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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.
₵75.00Manuwa 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.
₵120.00 – ₵245.00 -
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.
₵85.00Voice of America
₵85.00 -
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.
₵120.00Season Of Crimson Blossoms
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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.
₵110.00Why Do You Dance When You Walk?
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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?
₵95.00The Whispering Trees
₵95.00 -
International Sisi Eko and Other Stories
A desperate doctor commits murder to appease his wife. A drug-dealing family comes undone following a police raid. A young foreign-educated graduate, brimming with patriotic zest, returns to Nigeria to help rebuild her country, but quickly becomes disillusioned as the hassle and unpredictability of Lagos overwhelm her. And in jaunty, pointed observations, “Two-Way Streets” collects and reflects on the motifs of typical Lagos living.
The stories in this anthology take on the beautiful, clustered Lagos with aplomb and all-knowing authority, the characters’ lives coming together to weave a rich tapestry of a city that is at once startling in its grime and entertaining in its glory.
₵55.00 -
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.
₵95.00The 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.
₵95.00Chasing Facades
₵95.00 -
Pleasantview
Winner of the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Winner 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.
₵150.00Pleasantview
₵150.00 -
What Happened to Janet Uzor
A year after their best friend, Janet Uzor dies in a drowning incident, Pamela and Ebere are trying to cope and move on in their own unique ways. Pamela buries her emotions, while Ebere has been on a mission to find out what really happened to their friend, an excellent swimmer, whose death seems unfair and unconscionable. When Pamela begins to receive sinister letters threatening her life, she finally has to confront her fears, and with the help of Ebere, on/off boyfriend Eche, good friend Daniel Kalio, she sets out to find out who is after her life. In order to do this, they have to uncover the truth and the circumstances behind the death of Janet Uzor.
₵95.00What Happened to Janet Uzor
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Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?
““Yinka is a lovable and relatable disaster—which is to say, she isn’t actually a disaster at all…I adore her.”—Emily Henry, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Book Lovers
“Feel good, funny, and clever, it’s got smash-hit written all over it!” –Josie Silver, New York Times bestselling author of One Day in DecemberNAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2022 BY MARIE CLAIRE, PARADE, ESSENCE, MS. MAGAZINE, POPSUGAR, BUSTLE, BOOKRIOT, DEBUTIFUL AND MORE!
Meet Yinka: a thirty-something, Oxford-educated, British Nigerian woman with a well-paid job, good friends, and a mother whose constant refrain is, “Yinka, where is your huzband?”
Yinka’s Nigerian aunties frequently pray for her delivery from singledom, her work friends think she’s too traditional (she’s saving herself for marriage!), her girlfriends think she needs to get over her ex already, and the men in her life…well, that’s a whole other story. But Yinka herself has always believed that true love will find her when the time is right.
Still, when her cousin gets engaged, Yinka commences Operation Find-A-Date for Rachel’s Wedding. Aided by a spreadsheet and her best friend, Yinka is determined to succeed. Will Yinka find herself a huzband? And what if the thing she really needs to find is herself?
Yinka, Where is Your Huzband? is a fresh, uplifting story of an unconventional heroine who bravely asks the questions we all have about love. Wry, moving, irresistible, this is a love story that makes you smile but also makes you think – and explores what it means to find your way between two cultures, both of which are yours.
₵135.00Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?
₵135.00 -
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.
₵150.00Rose and the Burma Sky
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Wake Me When I’m Gone
Everyone says that Ese is the most beautiful woman in the region, but a fool. A young widow, she lives in a village, where the crops grow tall and the people are ruled over by a Chief on a white horse. She married for love, but now her husband is dead, leaving her with nothing but a market stall and a young son to feed.When the Chief knocks on Ese’s door demanding that she marry again, as the laws of the land dictate she must, Ese is a fool once more. There is a high price for breaking the law, and an even greater cost for breaking the heart of a Chief. Ese will face the wrath of gods and men in the fight to preserve her heart, to keep her son and to right centuries of wrongs. She will change the lives of many on the road to freedom, and she will face the greatest pain a mother ever can.
Wake Me When I’m Gone is a story of curses broken, and lives remade, of great tragedy and incredible rebirth. In this, his second novel, Nigerian writer Odafe Atogun unfolds a world rich with tradition and folklore, a world filled with incredible people of remarkable strength, a world that is changing fast.
₵125.00Wake Me When I’m Gone
₵125.00 -
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.
₵125.00The Cabal
₵125.00