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And Then He Sang a Lullaby
And Then He Sang a Lullaby is a breathtaking and captivating story of two gay men who find each other in Nigeria and are determined to love despite all that stands in their way.
August is a straight-passing track star who has left Enugu, his overbearing sisters, and an apathetic father to find himself at the University of Nigeria Nsukka. Segun is an openly gay student who is reluctant to fall in love with August, wanting only to be with a man who is comfortable with his sexuality and has the capacity to love without shame. But when the Same Sex (Marriage) Prohibition Act is passed, August and Segun must find a way to tend to their blossoming romance in a country determined to eradicate them. And even while they run into harshness and cruelty at the hands of people whose lives and loves are legal, the two young lovers find kindness, understanding, solace and comfort in the arms of each other and in unexpected places.
₵140.00And Then He Sang a Lullaby
₵140.00 -
Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree
*Available from 15th September 2019.
Based on interviews with young women who were kidnapped by Boko Haram, this poignant novel by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani tells the timely story of one girl who was taken from her home in Nigeria and her harrowing fight for survival. Includes an afterword by award-winning journalist Viviana Mazza.
A new pair of shoes, a university degree, a husband–these are the things that a girl dreams of in a Nigerian village. And with a government scholarship right around the corner, everyone can see that these dreams aren’t too far out of reach.
But the girl’s dreams turn to nightmares when her village is attacked by Boko Haram, a terrorist group, in the middle of the night. Kidnapped, she is taken with other girls and women into the forest where she is forced to follow her captors’ radical beliefs and watch as her best friend slowly accepts everything she’s been told.
Still, the girl defends her existence. As impossible as escape may seem, her life–her future–is hers to fight for.
₵145.00Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree
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An Orchestra of Minorities
The “superb and tragic” Booker Prize finalist about a Nigerian poultry farmer who sacrifices everything to win the woman he loves, by the author of The Fishermen (Boston Globe)Set on the outskirts of Umuahia, Nigeria and narrated by a chi, or guardian spirit, AN ORCHESTRA OF MINORITIES tells the story of Chinonso, a young poultry farmer whose soul is ignited when he sees a woman attempting to jump from a highway bridge. Horrified by her recklessness, Chinonso joins her on the roadside and hurls two of his prized chickens into the water below to express the severity of such a fall. The woman, Ndali, is stopped her in her tracks.Bonded by this night on the bridge, Chinonso and Ndali fall in love. But Ndali is from a wealthy family and struggles to imagine a future near a chicken coop. When her family objects to the union because he is uneducated, Chinonso sells most of his possessions to attend a college in Cyprus. But when he arrives he discovers there is no place at the school for him, and that he has been utterly duped by the young Nigerian who has made the arrangements.. Penniless, homeless, and furious at a world which continues to relegate him to the sidelines, Chinonso gets further away from his dream, from Ndali and the farm he called home.
Spanning continents, traversing the earth and cosmic spaces, and told by a narrator who has lived for hundreds of years, the novel is a contemporary twist of Homer’s Odyssey. Written in the mythic style of the Igbo literary tradition, Chigozie Obioma weaves a heart-wrenching epic about destiny and determination.
₵145.00An Orchestra of Minorities
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Aviara: Who Will Remember You
When twenty-five-year-old Anthony Mukoro returns from the city, to his hometown Aviara, it is with news that shatters the hopes of his retired parents – he is dying. This startling revelation sends his family into a frantic search for answers. But the answers they seek will come at a cost.
To save his life, he must confront forgotten memories from a traumatic experience in his past and a darkness that swells and grows unnoticed within the town. Unknown to Anthony, this begins a journey that will lead him into a dark world of murder and a town’s history steep in blood and shadows.
Aviara explores the complex balance between science and spirituality, fate and ancestry, within the labyrinth of one man’s unravelling reality.
₵145.00Aviara: Who Will Remember You
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A Spell of Good Things
Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize
A spellbinding novel about family secrets and bonds, thwarted hope and the brutal realities of life in a society rife with inequality. Featured in Stylist’s best fiction of 2023, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, the Women’s Prize shortlisted author of Stay With Me, unveils a dazzling story of modern Nigeria and two families caught in the riptides of wealth, power, romantic obsession and political corruption.
Ẹniọlá is tall for his age, a boy who looks like a man. His father has lost his job, so Ẹniọlá spends his days running errands for the local tailor, collecting newspapers and begging, dreaming of a big future. Wúràọlá is a golden girl, the perfect child of a wealthy family. Now an exhausted young doctor in her first year of practice, she is beloved by Kúnlé, the volatile son of family friends. When a local politician takes an interest in Ẹniọlá and sudden violence shatters a family party, Wúràọlá and Ẹniọlá’s lives become intertwined.
In this breathtaking novel, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ shines her light on Nigeria, on the gaping divide between the haves and the have-nots, and the shared humanity that lives in-between.
₵145.00A Spell of Good Things
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An African Abroad: A Travel Memoir
When Ajala is not escaping an assassination attempt and dodging the bullets of eager security agents around the Duke of Edinburgh in Sydney, he is crashing his scooter, amid a hail of gunfire, through a border between Jordan and Israel—or he is cutting through security to shake the hands of Nikita Khrushchev. And when Ajala is not trying ‘African ju-ju’ on pretty Russian girls, he is enjoying a tense audience with Golda Meir in Israel and hobnobbing with Fúnmiláyọ̀ Ransome-Kútì in Moscow.
The Original One-Man Daredevil-Traveller, Moshood Ọlábísí Àjàlá saw it all, did it all, and lived to tell the tale. Now back in print for the first time since 1963, here are the travel stories of his trips around Europe, the Middle East, and Australia as told by the man himself. This new edition comes with a preface by Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún and a foreword by Joane Àjàlá.
₵145.00₵150.00An African Abroad: A Travel Memoir
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I Am Still With You
“Epic and intimate.” – Margo Jefferson, Author of Negroland
Emmanuel Iduma never met his uncle, his father’s favourite brother and the man for whom he is named. The elder Emmanuel left home in 1967 to fight in the Biafran War and was not seen again. The war lasted for three years, with young Igbo men volunteering to fight for a breakaway republic in the chaotic wake of British decolonization. Around one hundred thousand others who fought in the war shared similar fates to Emmanuel’s uncle, though there are no official records of these losses. The tensions that gave rise to the conflict remain, threatening sometimes to bubble over. In this landscape, there are no monuments or graves. Instead, a collective remembering remains, for the most part, silent.
I Am Still With You sees a young Nigerian return to his country of birth. Travelling the route of the war, Iduma explores both a national history and the mysteries of his own family, finding both somewhat scarred and haunted, the memories warped by time and the darkest parts left for decades unspoken.
₵145.00I Am Still With You
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Bookset: Junior African Writers Series (JAWS) Starters (10 books)
Age Range: 3 – 6 years
JAWS Starters are simple books for young readers in Africa. The series provides interesting stories to encourage children to read for pleasure.
The books are at three levels. Level 1 is for children who have just begun to read by themselves. Level 2 and 3 use progressively wider vocabulary and more complex sentence structures. The language has been carefully controlled at each level to make reading easy. Also, there are pictures on every page to help the pupils follow the story. At Level 1, pupils can follow the story from the pictures alone.
There are activities at the end of each book. If a word in an African language is used in the story, there will be a note of its meaning at the end of the book as well.
₵150.00₵160.00 -
Voices that Sing Behind the Veil: Anthology of Short Stories from Africa and the Diaspora (Hardcover)
This 684-page collection is published in collaboration with the Pan African Writers Association which is based in Accra and affiliated to the continental body, the African Union.
The fifty-six stories come from fifteen African countries and elsewhere; Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Burkina Faso and East of the continent, Uganda, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo in the Great Lakes region, Ethiopia and Tanzania (in setting). They bring in other voices in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Botswana, Malawi, St. Maarten, United States and Britain. The themes are amok and definitely so in a vein of free expression. There are stories of love (of even a man who finds one whilst visiting a dying cancer-patient wife at the hospital in Lagos) or of a husband wrongfully imprisoned in Malawi who upon escape from jail confronts a wife about to wed again, a story very reminiscent of the main character in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s, Weep Not, Child.
There is hate and there is poverty – one from Kenya which reads like the Zimbabwean novelist, Dambudzo Marechera’s 1978 classic, The House of Hunger. Issues of mental health, corpse donation for scientific research and Coronavirus-19 are addressed alongside Pentecostal redemption, fake prophets and the havoc they exert on societies as do their counterparts in Islam.
Contributing writers include distinguished and award-winning writers, academics and emerging talents such Zaynab Alkali (Nigeria), Ben Okri (UK/Nigeria), Molefi Kete Asante (US), Wesley Macheso (Malawi), Ogochukwu Promise (Nigeria), Grace Maguri (Zimbabwe), Athol Williams (South Africa), Martin Egblewogbe (Ghana), Esther K Mbithi (Kenya), Mary Ashun (Ghana), Wale Okediran (Nigeria) among others.
“These extraordinary stories, mesmerising and beautifully written, are surely connected to a past that remains with us, the experiences of day-to-day living and the limitless imaginings of our futures. The discerning editor combines stories that communicate appreciation with apprehension, presence with essence… a good read.” – Toyin Falola, Historian and the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair, University of Texas, Austin
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Swallow
It is the early 1830s, the countries of the global north are mired in internecine wars and poverty. The British Empire has set themselves up as the world power through the trans-atlantic slave trade and has started its long-term goal of sequestering and colonising the West Coast of Africa ahead of Germany and France. In their designs for Oduduwa nations, independent city-states in the south-west, they had factored in greed and the use of force, but what they hadn’t bargained for was resistance from the powerful women living in these areas.
These women with intertwined lives will learn of love and betrayal in the fight for survival. Efunsetan Aniwura fights to keep her family’s power. Efunporonye craves a place for herself in a world that is unforgiving to timid women. In trying to make their mark in a society dominated by men and their wars, these women will rise up against the incursions of The British Empire.
Swallow is a vivid reimagining of ancient Yoruba history that tells a sweeping tale of tradition and culture, family, legacy and love.
₵150.00Swallow
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Rose and the Burma Sky
A gripping and intimate historical novel of a black soldier’s experience in the Second World War – a rare and moving tale of love and sacrifice.
One war, one soldier, one enduring love
1939: In a village in south-east Nigeria on the brink of the Second World War, young Obi watches from a mango tree as a colonial army jeep speeds by, filled with soldiers laughing and shouting, their buttons shining in the sun. To Obi, their promise of a smart uniform and regular wages is hard to resist, especially as he has his sweetheart Rose to impress and a family to support.
Years later, when Rose falls pregnant to another man, his heart is shattered. As the Burma Campaign mounts, and Obi is shipped out to fight, he is haunted by the mystery of Rose’s lover. When his identity comes to light, Obi’s devastation leads to a tragic chain of unexpected events.
In Rose and the Burma Sky, Rosanna Amaka weaves together the realities of war, the pain of first love and how following your heart might not always be the best course of action. Its gritty boy’s-eye view brings a spare and impassioned intensity, charging it with universal resonance and power.
₵150.00Rose and the Burma Sky
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A Shred of Fear: A Memoir (Hardcover)
Fifty years after the Biafran War ended in 1970, and as memories of the war fade and cultural, religious and tribal divisions rear their heads, Uche Nwokedi’s childhood memories of that time are presented in this memoir. Aged seven when the war began, he and his family would spend the next three years as refugees in their own country. A Shred of Fear brings dramatic events vividly to life. Moments of fear, sadness, tragedy, and family solidarity are told with pathos and humour. More than a war story, this compelling narrative shines a fearless light on a dark period.
“Powerful and endearing. Uche Nwokedi’s A Shred of Fear is an open invitation to consider his boyhood memories of the Biafran War, told from his perspective as a man who also bore witness to its antecedents and aftermath. This is an inspiring book that is sure to mend bridges.” – Sefi Atta, Author, Everything Good Will Come
“As one who participated fully in the Biafra War, A Shred of Fear is a powerful and vivid factual recollection of events that defined the war for the author. Written with such brilliant simplicity, one is taken on a journey of the changes in life in a time of war by the author. A must read. Highly recommended!” – Chief Arthur Mbanefo FCA, MFR, CON, Commissioner/Roving Ambassador in Biafra (1967-1970); Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (1999-2003)
“A Shred of Fear is a beautifully evocative work that reveals the inimitable but understated role of the many women who confronted the war-within a war marked by hunger, agony and death. Rich in style and language, and full of humour, Uche Nwokedi’s writing is an emotionally wrenching, cross-over read.” – Yinka Olatunbosun, Journalist
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Americanah: Tenth Anniversary Edition
This special edition of the groundbreaking novel by internationally acclaimed author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie commemorates a decade of literary excellence and cultural impact, reaffirming Americanah’s place as a modern classic. Featuring a new introduction from the author, this edition is beautifully presented, designed to captivate both loyal fans and new readers alike.
As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America. There she suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze had hoped to join her, but post 9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.
Thirteen years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a blogger. But after so long apart and so many changes, will they find the courage to meet again, face to face? Fearless, gripping, spanning three continents and numerous lives, the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Americanah is a richly told story of love and expectation set in today’s globalised world.
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Our Ancestories Bookset: Idia of the Benin Kingdom, Njinga of Ndongo and Matamba Plus Coloring & Activity Books (4 books)
Age Range: 4 – 12 years
- Children’s Africana Book Awards (CABA) – 2021 Winner – Best Books for Young Children
- Wishing Shelf Book Award – 2020 Finalist
- Kidsshelf Book Cover Award -2020 Winner
- Eric Hoffer Award – Honourable Mention (Children’s Category) First Horizon Finalist Grand Prize Short List
The complete set of the Our Ancestories books. Our picture books as well as accompanying workbooks on Queen Idia and Njinga. These are stories of hope and courage that show every young girl is capable of greatness.
There is a deep divide between the truth of African history and the common understanding of it. Our Ancestories Bookset helps to bridge this gap through various means including stories about two African female leaders and accompanying activity and colouring books.
This set includes:
Idia of the Benin Kingdom (Our Ancestories)
Njinga of Ndongo and Matamba (Our Ancestories)
Idia of the Benin Kingdom: Coloring and Activity Book (Our Ancestories)
Njinga of Ndongo and Matamba: Coloring and Activity Book (Our Ancestories)
Our Ancestories’ vision is to nudge the world towards a point where:
- There is an avid learning culture for African history.
- People of African descent are at least as exposed to African history as we are to Western history.
- Africans look more to our history as we pave a way for the future.
- Legends that make up African history are mainstream and are introduced to children across the globe.
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Sànyà
She could either be the saviour of her people,
or the destroyer of their world.Sànyà always felt different. And everyone that knew her—the people in the village she grew up in, her beloved brother, Dada, her Aunt Abike, and even her parents before she was born—knew that there was something special about her, too. After an unspeakable tragedy causes her to leave home and grow up too soon, she is devastated to find that her incredible powers are linked to a future which she must fight, even at the cost of her very soul. She begins life anew, hoping that the dark prophesy would somehow rewrite itself. Soon, however, her carefully crafted life and identity becomes the catalyst for a deadly war that will tear her family apart, and doom everything she holds dear.
Oyin Olugbile’s masterful debut tells the story of dangerous love—lost, found, and lost again—all against the backdrop of a fantastical, enthralling empire that holds even the Òrìsà themselves spellbound.
₵160.00Sànyà
₵160.00