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A Stranger in their Midst: A Memoir (2nd Edition)
Charles E. Archibong was elevated to the bench of the Federal High Court of Nigeria in 2002—the primary superintending forum of Nigeria’s federal system, with jurisdiction over the executive activity of the federal government and all its agencies.
This book details matters that came before Archibong during his time as a Federal Judge. His characteristic approach to adjudication was a decided bent toward speedy conclusion of proceedings before him. These cases ranged from the abduction of a sitting state governor, the recall of the Deputy President of the Nigerian Senate, a trial of activists of the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), to pushing through trial a civil claim against federal authorities over publication of an air accident report, oil magnates and communication czars tangling with their creditors. The stories are told with the skill and pathos of an excellent writer.
Things reach a climax when Justice Archibong collides with senior lawyers engaged on behalf of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to conduct a major criminal trial, and about the same time the Judge gets caught in the crossfire of feuding political bigwigs litigating for the control of party political structures. These conflicts will lead to the premature termination of his judicial career.
₵135.00 -
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
₵150.00 -
Small by Small: Becoming a Doctor in 1990s Nigeria
“A small miracle of a book.” — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
As he works his way through his medical training, Ike Anya’s grandmother reassures him, “everything worthwhile is achieved small by small.”
Ike’s story charts the triumphs and failures of his student days through to his first demanding year as a house officer. A medical memoir unlike any from the West, this is filled with the colour and vibrancy of tempestuous 1990s Nigeria, where political unrest, social change and a worsening economy make a doctor’s life particularly challenging.
₵130.00 -
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
₵145.00 -
Men Across Time: Contesting Masculinities in Ghanaian Fiction and Film
Men Across Time: Contesting Masculinities in Ghanaian Fiction and Film examines the various constructions and manifestations of masculinities from precolonial, colonial, independent and post-independent Ghana as portrayed in selected Ghanaian fiction, film and music videos. Two main questions are engaged here:
- What predominant masculine images are present in Ghanaian texts?
- In what ways has the passage of time affected the subversion of dominant masculine images, contested hegemony and created room for the presence of alternative masculinities?
This book submits that in questioning the various masculine modes of behaviours portrayed in these texts, and negotiating their own masculine identities, the male characters showcase the mutations that are taking place within masculine representations over time and aver that other models of masculine expression are possible.
“This study’s engagement with the theory of hegemonic masculinity represents an important contribution to the discourse in gender studies in Ghana and Africa. In addition, it is well researched and presents a cutting-edge analysis of masculinity across genres. I cannot think of any other study in Ghanaian literary and cultural studies that provides such a broad historical background context and the book is certainly original in its approach.” — Professor Mansah Prah, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Cape Coast, Ghana
“The book’s major strength is in adding significantly to an area of study that is currently under theorised. This has the potential to make a robust and important contribution to the field of knowledge on representation of masculinities in African and specifically Ghanaian popular culture.” — Associate Professor Nicky Falkof, Media Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
₵300.00 -
Peter Dagadu: Man of God
Usually we know those men who have influenced church and nation only by reputation, as it were from the outside. In this book we have the rare privilege of seeing such a man at close quarters his childhood and schooling, how he came to Christ, the struggles and problems he went through in short, what made him the man of God he was.
Though Peter Dagadu died so many years ago, there are thousands who knew him and who will find in this account the secret of a man they admired but did not always understand: To many others, both lay and ordained, the story of Peter Dagadu will prove a challenge to climb the upward path following in his footsteps.
Peter Barker came to Ghana in 1956, after studying history and theology at Oxford, to work on the magazine New Nation, of which Peter Dagadu was a member of the advisory board. He later taught French and history at Okuapemman and La Bone secondary schools, and in 1961 began a two-year course of study for the London BD at Trinity College (then in Kumasi). After three years as pastor of Kaneshie Presbyterian Church and editor of Christian Messenger, he was seconded to the Christian Council as secretary of the Literature Committee and later manager of Asempa Publishers.
₵25.00Peter Dagadu: Man of God
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Amu the African (Children’s Edition)
This is the children’s edition of the earlier book, Amu the African, A Study in Vision and Courage, written by Fred Agyeman. From this book, we can learn about the qualities of selflessness, originality, regard for Africaness etc. which characterised the life of this renowned Ghanaian educationist and reformist, Dr Ephraim Amu.
The book seeks to inspire the youth to emulate the good example of Dr Amu – a personality who has influenced for good, many pupils and students in his 50 years of teaching.
In this children’s edition, Fred Agyemang and Phanuel Nyaku have retold the story of Amu in simple, easy-to-read narrative form.
This book is highly recommended for Ghanaian children to help them absorb some of the values we cherish from our traditional heritage as eminently exemplified in the life of Dr Ephraim Amu.
Not since Dr Kwegyir Aggrey has any other Ghanaian influenced more positively the development of Ghanaian culture and pride in the African Personality than Dr Ephraim Amu.
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My Footprints in Ghana’s Black Gold
This memoir — part historical and part autobiographical — traces the author’s involvement with the final phase of petroleum exploration in Ghana, a journey that took over a century, beginning with the first onshore well in 1896. It has been a most interesting journey, with many twists and turns.
In the early days of the existence of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, there were various myths and half-truths about the presence or absence of commercial quantities of oil and gas in the basins of the Ghana.
- Nigeria was draining Ghana’s oil and that all that was required was for Ghana to buy powerful machines and begin to pump and drain her own
- Ghana would never find oil until the gods of Nzemaland and the Volta Region had been pacified
- The GNPC Model Production Sharing Agreement was too stringent on contractors
A major seismic interpretation of the Cape Three Points sub-basin of the Western Region, in 1992, would turn out to be the watershed of this new brave phase of exploration in Ghana.
The book was finally launched in Ghana in April 2022.
Hopefully, going to the heart of the matter should help future generations of ordinary Ghanaians, politicians and explorationists understand what it took to make Ghana a petroleum producing country, just in case the country was afflicted by the “Dutch disease.”
₵120.00 -
From Dar es Salaam to Bongoland: Urban Mutations in Tanzania
The name Dar es Salaam comes from the Arabic phrase meaning house of peace. A popular but erroneous translation is ‘haven of peace’ resulting from a mix-up of the Arabic words “dar” (house) and “bandar” (harbour). Named in 1867 by the Sultan of Zanzibar, the town has for a long time benefitted from a reputation of being a place of tranquility. The tropical drowsiness is a comfort to the socialist poverty and under-equipment that causes an unending anxiety to reign over the town. Today, for the Tanzanian, the town has become Bongoland, that is, a place where survival is a matter of cunning and intelligence (bongo means ‘brain’ in Kiswahili). Far from being an anecdote, this slide into toponomy records the mutations that affect the links that Tanzanians maintain with their principal city and the manner in which it represents them.
This book takes into account the changes by departing from the hypothesis that they reveal a process of territorialisation. What are the processes – envisaged as spatial investments – which, by producing exclusivity, demarcations and exclusions, fragment the urban space and its social fabric? Do the practices and discussions of the urban dwellers construct limited spaces, appropriated, identified and managed by communities (in other words, territories)? Dar es Salaam is often described as a diversified, relatively homogenous and integrating place. However, is it not more appropriate to describe it as fragmented?
As territorialisation can only occur through frequenting, management and localised investment, it is therefore through certain places – first shelter and residential area, then the school, daladala station, the fire hydrant and the quays – that the town is observed. This led to broach the question in the geographical sense of urban policy carried out since German colonisation to date. At the same time, the analysis of these developments allows for an evaluation of the role of the urban crisis and the responses it brings.
In sum, the aim of this approach is to measure the impact of the uniqueness of the place on the current changes. On one hand, this is linked to its long-term insertion in the Swahili civilisation, and on the other, to its colonisation by Germany and later Britain and finally, to the singularity of the post-colonial path. This latter is marked by an alternation of Ujamaa with Structural Adjustment Plans applied since 1987. How does this remarkable political culture take part in the emerging city today?
This book is a translation of De Dar es Salaam à Bongoland: Mutations urbaines en Tanzanie, published by Karthala, Paris in 2006.
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Southern African Liberation Struggles 1960-1994 (Contemporaneous Documents, 9 Volumes)
These 9 volumes are the most comprehensive historical record of the liberation struggles in southern Africa. Comprising 2.4 million words in 5,394 pages, they record interviews with liberation fighters and supporters in the Frontline states and the extraordinary sacrifices they made so that Africa could at last be free. With the fall of the South African apartheid regime, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) identified the need to record the experiences of the liberation struggles in Southern Africa, from 1960 until that final liberation in 1994. To that end, SADC launched the Hashim Mbita Project – named after the last Executive Secretary of the OAU Liberation Committee.
The research covered liberation movements in the countries which engaged in liberation wars, the Frontline states and Extension countries; and the Research Project team comprised members from the SADC mainland states of Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho and Swaziland. The support received from other regions is documented: Anglophone West Africa, Francophone Africa, North Africa, East Asia, Canada and the United States, Cuba and the Caribbean, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Nordic Countries, Western Europe, the Soviet Union, Non-Aligned Movement: India, Yugoslavia, Indonesia, Sri lanka; Organisation of African Unity and United Nations.
₵3,000.00 -
The Mkapa Years: Collected Speeches (3-Volume Box Set, Hardcover)
This collection of speeches, in three volumes, by the third President of the United Republic of Tanzania, Benjamin William Mkapa (1995–2005), will serve primarily as reference documents to the vision of what he attempted to achieve in his ten years of leadership. His tenure as a leader came at a time when Tanzania’s economy was in dire condition. The legacy of the command economy, which had been in place for much of the 1970s and 1980s, was still felt. There was resistance to change to adopt a market economy, evident in the political tensions and debates about privatisation, an approach following Structural Adjustment Programmes, imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, that had led to stagnation of the economy, high inflation, deteriorating health, education, communication, and transport sector services, as well as general gloom in the country especially among the poor. The bold steps he took during the first half of his administration did not immediately endear him to the public. However, in the ensuing years, slowly but steadily, positive results were achieved, and the social cost of change that the people had endured was appreciated. Relations with development partners and the multilateral agencies that before he took office had sunk to the lowest ebb were restored, and Tanzania, which was no longer unfit to borrow, received the largest debt relief ever and henceforth. Tanzania was on its way to new growth potentials and a vibrant private sector-led economy.
These collected speeches tell this story and tell it well, in great prose laced with wit and quotations from world political and literary sources, which is an evidence of his erudition as a literature student and journalist.
₵850.00 -
Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America (Hardcover)
From New York Times bestselling author of Lead From The Outside and political leader Stacey Abrams, a blueprint to end voter suppression, empower our citizens, and take back our country.
“With each page, she inspires and empowers us to create systems that reflect a world in which all voices are heard and all people believe and feel that they matter.” —Kerry Washington
A recognized expert on fair voting and civic engagement, Abrams chronicles a chilling account of how the right to vote and the principle of democracy have been and continue to be under attack. Abrams would have been the first African American woman governor, but experienced these effects firsthand, despite running the most innovative race in modern politics as the Democratic nominee in Georgia. Abrams didn’t win, but she has not conceded. The book compellingly argues for the importance of robust voter protections, an elevation of identity politics, engagement in the census, and a return to moral international leadership.
Our Time Is Now draws on extensive research from national organizations and renowned scholars, as well as anecdotes from her life and others’ who have fought throughout our country’s history for the power to be heard. The stakes could not be higher. Here are concrete solutions and inspiration to stand up for who we are now.
“This is a narrative that describes the urgency that compels me and millions more to push for a different American story than the one being told today. It’s a story that is one part danger, one part action, and all true. It’s a story about how and why we fight for our democracy and win.” – Stacey Abrams
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Diana: Her New Life
The publication in 1992 of Andrew Morton’s number-one national bestseller, Diana: Her True Story, shook the British royal family to its very foundations. The book’s many revelations – that Prince Charles had been having a long-term affair, that the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales had been a sham, that the Princess had been suffering from an eating disorder and had made several halfhearted suicide attempts – were initially greeted with disbelief. But as time passed, it became clear that the book was, as its title claimed, Diana’s true story, especially when the couple announced their separation in December 1992. When Prince Charles eventually admitted his adultery on television, he put the final seal of confirmation on Andrew Morton’s claims. Diana’s friends were hopeful that the separation from Charles, which ended years of a torturous existence, would bring Diana the freedom to find happiness in a new role. But has she? With her marriage in limbo and her children only occasionally by her side, Diana’s position in the royal family is one of increasing isolation. Diana: Her New Life chronicles the secret battles that have raged behind closed doors, and Diana’s constant frustration as she endeavors to break free from the restrictions of her semi-detached royal life. Again with unprecedented access to some of Diana’s closest friends and advisers, Andrew Morton is able to strip away the royal propaganda and reveal how Diana, who became a princess before she had reached maturity, is at last learning to become a woman in her own right rather than a puppet of the palace. Andrew Morton exposes the infighting and intrigue behind this most sensational royal crisis, as well as Diana’s private thoughts on her retirement from public life, remarriage, the men in her life, and the grooming of Prince William for his future role.
₵60.00Diana: Her New Life
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Charles: Victim or Villain
Charles, Prince of Wales, has long been the subject of intense scrutiny and speculation. Everyone assumes that they know the story of the Prince’s life and his failed marriage to Diana. Diana herself told the world in no uncertain terms about her unhappiness with the British Royal Family, leaving no doubt as to whom she held responsible.
But Diana’s version was only part of the story.
Penny Junor’s new biography, Charles: Victim or Villain?, reveals the startling complexities and contradictions of a man born to a position of unique privilege. On the occasion of the Prince’s fiftieth birthday it provides fresh perspective and entirely revolutionizes the way we think about Charles, his marriage and his mistress.
Drawing on the memories, experiences and observations of those closest to the Prince, the Princess and Camilla — some of whom have never spoken before — Penny Junor is in an unrivaled position to explode and explain the popular myths. Her analysis of the Prince’s marriage to Diana, a vulnerable but difficult young woman, and his relationship with Camilla, earthy and independent, results in a provocative new portrait of the man who will be King.
₵60.00₵85.00Charles: Victim or Villain
₵60.00₵85.00 -
Bless Me Father
**Available from mid February 2019**
Bless Me Father is the true story of an incredible South African life. Born into a violent and broken family, and growing up in a variety of institutions, Cape Town based poet and writer Mario d’Offizi tells his remarkable, often shocking and ultimately inspiring life adventure – one that spans several decades in a country undergoing radical change. From his tough days at Boys Town to wild years in the advertising world, a stint in the restaurant business and a sharp edged journalistic adventure in the DRC, d’Offizi tells his critically acclaimed story with the unfailing sensitivity and warmth of a true poet.
₵70.00Bless Me Father
₵70.00