African Fantasy is a fast-growing genre, fuelled by the endless reservoir of resources that is African Mythology.
While many of the very best in this genre still struggle with issues pertaining to historical accuracy and mythological authenticity, they remain thoroughly enjoyable reads regardless.
Here are the best twelve African Fantasy books written before 2025, ranked.
In a world where magic once thrived but has since been brutally suppressed, Children of Blood and Bone follows Zélie, a young divîner determined to restore magic to the oppressed maji of Orïsha.
With her white hair and latent powers, Zélie embodies a lost generation robbed of their legacy. Alongside her brother and a defiant princess, she embarks on a dangerous quest to awaken the gods and bring back the magic her people were denied. Adeyemi draws heavily on Yoruba cosmology, African folklore, and real-world injustices like police brutality and systemic violence.
Dark, dense, and unapologetically violent, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is the first book in James’s Dark Star Trilogy and redefines African epic fantasy with unapologetic boldness.
The story centres around Tracker, a hunter famed for his supernatural nose, hired to find a missing boy. But nothing is straightforward — least of all the truth. As he recounts the journey, Tracker weaves a wild tale of betrayal, shapeshifters, witches, vampires, and haunted landscapes drawn from pan-African folklore. James writes in a vivid, non-linear style that feels like oral storytelling on steroids.
Set in southeastern Nigeria, Dazzling tells the dual coming-of-age story of two girls linked by spiritual forces beyond their understanding. Treasure, bound to a deity by a spiritual bargain, lives between two worlds — the human and the divine.
Ozoemena, initiated as a Leopard spirit, wrestles with the sacred role she’s forced to inherit. As their paths converge, the novel explores themes of gender, myth, destiny, and inherited power. Emelụmadụ’s prose shimmers with lyricism and traditional Igbo spirituality, blending ancient cosmologies with modern realities. It’s both grounded and dreamlike — a deeply Nigerian story with universal resonance.
Ghosts, gods, and talking animals roam the pages, but so do pain, memory, and family secrets. Dazzling reclaims traditional beliefs without exoticizing them, offering a powerful, feminist-inflected tale that respects the mythic while honouring the everyday struggles of young girls becoming women in a world that often demands silence from them.
In Blood Scion, fifteen-year-old Sloane discovers she’s a Scion — descended from Yoruba orisha and harbouring fire magic in a world that kills people like her. But instead of fleeing, she is forced to join the very army that hunts her kind.
As a soldier-in-training, she plots to burn the system from within. Set in a colonized version of Nigeria, this YA fantasy is as much a rebellion story as it is a searing indictment of colonial violence, child warfare, and lost identity.
Falaye doesn’t sugarcoat trauma. The brutality is real, the body count is high, and the emotional stakes are devastating. But so is the courage, especially from a protagonist who learns that survival is resistance.
Set in the mystical kingdom of Nri, this fantasy novel follows twin sisters Naala and Sinai, separated at birth and unaware of their divine heritage. Orphaned and raised in different corners of a patriarchal empire, both girls begin to uncover powers rooted in their godly bloodline. Their journey toward identity, sisterhood, and revolution unfolds against a backdrop of divine war and ancestral secrets.
Amayo crafts a richly layered world inspired by Igbo cosmology and pre-colonial Nigerian society, placing goddesses at the heart of a story about reclaiming lost histories. Daughters of Nri champions female empowerment, spiritual legacy, and resistance, weaving quiet defiance into every chapter. With lush prose and vivid worldbuilding, it marks the beginning of The Return of the Earth Mother series.
Sixteen-year-old Deka lives in a rigid, patriarchal empire where purity is prized and blood defines your worth.
On the day of her purification ceremony, Deka bleeds gold, revealing herself as impure and inhuman. What follows is a whirlwind shift: instead of execution, she is recruited into an elite army of girls like her — the Alaki — who possess supernatural strength and cannot die.
Set in the fictional land of Otera but inspired by West African folklore and the trauma of societal oppression, The Gilded Ones blends fantasy, feminism, and fierce action. First in The Deathless series, it’s a brutal, empowering tale where pain and power walk hand in hand, and where broken girls become unbreakable warriors.
Often described as the “Nigerian Harry Potter,” Akata Witch introduces Sunny Nwazue, an albino girl born in the U.S. but raised in Nigeria, who discovers she belongs to a hidden magical world. Sunny is a Leopard Person, one of many born with innate mystical abilities.
Under the mentorship of a magical quartet, she learns to control her powers and faces a terrifying evil threatening the magical and human worlds. Drawing from Nigerian folklore, secret societies, and juju traditions, Okorafor creates a fresh, distinctly African fantasy that blends the ordinary with the extraordinary.
The fantasy book is both a magical adventure and a personal journey of self-discovery, and it kickstarts the acclaimed Nsibidi Scripts series — a must-read for fans of African-rooted fantasy.
In the continent of Oon, knowledge is power and also forbidden. Danso, a young scholar in the ancient city of Bassa, is expected to toe the line: marry well, keep quiet, and forget about his mixed heritage.
But when he encounters Lilong, a warrior from a supposedly extinct people, he’s pulled into a long-buried history of forbidden magic, lost cultures, and political deception.
Son of the Storm reimagines African fantasy with detailed worldbuilding, class politics, and a sharp eye on how empires are built and lies are maintained. Okungbowa blends oral tradition, myth, and West African settings to create a fantasy epic rooted in real-world dynamics of race, caste, and knowledge control.
Binti follows a young Himba girl who becomes the first of her people to gain admission to Oomza University, a prestigious, intergalactic institution.
Despite her community’s deep resistance to outsiders, Binti leaves home, carrying her people’s traditions with her, including her sacred edan and the protective otjize clay on her skin. But space travel is not without danger.
When the alien Meduse attack her ship, killing everyone else on board, Binti becomes the unexpected bridge between two warring civilizations.
In a world where shadows hold secrets and magic pulses beneath the skin of tradition, The Dance of the Shadows delivers a gripping tale of ancestry, vengeance, and forbidden power.
Set in a richly imagined African kingdom, the fantasy novel follows Noria, a young girl caught in the crossfire between the mortal world and the ancient realm of the spirits. As dark forces rise and sacred pacts unravel, she discovers her terrifying ability to commune with the dead — a gift both feared and revered.
First published in 1952, The Palm-Wine Drinkard is often cited as the first African fantasy novel. Written in a deliberately non-standard English that mimics Yoruba oral storytelling, the book follows a nameless narrator — a man so addicted to palm wine that he journeys into the land of the dead to retrieve his deceased tapster.
What follows is a surreal, episodic adventure through bizarre towns, magical creatures, and moral lessons. Tutuola’s work was revolutionary. At a time when African literature was expected to conform to European literary forms, this book broke all the rules. It reads like myth, dream, and satire rolled into one — fantastical, humorous, and unsettling.
Despite early criticism, it has become a cornerstone of African speculative literature. The Palm-Wine Drinkard redefined what African fiction could be: wildly imaginative, deeply rooted in local culture, and completely unafraid to be strange.
In an alternate 1912 Cairo, where magic and technology coexist thanks to a portal opened decades earlier, Agent Fatma el-Sha’arawi of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities is called to investigate the murder of a secret brotherhood.
The culprit claims to be the legendary al-Jahiz, the man who unleashed the djinn into the world, returned from the dead. As Fatma, dressed always in bowler hats and three-piece suits, digs deeper, she uncovers a conspiracy that threatens to shake both the magical and political foundations of this steampunk-infused Egypt.
A Master of Djinn is a full-length novel set in the same universe as Clark’s award-winning novellas. It blends Islamic mythology, noir detective tropes, and lush worldbuilding to create a fantasy like no other.
