• Cultural Heritage

    Cultural Heritage (39)

  • Manuwa Street

    “Lagos brings you alive. Lagos kills you. Here, you’ll be wrong about everything. Here, you won’t have anything to worry about. Lagos creates as many millionaires as it sends poor people to the mat. Here, Nature abounds as much as it self-destructs. And never, you humans, despite your beliefs and certainties, have you ever wanted to live so much. In the midst of this overflow, this too many people, this too much waste, injustices, parties and excesses. Of everything you’ve tried to ignore until now.”

    French journalist Sophie Bouillon documents living in Lagos in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown. As a journalist, she gets out of her night to go and write the dispatch that will announce to the world that Africa, in turn, is affected by this “white virus” that is bringing the West to its knees.

    In this thoughtful narrative non-fiction, Bouillon explores everyday life in Lagos through experiences from her career and personal life. In one unforgettable year, the city was rocked by explosions, evictions and protests. A city that never sleeps put to bed by the pandemic. Manuwa Street is the impressive story of a year that will end with the uprising of a people. It is also and above all a hypnotic and luminous dive into a city that never lets up, meeting men and women struggling with the din of the world.

    But Manuwa Street isn’t just a disinterested documentation of a foreigner’s impression of Lagos; it is about love, uncertainty, hope and survival.

    Manuwa Street

    75.00
  • A Possible Future: An Anthology of the Best Nigerian Writing (1789 – 2018)

    Spanning two hundred years and multiple genres, A Possible Future uses gorgeous excerpts from over eighty literary works to showcase the inventiveness in Nigerian letters and the various zeitgeists—colonialism, despotism, Afropolitanism, postcolonialism, race and sexuality—that have defined it throughout the country’s history. The writers whose works are represented here—A. Igoni Barrett, Taiye Selasi, Gbenga Adesina, Helen Oyeyemi, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, Niyi Osundare, and many more—remind the world of our fraught yet rich literary backstory and point towards the immense possibilities awaiting us in its future.

    120.00245.00
  • Voice of America

    Set in Nigeria and America, Voice of America moves from boys and girls in villages and refugee camps to the disillusionment and confusion of young married couples living in America, and back to bustling Lagos. It is the story of two countries and the frayed bonds between them.

    In ‘Waiting’, two young refugees make their way through another day, fighting for meals and hoping for a miracle that will carry them out of the camp; in ‘A Simple Case’, the boyfriend of a prostitute gets rounded up by the local police and must charm his fellow prisoners for protection and survival; and in ‘Miracle Baby’, the trials of pregnancy and mothers-in-law are laid bare in a woman’s return to her homeland.

    Written with exhilarating energy and warmth, the stories in Voice of America are full of humour, pathos and wisdom, marking the debut of an immensely talented new voice.

  • Season Of Crimson Blossoms

    WINNER OF THE NLNG NIGERIA PRIZE FOR LITERATURE

    An affair between 55-year-old widow Binta Zubairu and 25-year-old weed dealer Reza was bound to provoke condemnation in conservative Northern Nigeria. Brought together in unusual circumstances, Binta and Reza faced a need they could only satisfy in each other. Binta – previously reconciled with God – now yearns for intimacy after the sexual repression of her marriage, the pain of losing her first son and the privations of widowhood. Meanwhile, Reza’s heart lies empty and waiting to be filled due to the absence of a mother. The situation comes to a head when Binta’s wealthy son confronts Reza, with disastrous consequences. This story of love and longing – set against undercurrents of political violence – unfurls gently, revealing layers of emotion that defy age, class and religion.

  • Why Do You Dance When You Walk?

    One morning in Paris on the way to kindergarten, a little girl asks her father “Papa, why do you dance when you walk?” The question is innocent and serious. Why does her father limp, why can’t he ride a bicycle or a scooter? Her father feels compelled to answer, to bring back the memories of his childhood in Djibouti and tell her what happened to his leg. It was a place of sunlight and dust and sickness, a sickness that made him different, unique. They called him a skinflint and a runt, but he was the smartest kid in his school.

    Waberi remembers the shifting desert of Djibouti, the Red Sea, the shanty roofs of the houses in his neighborhood, an immense loneliness and some unforgettable characters: Papa-la-Tige who sold baubles to tourists, his tough, silent mother Zahra who trembled, and his grandmother nicknamed Cochise. He tells of the moment when his life changed forever and the ensuing struggle that made him a man, a man who knows the value of poetry, silence and freedom, a man who is still dancing.

  • The Whispering Trees

    The magical tales in The Whispering Trees capture the essence of life, death and coincidence in Northern Nigeria. Myth and reality intertwine in stories featuring cat-eyed English witches, political agitators, newly-wedded widows, and the tormented whirlwind, Kyakkyawa. The two medicine men of Mazade battle against their egos, an epidemic and an enigmatic witch. And who is Okhiwo, whose arrival is heralded by a pair of little white butterflies?

  • The Stress Test

    Taramade Johnson seems to have it all. But she is stuck in a dead-end marriage, consumed by her desire for Adam Okoya, a male colleague, and burdened with a secret that could cause her to lose everything.

    Things start to come undone when it is revealed that the Johnsons’ Marine Compact Bank, led by the tyrannical Damelda Johnson, Taramade’s mother-in-law, is not as healthy as it would appear. A bureaucratic reformer, Banke Olumide, soon emerges and takes Damelda’s place as MD of the troubled bank.

    Meanwhile, Damelda retires to hatch a plan that will put control of the bank in her grip again. But there are others who want the bank just as much as Damelda does. And for some, it is a battle worth dying – or killing – for.

    The Stress Test

    95.00
  • Chasing Facades

    Young and ambitious, Tayo Dabi is a rising star at Regent Detective Agency where she is a trainee detective. Driven by her passion to solve crimes – even as her brother’s murderer walks free – Tayo immerses herself in the job, delivering results that belie her newbie status.

    But when Tayo is assigned a new, high-profile case, her confidence is shaken. Lawrence Gbade, a popular, wealthy contractor is murdered in his home, and as Tayo digs deeper things become less certain. Was Gbade’s murder a robbery gone wrong, or something much more sinister? Even as self-doubt sets in, Tayo has to battle resentment from older, more experienced detectives, an obnoxious male colleague and her growing attraction to Tony, the victim’s brother.

    Romance meets crime thriller in this gripping story of betrayal, rage and the facades we put up to hide our true selves.

    Chasing Facades

    95.00
  • Pleasantview

    Winner of the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean LiteratureWinner of the 2022 CLMP Firecracker Award in Fiction. Shortlisted for the Society of Authors’ McKitterick Prize 2022

    Coconut trees. Carnival. Rum and coke. To many outsiders, these and other sunny images are all they know about life in the Caribbean. However, if you want to learn how the locals truly live and experience the dark and often harrowing truths that lurk behind the idyllic imagery of Caribbean culture, then come visit the town of Pleasantview.

    Come during election season, and see how one candidate sets out to slaughter endangered turtles- just for fun. Or come on the day the other candidate beats his outside woman,’ so badly she ends up losing their baby. Then come on the night of the political rally, where this grieving woman exacts very public revenge. Stay a while, and see how this single event has a trajectory far beyond the lives of the immediate actors, with often tragic and heartbreaking consequences.

    Written in a remarkable combination of Standard English and Trinidad Creole. Pleasantview showcases the entrenched political, racial, patriarchal, and class dichotomies of life in Trinidad.

    Pleasantview

    150.00
  • The Ones We Find

    Age Range: 15+ years
    Available from 11th October, 2023
    Something Happened Last Night…
    Five years ago, a chance meeting with Femi Uzoechi changed Marilyn’s life. Except for the part she keeps under lock and key in her house of cards. The line between her past and the one she wanted was long drawn in the sand. But all that changed on the eve of her wedding.
    When an urgent call drags Marilyn to work on her day off, a cryptic conversation with Femi leaves her with unanswered questions. ‘Something happened last night,’ he says.
    Hours later, Femi is dead.
    An accident? Suicide? Murder? The police see no foul play. Neither does Femi’s TV-famous widow. But Marilyn can’t shake off those haunting words. As she digs up the graves of Femi’s past in pursuit of the truth, the cracks in her own life begin to surface, threatening to send everything she’s built crumbling down. Every thread she unravels takes her a step closer to the scattered pieces of the girl she left behind, a crossroads she can no longer evade, and a killer with nothing to lose.

    The Ones We Find

    100.00
  • 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.

  • The Cabal

    Bako Thomas lives a solitary life, a calm centre in an increasingly unstable world. The City outside his apartment is sliding towards a dystopia as a fuel crisis holds citizens to ransom. He is down to his final chance with Avé, his girlfriend of two years, and his relationships with his neighbours, The Law, Gebu and Mimi is fraught with anxiety and tension. When a tragedy forces him to go on the run, he soon finds himself being roped into the murky world of politics and corruption he thought he had left behind for good.

    The Cabal

    125.00
  • When We Were Fireflies

    When brooding artist, Yarima Lalo, encounters a moving train for the first time, two serendipitous events occur. First, it triggers memories of past lives in which he was twice murdered—once on a train. He also meets Aziza, a woman with a complicated past of her own, who becomes key to helping him understand what he is experiencing. With a third death in his current life imminent, together they go hunting for remnants of his past lives. Will they find evidence that he is losing his mind or the people who once loved or loathed him?

    “A gripping, layered, passionate and haunting novel with tones of otherworldliness. Abubakar’s prose sparkles with poetry, wisdom and compassion. This is a complex and unforgettable story that will keep you up at night.” – Bisi Adjapon

  • Five Brown Envelopes

    Nduka “Kaka” Kabiri’s company is in trouble. A legacy inherited from his late father, Construction Lions Limited will be liquidated after their multi-billion-dollar project in Northeastern Nigeria is seized and destroyed by terrorists.

    To save his company, Kaka’s bid must win a World-Bank- sponsored rail project tender. This contract will pay off all his debt and make Kaka one of the richest men in Africa. The stakes are high, and greedy, powerful, dangerous men in the corridors of power—and some close enough to walk the corridors of his own home—will do anything to stop Kaka from winning the rail tender.

    Things become dangerous for him when a beautiful seductress, Tsemaye, appears. She is followed in sequence by five brown envelopes whose mysterious contents threaten to destroy his young family, ensuring that he may lose more than just the rail tender.

    Five Brown Envelopes is a gripping thriller in the tradition of Jeffrey Archer and Richard North Patterson.

  • Wahala

    “Contemporary female friendship goes glam in this lively debut novel with remarkable depth.” – Washington Post

    “Great fun and extremely smart.” – npr.org

    NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2022 BY Vogue, Marie Claire, Glamour, Essence, Oprah Daily, Entertainment Weekly, CrimeReads and more!

    An incisive and exhilarating debut novel following three Anglo-Nigerian best friends and the lethally glamorous fourth woman who infiltrates their group—the most unforgettable girls since Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha.

    Ronke wants happily ever after and 2.2. kids. She’s dating Kayode and wants him to be “the one” (perfect, like her dead father). Her friends think he’s just another in a long line of dodgy Nigerian boyfriends.

    Boo has everything Ronke wants—a kind husband, gorgeous child. But she’s frustrated, unfulfilled, plagued by guilt, and desperate to remember who she used to be.

    Simi is the golden one with the perfect lifestyle. No one knows she’s crippled by impostor syndrome and tempted to pack it all in each time her boss mentions her “urban vibe.” Her husband thinks they’re trying for a baby. She’s not.

    When the high-flying, charismatic Isobel explodes into the group, it seems at first she’s bringing out the best in each woman. (She gets Simi an interview in Shanghai! Goes jogging with Boo!) But the more Isobel intervenes, the more chaos she sows, and Ronke, Simi and Boo’s close friendship begins to crack.

    Wahala

    110.00

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