Afropean, Johny Pitts
Afropean, Johny Pitts
List: $12.38 | Sale: $8.67
Club: $6.19

Afropean
Notes from Black Europe

Author: Johny Pitts

Narrator: Johny Pitts

Unabridged: 11 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 06/06/2019


Synopsis

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Afropean written and read by Johny Pitts.

In the face of growing racial discrimination, anti-immigrant sentiment and the spectre of terrorism looming large over an economically stricken continent, Afropean is an on-the-ground documentary of areas where Europeans of African descent are juggling their multiple allegiances and forging new identities: too indelibly woven into Europe to identify with Africa and yet struggling with outdated ideas of what it means to be European.

Afropean will plot an alternative map of the continent, taking the reader to places like Cova Da Moura, the Cape Verdean shantytown on the outskirts of Lisbon with its own underground economy, and Rinkeby, the area of Stockholm that is eighty per cent Muslim. The author visits the former Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, where West African students are still making the most of Cold War ties with the USSR, and Clichy Sous Bois in Paris, which gave birth to the 2005 riots.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jearl on July 14, 2019

Now, I'm openly biased when I say I loved this book. Having studied European Studies with French and Spanish I could probably count the number of works by and or centered Black Europeans that I studied throughout my 4 years of study on one hand. One of those being an extract from Franz Fanon’s `The......more

Goodreads review by Sanjuro on March 10, 2020

I'm deeply torn by this book, which I found enthralling, informative, and innovative, but which is also littered with the sorts of problems that arise when the methodology is really thought through. The first 200 pages or so left me captivated, but the book began wearing out its welcome when the man......more

Goodreads review by Ruth on March 05, 2020

I enjoyed this book on many levels. I am a fan of factual literature but sometimes factual books can feel like they came from the same template: research findings + drawing conclusions (I think its called the translation method). This book is very different. I was expecting to read about the history......more

Goodreads review by All My Friends on January 13, 2022

Insightful and oftentimes reaffirming. I’ve been meaning to read Afropean for a while now, since I saw Johny presenting this book at the literature festival in Berlin in 2020. Though sadly, only virtually. I found Afropean especially interesting because I’ve been to so many of the cities Johny has t......more

Goodreads review by Koen on March 15, 2021

Thought this was just okay. A travelogue of sorts where Pitts back-packs though Europe looking for aspects related to his term Afropean. The subtitles reads Notes From Black Europe and I felt it was just that, notes. While definitely an interesting topic, for me the book lacks structure and perhaps ev......more


Quotes

Afropean announces the arrival of an impassioned author able to deftly navigate and illuminate a black world that for many would otherwise have remained unseen The Guardian

[Pitts'] talent for sharp summary is apparent early on...a natural talent for describing cities and their atmosphere The Evening Standard

a beautiful study of black identity in Europe The Telegraph

it is remarkable how quickly he gets to the soul of a place [...] What is consistently impressive throughout Pitts's work is his ability to blend fact with anecdote; the effect is often cinematic. At times, you may feel that instead of reading a non-fiction book you are watching a well-paced historical thriller New Statesman

"forced me to stop and pause", "the book invites us to witness journeys of creativity of communities often unrecorded in studies of European history, highlighting the commonality of African-European experiences across the continent" BBC History Magazine, Books of the Year