Motherland: A Journey through 500,000 Years of African Culture and Identity

by Luke Pepera

Overview

A groundbreaking exploration of 500,000 years of African history, cultures and identity.

Historian, archaeologist, and anthropologist Luke Pepera takes us on a personal journey discovering 500,000 years of African history and cultures in order to reclaim and reconnect with this extraordinary heritage. He tackles the question many people of African descent ask - Who are we? Where do we come from? What defines us? And it explores how knowledge of this deeper history might affect current understandings of African identity.

Through thematically-linked chapters that explore aspects of African identity from nomadic culture and matriarchal society to beliefs about the afterlife and the tradition of oral storytelling, and interwoven with Luke's own experiences of exploring his Ghanaian family history and his personal questions of identity, this is a comprehensive, relevant and beautifully told new history of Africa, and how it has shaped the world we know today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781639368839
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	06/03/2025
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Luke Pepera is a writer, broadcaster, historian, and anthropologist dedicated to sharing his passion for African history and cultures. He was born in Ghana and has a degree from St. Peter's College, Oxford, where he read Archaeology & Anthropology and studied ancient and medieval African history. Since graduating he has worked at the Pitt Rivers Museum, The Times, and Tatler, and has written and presented Africa: Written Out of History, a documentary for Dan Snow's History Hit.

Editorial Reviews

"Historian Pepera debuts with a sprawling account of African cultures. Noting that historical literature tends to perceive Africa through the lens of the Transatlantic slave trade at the 'expense of everything that came before,' and that as a result 'historical chronologies are not how many African peoples' relate to their past, Pepera endeavors to bridge the gap. Rendered in charming, conversational prose, this edifies."

Publishers Weekly

"A beautiful, engaging, informative and deeply readable exploration of the multitude of African identities. Motherland gently meanders through stories of past and present, introducing us not only to the cultures and history of a continent's peoples, but to the individuals themselves. Pepera proves that history is a record of personal experiences. Marvellous!"

 bestselling author of The Five Hallie Rubenhold

"Africa is often read and understood through the twin lenses of colonization and the transatlantic slave trade. While these painful stories are crucial for understanding Africa’s history, as well as the world's, Motherland reminds readers that these account for only a few hundred years out of the millennia-long history of the African continent. In this engaging book, Ghanaian historian and anthropologist Pepera highlights a few of the incalculably many histories and cultures that have risen, fallen, and survived throughout Africa. Pepera’s accessible recounting of history and straightforward writing style offer space for readers new to African history to find avenues for further exploration. A sprawling, eclectic celebration of Africa’s vast and varied history."

Booklist

"Simultaneously capacious and personal, this achieves what might have been thought impossible: to give the reader 500,000 years of history, spanning an entire continent, without ever becoming reductive. A masterful achievement."

host of The Rest is History and Sunday Times& Tom Holland

"I loved and learnt on every page. A brilliant gift of truth."

bestselling author of The Seven Wonders of the Anc Bettany Hughes

"Wonderful and illuminating: a historical and personal journey through 500,000 years of African history, power and culture, with a fascinating cast of African leaders and artists, from imperial conquerors and warrior queens to rappers, activists and migrants, from prehistory to the 21st century. An essential read."

 New York Times bestselling author Simon Sebag Montefiore

"Vivid, compelling and powerful, this groundbreaking book masterfully intertwines sweeping history with personal insights. The people, events and places from Africa's rich history and culture featured in the narrative are as illuminating as they are thought-provoking. Few books can lay claim to changing their readers' perceptions so profoundly. A stunning debut."

author of Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I  Tracy Borman

"African pasts and cultural understandings are vital to the present. 'We have a warped understanding of Africa’s past,' writes Pepera at the outset of his capacious history. To unlearn misconceptions, he invites readers on a sweeping, eclectic trip across time and space. A stirring, optimistic portrait of African identities and meaning making, past and present."

Kirkus Reviews

"Motherland is a colorful, crisply narrated journey through the history of the continent that made mankind. Luke Pepera folds together political, cultural and spiritual history, dancing deftly between centuries and traditions. Motherland is a splendid, clear-eyed, compelling debut from a brilliant new historian. "

 New York Times bestselling author of He Dan Jones

"An extraordinary achievement showcasing Pepera's skills as both a writer and a scholar. From the continent's role as the midwife of humanity, to the profound global influence of people of African descent, Motherland leads us expertly through age after age of astoundingly rich history and culture. An enlightening read that is sure to top many awards lists."

Lindsey Fitzharrism New York Times Bestselling author of The Facemaker

"Elegant and powerful, Pepera's magnificent book elevates our understanding of Africa's overlooked histories, re-inscribing them into the timeline of world history. Absolutely riveting."

author of African Europeans Olivette Otele

"A fascinating, personal reappraisal of African cultural history, at once challenging and enlightening."

author of Agent Zo Clare Mulley

"Magisterial, brilliant, capacious and transformative, this astonishing journey into the heart of Africa is a superb synthesis, an analysis of 500,000 years of history and the most gripping, colourful and marvellous journey possible. The continent of Africa is here, vivid with life, death, survival, hope and stories."

author of Becoming Queen Victoria Kate Williams

"From Eve to the queenly kandakes of Nubia, from Alessandro de' Medici of Renaissance Florence to Hollywood's Chadwick Boseman, Pepera's expansive story of African history and culture is unlike any other you will read. An energetic and impassioned debut from an historian who is sure to go far."

author of The Missing Thread Daisy Dunn

2025-04-04
African pasts and cultural understandings are vital to the present.

“We have a warped understanding of Africa’s past,” writes Pepera at the outset of his capacious history. To unlearn misconceptions, he invites readers on a sweeping, eclectic trip across time and space. Refusing to center histories of victimization, such as the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans, he instead emphasizes their creativity and achievement. Construing “Africa” broadly, Pepera’s thematic chapters show African and African diasporic identities as interwoven and persistent. His descriptive skill brings research from historical and ethnographic sources into conversation with contemporary examples, vividly showing that for Africans, the past and their ancestors’ past achievements infuse the quotidian present. Pepera narrates familiar African histories, such as the marvelous story of Malian emperor Mansa Musa’s 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca. Musa’s wealth in gold, and his generosity in distributing it during his three-month stop in Cairo, famously disrupted the Egyptian economy, bringing him and Mali into wider renown. He also explores the fascinating histories of African royal women, including Njinga Mbande, a 17th-century queen of Ndongo, in what is today Angola. In other chapters, Pepera’s purpose is quite different. In “How the Dead Still Live,” he moves from African understandings of ancestors’ efficacy in their descendants’ lives to a moving discussion of the legacy of the actor Chadwick Boseman. The latter’s “exemplary life” was reflected in his acting choices, in which his portrayals of figures like Jackie Robinson, James Brown, and T’Challa/Black Panther modeled an African spirit of ancestral veneration. Pepera similarly connects African forms of wordsmithing—praise singing, proverbs, epics—to diasporic forms of verbal battles such as rap or playing “the Dozens.” The book’s presentation of how racism developed over the centuries will disappoint some readers, since it largely eschews structural explanations of how anti-Blackness came to be a global phenomenon. But it will undoubtedly inspire those who seek to understand Africa and its peoples everywhere as shapers of human history.

A stirring, optimistic portrait of African identities and meaning making, past and present.

Kirkus Reviews