Scramble for Africa by Thomas Pakenham — The definitive narrative history of European colonisation in Africa, covering the German occupation of what is now mainland Tanzania (then German East Africa) in compelling detail. The chapter on the East African campaigns of the First World War puts Bukoba's history — including the 1915 British raid — in full context. If you want to understand why the town looks the way it does, start here.
The Zanzibar Chest by Aidan Hartley — A foreign correspondent's memoir partly set in East Africa, written with unusual honesty about the contradictions of reporting from a continent in crisis. It covers Tanzania, Kenya, and the Great Lakes region during the turbulent 1990s and reads nothing like standard war journalism.
Weep Not, Child by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o — Kenya's most celebrated novelist writes about East African colonial experience in a way that resonates across the region. Set during the Mau Mau uprising but rooted in the everyday texture of life under foreign rule that Bukoba and the Lake Victoria shore shared. This is the place to start with Ngũgĩ; A Grain of Wheat is the masterpiece but harder going.
Lake Victoria by Hannelore Bublitz — A detailed account of the ecology and human geography of Lake Victoria, covering all three shoreline countries. Combines natural history with the social and economic realities of the communities that depend on the lake — fishing villages, water hyacinth, Nile perch, and the people caught between them.