See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Côte d’Ivoire, also known in English as Ivory Coast (personally I take the position that you call people and countries by the names they wish to be known by).
I have not been to Côte d’Ivoire myself, though I have advised its government on a couple of occasions.
| Title | Author | Goodreads raters | LibraryThing owners |
| Aya | Marguerite Abouet | 6,986 | 664 |
| The Bitter Side of Sweet | Tara Sullivan | 3,646 | 277 |
| Aya of Yop City | Marguerite Abouet | 2,421 | 260 |
| Too Small to Ignore: Why Children Are the Next Big Thing | Wess Stafford | 1,142 | 505 |
| Nine Hills to Nambonkaha: Two Years in the Heart of an African Village | Sarah Erdman | 1,784 | 312 |
| Aya: Life in Yop City (Aya #1-3) | Marguerite Abouet | 1,683 | 166 |
| Aya: The Secrets Come Out | Marguerite Abouet | 1,331 | 154 |
| Aya: Love in Yop City (Aya #4-6) | Marguerite Abouet | 885 | 127 |
So, I confess I had not heard of the popular graphic novel sequence by Marguerite Abouet about her heroine Aya, set in Côte d’Ivoire in the 1970s, but I’ll have to look out for them now. It’s also nice to see a success for the bande dessinée genre.
If I count correctly, this is the sixth country where seven of the top eight books are by women, joining Canada, South Korea, Kenya, the United Kingdom and Iran.
I disqualified eleven books. For about half of them, this was because they were set in or about a number of countries including Côte d’Ivoire, but much less than half set there. This knocked out Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert, The Fortunes of Africa by Martin Meredith, Dictatorland by Paul Kenyon, Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus by David Quammen, and Africa Is Not a Country by Margy Burns Knight.
I really hesitated with The Suns of Independence by Ahmadou Kourouma, which is set between two fictional countries, the Socialist Republic of Nikinai and Ebony Coast. Kourouma himself was firmly Ivoirian, but in the end I feel he deliberately set the book in a fictional place which is as closely related to Côte d’Ivoire as, say, the Shire is to England.
There were a couple with very little Ivoirian material, and I fear that people tagging them on LT / GR get mixed up between West African countries. Tété-Michel Kpomassie, author of An African in Greenland, is from Togo. Allah Is Not Obliged, by Ahmadou Kourouma, does start in Côte d’Ivoire but is mostly set in Liberia. The Dragons, the Giant, the Women by Wayétu Moore is set in Liberia and the USA. Standing Heavy, by Gauz, is set among Ivoirians in Paris. Arab Jazz, by Karim Miské, is set among Arabs in Paris; Miské was born in Côte d’Ivoire, but identifies as Mauritanian-French.
Next up are Cameroon, Nepal, Venezuela and Niger.
Asia: India | China | Indonesia | Pakistan | Bangladesh (revised) | Russia | Japan | Philippines (revised) | Vietnam | Iran | Türkiye | Thailand | Myanmar | South Korea | Iraq | Afghanistan | Yemen | Uzbekistan | Malaysia | Saudi Arabia | Nepal | North Korea | Syria | Sri Lanka | Taiwan | Kazakhstan | Cambodia | Jordan | UAE
Americas: USA | Brazil (revised) | Mexico | Colombia | Argentina | Canada | Peru | Venezuela | Guatemala | Ecuador | Bolivia | Haiti | Dominican Republic
Africa: Nigeria | Ethiopia (revised) | Egypt | DR Congo | Tanzania | South Africa | Kenya | Sudan | Uganda | Algeria | Morocco | Angola | Mozambique | Ghana | Madagascar | Côte d’Ivoire | Cameroon | Niger | Mali | Burkina Faso | Malawi | Zambia | Chad | Somalia | Senegal | Zimbabwe | Guinea | Benin | Rwanda | Burundi | Tunisia | South Sudan
Europe: Russia | Türkiye | Germany | France | UK | Italy | Spain | Poland | Ukraine | Romania | Netherlands | Belgium
Oceania: Australia