Photographic documentation of, and statements from, people living with HIV & AIDS in six sub-Saharan African countries. B/w photos, 206pp, UK. ACTION AID

Using interviews, personal experiences and research, the contributors depict the realities of how African children deal with the AIDS pandemic. Index, notes, tables, b/w photos, xvii, 265pp, USA. OHIO U P, 0896802329

Second edition. This collection of true stories reveals the experiences of orphans, street children, grandparents, aunts, foster parents, charity and social workers and foreign donors across South Africa, Zambia and Uganda. The book questions what will happen to the minds of a generation that grows up alone, poor and ashamed by the stigma of the disease that killed their parents. Notes, index, xviii, 176pp, UK. PLUTO PRESS, 0745320759

Traces the carnage of HIV/AIDS from its Ugandan epicentre in the villages of Kasensero, along the shores of Lake Victoria, through sub-Saharan Africa and onto the rest of the world. Peter Mugyenyi’s involvement in the struggle against the virus started in 1989, soon after his return from a long exile in Europe and the Middle East. On arrival he found the disease devastating his country, compelling him to fight the modern plague. He became one of the leaders in a protracted fight against the scourge and an advocate for universal access to life-saving antiretroviral therapy. Here he exposes the incredible self-indulgence of the pharmaceutical companies and the cold-heartedness of the rich world that turned a blind eye until it was far too late, and then responded too slowly with too little. Index, 294pp, UGANDA. FOUNTAIN PUBLISHERS.

Memory books are slim volumes of words and drawings, created by people with HIV/AIDS. These books humanise the catastrophe and leave a legacy of knowledge and understanding for future generations. This fable illustrates the importance of books as a means of education, of preserving memories and of sharing life. In the midst of death and suffering, a young girl plants a tree. She nurtures it as a fragment of life that will grow and survive and like the Memory Books, outlive this global crisis. Translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson. App, 120pp, UK. HARVILL, 1843432072

New in paperback. From young women queuing for a test outside a village clinic, to NGO offices with no lightbulbs, from Presidents in denial, to missionaries waving banners for abstinence to the author confronting the possibility of testing positive herself, this is eye-opening, provocative and utterly gripping in equal measure. AIDS may be the deadliest infectious disease in human history. What makes some societies more vulnerable than others? Why is the HIV epidemic so severe in Africa and why have many governments and NGOs largely failed to halt its progress? In an utterly riveting narrative where the author moves from ideas of how societies are arranged to the bitter conflict between nature and science, Helen Epstein goes to the heart of why epidemics spread in the way they do and what we should be doing to stop them. Index, notes, 326pp, UK. PENGUIN BOOKS.

Thirteen women tell their personal stories in words, paintings and photography, shining a light on the human face of HIV/AIDS statistics in Cape Town. Gloss, colour illus, 183pp, SOUTH AFRICA. DOUBLE STOREY BOOKS.

2003 1919930353 Paperback

An account of a nine-month journey made by the author and his family into some of the World's HIV/AIDS epicentres. Sent by the Salvation Army to bear witness to the work they were doing in response to the pandemic, Rhidian Brook, his wife and two children, follow a trail of devastation through communities still shattered and being broken by this disease: truck stop sex workers in Kenya, victims of rape in Rwanda, child-headed families in Soweto, children of prostitutes in India, farmers who sold blood for money in China. It is a remarkable journey among the infected and the affected through a world that, despite seeming on the brink of collapse, is being held together, not by power, politics, guns and money; but by small acts of kindness performed by unsung people choosing to live in hope. Col photos, 283pp, UK. MARION BOYARS.

The moving story of a young boy's fight against AIDS. SPEARHEAD, 0864865333

In a tin-walled compound outside Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a middle-class woman named Haregewoin Teferra suffers terrible personal losses. In grief, she turns to the church, and is presented with two orphans and asked to house them. Haregewoin agrees. Once she opens her gate, she never manages to close it again. Here is a woman who does not run away from HIV-positive and AIDS-orphaned children, brought to her on foot, by bus or by donkey cart. There are over a million AIDS orphans in Ethiopia; this account tells a few of their remarkable stories through the eyes of a woman whose own life has been altered by them. Index, bib, notes, col photos, 471pp, UK. BLOOMSBURY.