    Published Feb 2017

    More about this book

    Read Reviews

    In his intimate, entertaining, and heartfelt memoir, Spillman narrates a colorful, music-filled coming-of-age portrait of an artist's life that is also a cultural exploration of a shifting Berlin.

  • A Fort of Nine Towers jacket

    A Fort of Nine Towers

    by Qais Akbar Omar

    Published Apr 2014

    More about this book

    Read Reviews

    With all the emotional power of The Kite Runner, this is the very first true life account of growing up in Afghanistan, by a writer who still lives in Kabul.

  • King Peggy jacket

    King Peggy

    by Peggielene Bartels, Eleanor Herman

    Published Feb 2013

    More about this book

    Read Reviews

    The charming real-life fairy tale of an American secretary who discovers she has been chosen king of an impoverished fishing village on the west coast of Africa.

  • Running the Rift jacket

    Running the Rift

    by Naomi Benaron

    Published Oct 2012

    More about this book

    Read Reviews

    Running the Rift follows Jean Patrick Nkuba, a gifted Rwandan boy, from the day he knows that running will be his life to the moment he must run to save his life, a ten-year span in which his country is undone by the Hutu-Tutsi tensions.

  • Wife of the Gods jacket

    Wife of the Gods

    by Kwei Quartey

    Published Aug 2010

    More about this book

    Read Reviews

    Lyrical and captivating, Kwei Quartey’s debut novel brings to life the majesty and charm of Ghana–from the capital city of Accra to a small community where long-buried secrets are about to rise to the surface.

  • Say You're One of Them jacket

    Say You're One of Them

    by Uwem Akpan

    Published Jul 2009

    More about this book

    Read Reviews

    Uwem Akpan's stunning stories humanize the perils of poverty and violence so piercingly that few readers will feel they've ever encountered Africa so immediately.

  • Half of a Yellow Sun jacket

    Half of a Yellow Sun

    by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

    Published Sep 2007

    More about this book

    Read Reviews

    Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie weaves together the lives of three characters swept up in the turbulence of a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria in the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed.

  • An Ordinary Man jacket

    An Ordinary Man

    by Paul Rusesabagina

    Published Mar 2007

    More about this book

    Read Reviews

    The riveting life story of hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina who, as his country was being torn apart by violence during the Rwandan genocide of 1994, sheltered more than 12,000 members of the Tutsi clan and Hutu moderates, while homicidal mobs raged outside with machetes.

Join free to see the complete list of recommendations.
How we choose read-alikes

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    A Pair of Aces
    by Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray
    Two women on opposite sides of the law team up to bring down gangster Lucky Luciano in this gripping novel.
  • Book Jacket
    When No One Else Will
    by Amanda Skenandore
    1940s Chicago nurse risks everything at an illegal women’s clinic during a high-profile trial of courage and sisterhood.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket
    The Jellyfish Problem
    by Tessa Yang
    A marine biologist rescues a Maine island menaced by a giant glowing jellyfish in this inventive debut.
  • Book Jacket
    The Reimagining of Thornwood House
    by Jaleigh Johnson
    A witch and her ward discover a magical walking house and find the true meaning of home.
  • Book Jacket
    Feast
    by Catherine Kurtz
    In 19th-century France, a girl with a magical taste becomes a duc’s poison taster amid nobility and danger.
  • Book Jacket
    Summer's Never Over
    by Darby Bozeman
    A woman revisits a Southern summer camp where a counselor's death may not have been an accident.
Who Said...

Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Book
Trivia
  • Book Trivia

    Can you name the title?

    Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

Q S, S

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.