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Someone Birthed Them Broken: Stories
In this startling collection of short fiction, Ama Asantewa Diaka creates a vibrant portrait of young Ghanaians’ today, captured in the experiences of characters whose lives bump against one other in friendship, passion, hope, and heartache. Men like Opoku Sr., not yet forty and struggling to keep his family’s cocoa business afloat after his father’s unexpected passing. Opoku strains under the burden of caring for his eight younger siblings and the child whose mother ran off. When his new girlfriend tells him she’s pregnant, he knows he has nothing left to give.
Years later, that girlfriend’s son, Opoku Jr., now faces his own troubles, including his girlfriend Boatemaa, who (correctly) suspects he is sneaking around, and Amoafoa, the woman he’s seeing on the side. And there is John, who confides to his crush Baaba about a surprising encounter with a male friend over a game of FIFA; Baaba, who falls into a whirlwind romance with her professor that ends in violence; and their friend Ayeley, who is learning to accept pleasure after being raised to believe it is sinful.
Diaka charts this constellation of interconnected lives in thirteen stories, exploring themes which run through the collection like a current: corruption and economic hardship, trauma and infidelity, shame, neglect, and the tribulations of the female body. In telling their stories, Diaka illuminates hope, freedom, and triumph that can be found in the everyday—the bonds between women, the joys of love and sex and art and dancing, the possibility of repair and redemption.
Renowned for her spoken word artistry, Ama Asantewa Diaka demonstrates her lyrical brilliance in this emotionally rich work that unveils profound truths about her country, its inhabitants, and the universality of human experience.
₵160.00 -
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 -
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
₵120.00 -
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 -
Freshwater
An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born “with one foot on the other side.” Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of experiencing the world, one that illuminates how we all construct our identities.
Ada has always been unusual. As an infant in southern Nigeria, she is a source of deep concern to her family. Her parents successfully prayed her into existence, but she becomes a troubled child, prone to violent fits of anger and grief, developing separate selves within her. Ada is more than just volatile – she is an ogbanje, born “with one foot on the other side.” When Ada travels to America for college, a traumatic event crystallizes her selves into something more powerful.
Based in the author’s realities and narrated by these selves, Freshwater maps how Ada’s life spirals in a dangerous direction as her alters – now protective, now hedonistic – move into control.
Freshwater dazzles with ferocious energy and serpentine grace, heralding the arrival of a fierce new literary voice.
₵115.00Freshwater
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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
₵165.00When We Were Fireflies
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A Good Name
Twelve years in America and Eziafa Okereke has nothing to show for it. Desperate to re-write his story, Eziafa returns to Nigeria to find a woman he can mold to his taste. Eighteen-year-old Zina has big dreams. An arranged marriage to a much older man isn’t one of them. Trapped by family expectations, Zina marries Eziafa, moves to Houston, and trains as a nurse. Buffeted by a series of disillusions, the couple stagger through a turbulent marriage until Zina decides to change the rules of engagement.
₵135.00A Good Name
₵135.00 -
Màmá, It’s a Girl
Available from 4th September, 2023
For years, the people of KAMINWANAGA have lived by specific rules and traditions, but the birth of a feisty, determined and resilient young girl would shake up the whole village.
Her curiosity about the world beyond KAMINWANAGA and determination not to be a statistic leads to a series of life-altering events that causes her to grow into the woman who would change the course of history for her people.
₵125.00Màmá, It’s a Girl
₵125.00 -
No Be From Hia
A homecoming tale of a family brought together by migration and torn apart by tragedy and secrets. In a search for identity, love and acceptance – two ordinary girls travel from London to Lusaka to Lagos in order to save their family and discover their destiny.
Meet the Ayomides and the Kombes – Zambian-Nigerian-Jamaican powerhouse families brought together during the post-colonial migration of the 1960’s to the UK – and later separated by death, divorce and betrayal. Scattered between London, Lusaka, and Lagos, only the new generation can save this family.
Maggie Ayomide and Bupe Kombe are cousins on either side of the world who couldn’t be more different. Zambian-Nigerian and Zambian-Jamaican, both yearn for their disbanded family to reunite. When Bupe leaves Brixton to go to secondary school in Zambia, she brings light and disorder to Maggie’s world. However, the girls are hindered by dark family secrets such as the mysterious death of their late grandmother, and Maggie’s missing Nigerian father.
From the blazing streets of Brixton riots to multi-party elections in Zambia to glitzy Independence Day celebration and adventurous nightclubs in Lagos, this heartwarming story breathes life into the modern-day result of postcolonial Africa and 20th Century migration as it follows two ordinary girls trying to find their identity and reunite their family.₵185.00No Be From Hia
₵185.00 -
Small Worlds
An exhilarating and expansive new novel about fathers and sons, faith and friendship from National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and Costa First Novel Award winning author Caleb Azumah Nelson
One of the most acclaimed and internationally bestselling “unforgettable” (New York Times) debuts of the 2021, Caleb Azumah Nelson’s London-set love story Open Water took the US by storm and introduced the world to a salient and insightful new voice in fiction. Now, with his second novel Small Worlds, the prodigious Azumah Nelson brings another set of enduring characters to brilliant life in his signature rhythmic, melodic prose.
The one thing that can solve Stephen’s problems is dancing. Dancing at Church, with his friends, his band or alone at home to his father’s records, uncovering parts of a man he has never truly known.
Stephen has only ever known himself in song. But what becomes of him when the music fades? When his father begins to speak of shame and sacrifice, when his home is no longer his own? How will he find space for himself: a place where he can feel beautiful, a place he might feel free?
Set over the course of three summers in Stephen’s life, from London to Ghana and back again, Small Worlds is an exhilarating and expansive novel about the worlds we build for ourselves, the worlds we live, dance and love within.
₵125.00Small Worlds
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The Teller of Secrets (HarperVia Edition)
In this stunning debut novel—a tale of self-discovery and feminist awakening—a feisty Nigerian-Ghanaian girl growing up amid the political upheaval of late 1960s postcolonial Ghana begins to question the hypocrisy of her patriarchal society, and the restrictions and unrealistic expectations placed on women.
Young Esi Agyekum is the unofficial “secret keeper” of her family, as tight-lipped about her father’s adultery as she is about her half-sisters’ sex lives. But after she is humiliated and punished for her own sexual exploration, Esi begins to question why women’s secrets and men’s secrets bear different consequences. It is the beginning of a journey of discovery that will lead her to unexpected places.
As she navigates her burgeoning womanhood, Esi tries to reconcile her own ideals and dreams with her family’s complicated past and troubled present, as well as society’s many double standards that limit her and other women. Against a fraught political climate, Esi fights to carve out her own identity, and learns to manifest her power in surprising and inspiring ways.
Funny, fresh, and fiercely original, The Teller of Secrets marks the American debut of one of West Africa’s most exciting literary talents.
₵285.00 -
Truth is a Flightless Bird
Obama comes to Kenya!
The American president’s historic visit to Nairobi is the electric backdrop to the story of a pastor, who plunges into the slums to rescue the woman he loves from the clutches of a Somali drug lord.
But how deep can the pastor go, without destroying his faith, and himself?
Truth is a Flightless Bird is a brutal love letter to the frontier town that is present-day Nairobi: a studied observation of the the failure of bare-knuckled capitalism, the inequality machines our cities have become, and – ultimately – the profoundly irrational human capacity to hope, to risk everything in order to have something in which to believe.
With Truth is a Flightless Bird, Hussain establishes a remarkable voice, one truly his own.
₵100.00Truth is a Flightless Bird
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Infinite Roots
“I must tell you my history,” Baba would roar, “the history you learn at school is not better than that which I have to tell you. My history concerns you directly, it is who you are, what you are, and what you’re going to become.”
“…woven in an unbroken thread of prose…in a complex, digressive narrative that is like a set of Chinese boxes (or those Russian Matryoshka dolls), one laid inside another.” — Literary Review
Infinite Roots follows the multi-generational story of a Ghanaian military family, composed through the eyes of a young daughter learning about her history and culture through the many stories of her parents and elders. This autobiographical novel spreads out across the 60s and 80s Ghana as the military family journeys from Wa to Tamale to Accra to Kumasi to Takoradi to Ho and more. As the young girl grows, she also begins to share her own re-tellings as her elders once did.
“…it is an incredible survey of Ghanaian traditions, customs, superstitions and beliefs, as well as social and political history and the emergence of female education.” — Lee Oliver
₵80.00₵100.00Infinite Roots
₵80.00₵100.00 -
Lagos to London
A tale of two Nigerian students Remi Coker and Nnamdi Okonkwo from different backgrounds who leave the shores of Nigeria full of hope to further their education abroad. Remi from the prestigious Coker family is expected to return home after her law degree to run the family law firm and Nnamdi, frustrated by the federal university strikes plans to escape Nigeria and never return.
The story follows their journey of newfound freedom, self-discovery, hope, unexpected turns, lessons, and the realities of life in the United Kingdom.
₵85.00Lagos to London
₵85.00 -
Notes on Amma Darko’s Faceless
This book, Notes on Faceless, is intended as a study guide for students of Amma Darko’s novel, Faceless. Readers of Faceless go back again and again to this novel because it makes them feel and think about many issues in the book that relate to what happens around them. A good work of fiction allows us to imaginatively participate in what it means to be part of human society. Fiction “holds up a mirror” to us about life. It is therefore important to be able to understand and explain, as well as becomes more alert to how literature works. This book aims to help you do so, focusing on Faceless.
Notes on Faceless discusses what Darko does in Faceless and how she does it: the plot of the story, its setting, characterization, theme and style. Like every other field of study, literature has a special vocabulary that is used by all good students of the subject. Therefore, while discussing the essential elements in Faceless (i.e. plot, setting, etc.), this book also introduces you to some of the important literary terms or technical vocabulary used in reading literature. The goal is to make you familiar with the right language for talking and writing about a work of literature and to teach you how to use this language in your own reading and writing.
This book takes you further into your study of literature by guiding you to use suitable vocabulary to actually talk and write about a work of literature. After walking you through a discussion of each element, Notes on Faceless gives you practice in writing about Faceless in particular and literature in general.
₵45.00