Allah Is Not Obliged by Ahmadou Kourouma (2000) — The most important Ivorian novel in French. Told from the point of view of a child soldier, it follows a boy drawn into West Africa's wars in the 1990s. Kourouma was Ivorian and his French is deliberately rough and vernacular — deliberate, brilliant, and unlike anything else. Start here.
Aya de Yopougon by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie — A graphic novel series set in the Yopougon neighbourhood of Abidjan in 1978. It captures everyday life — love affairs, family politics, neighbourhood gossip — with warmth and without poverty porn. Several volumes; all worth reading.
The Dark Child (L'Enfant noir) by Camara Laye (1953) — Technically by a Guinean author, but the world it describes — the culture, the landscape, the Mande-speaking interior of West Africa — is directly relevant to the northwest of Côte d'Ivoire. A memoir of childhood in a traditional blacksmithing family.
Ivory Coast by Tom Sykes (Bradt Travel Guides) — The only dedicated English-language travel guidebook. Detailed and practical. Worth buying before you go.
Under the Kapok Tree: Identity and Difference in Beng Thought by Alma Gottlieb — An anthropologist's account of living with the Beng people of central Côte d'Ivoire. Dense but rewarding for anyone with a serious interest in Ivorian village life and cosmology.