If journalism is “the first rough draft of history,” as the saying goes, and nonfiction the second, is literature the third and final draft—the fullest, most truthful accounting of all? A novel, though a work of imagination, can tell a story from unexpected angles, bringing us voices not always recorded at the time.

I’ve been considering such matters as I read the gloriously vivid new historical novel Out of Darkness, Shining Light (Scribner) by Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah. It tells the story of Scottish missionary Dr. David Livingstone, whose travels in 19^th-century Africa—in search of the source of the Nile River—are the stuff of legend; his encounter with journalist Henry Morton Stanley occasioned the famous remark, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” The story has been told many times before (some say it was a partial inspiration for Joseph Conrad’s classic 1899 novella, Heart of Darkness), usually from the point of view of the white explorers.

Gappah takes a radically different approach. Her narrators are two Africans traveling in Livingstone’s entourage: Halima, an enslaved woman bought by Livingstone and employed by him as a cook, and Jacob Wainwright, a freed slave and Christian convert who attaches himself to Livingtone’s party as the missionary falls ill and dies of malaria. The bulk of the narrative concerns Livingstone’s final days and the decision taken by his African associates to carry the body to the port of Bagamoyo (in modern-day Tanzania) so it can be returned to Great Britain. Needless to say, Halima and Jacob perceive Livingstone and his quest quite differently from the historians—indeed, quite differently from one another. Using their voices (inspired by more than 10 years of research), Gappah fashions a tale that complicates and enriches our understandings of the slave trade, colonialism in Africa, and much more. It’s also a straight-up wonderful read.

Gappah’s novel is just one of a handful of new or recent titles that explore African history from new perspectives. Also out this month is The Shadow King (W.W. Norton), the second novel by Maaza Mengiste, a writer who was born in Ethiopia and now lives in Queens, New York. Set during Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopa in 1935, it concerns the women—beginning with Mengiste’s protagonist, Hirut—who join the battle against the Italian fascists after Emperor Haile Selassie has secretly gone into hiding. “The Shadow King” of the title is a man who is presented to the public as the emperor—dressed in his clothing, imitating his mannerisms—and Hirut is one of his guards. Our reviewer calls Mengiste a “master of characterization” and praises the novel as a “memorable portrait of a people at war—a war that has long demanded recounting from an Ethiopian point of view.”

Dr. Livingstone makes an appearance on the first page of Namwali Serpell’s debut novel The Old Drift (Hogarth/Crown), published earlier this year to rousing acclaim. This wildly imaginative epic novel aims to do nothing less than tell the story of the African nation of Zambia—past, present, and future—through the stories of three families, black, brown, and white. It goes well beyond the historical record with its mix of historical fiction, magical realism, and speculative fiction—what contributing editor Megan Labrise called “literary Neapolitan ice cream” when she interviewed Serpell, a Zambian writer who now lives in San Francisco. For all its flights of fancy, the novel depicts something essential about Zambia in much the same way that Midnight’s Children captured India or One Hundred Years of Solitude captured Colombia. “This novel’s generous spirit, sensory richness, and visionary heft make it almost unique among magical realist epics,” wrote our reviewer.

At long last, fiction from Africa and by Africans is being published and finding an audience here in the United States. We need to hear these stories and the truths they bring us—I look forward to reading much, much more.

Tom Beer is the editor-in-chief of Kirkus Reviews.