• 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.

    Swallow

    150.00
  • People Live Here

    Kanulia is a 25 year old single-mother whose quest for a better job that will help her raise her son in the post-PMS subsidy removal crises of January 2012 lands her a foreign-aid nursing work in Sana’a in the after-math of the Yemeni-Uprising the previous year. With the cast of eccentric yet friendly coworkers from all over the world, she eases into the old city, takes in the architecture. She begins a journey of friendship, trauma and rediscovery that will bring her back to Nigeria a changed woman, even though she is initially unaware of it, it’s a change that will save lives at the crisis stricken Northern borders of her country.

    People Live Here

    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.

  • Revenge from the African Jungle

    When killing others becomes a business, there is no stopping it. Such was the case of Bariki. He killed them without compassion. Out of their agony, he made abundant wealth and fame.

    The pain and the threat of being annihilated by just one man and his dog dominated their daily discourse.

    There seemed to be no survival in this vulnerable situation. Suddenly, the tides turned on one fateful day. They convened in their jungle and mapped out a deadly strategy. It was payback time; it was time for revenge.

    Can Bariki survive?

  • 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.

    No Be From Hia

    185.00
  • Daughter in Exile: A Novel

    The acclaimed author of The Teller of Secrets returns with a gut-wrenching, yet heartwarming, story about a young Ghanaian woman’s struggle to make a life in the US, and the challenges she must overcome.

    Lola is twenty-one, and her life in Senegal couldn’t be better. An aspiring writer and university graduate, she has a great job, a nice apartment, a vibrant social life, and a future filled with possibility. But fate disrupts her world when she falls for Armand, an American Marine stationed at the U.S. Embassy. Her mother, a high court judge in Ghana, disapproves of her choice, but nothing will stop Lola from boarding a plane for Armand and America.

    That fateful flight is only the beginning of an extraordinary journey; she has traded her carefree existence in Senegal for the perilous position of an undocumented immigrant in 1990s America.

    Lola encounters adversity that would crush a less-determined woman. Her fate hangs on whether or not she’ll grow in courage to forge a different life from one she’d imagined, whether she’ll succeed in putting herself and family together again. Daughter in Exile is a hope-filled story about mother love, resilience, and unyielding strength.

  • Conversations About Race: Humanity Chats

    This book is for all of us.
    Introductory yet meaningful, civil, and non-political conversations about our humanity.

    Conversations about Race is a follow-up to the race-related conversations on the Humanity Chats podcast.
    May these conversations help us broaden our lens.

    The Human Oath

    We are humans
    Descendants of one species
    Connected in ways we cannot comprehend

    We are humans
    From all around the world
    One kind only
    And that is humankind

    – The Shimmigrant, 2019

  • 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.

  • The Daughters of Nandi

    As she took her dying breath, Nandi Mhlongo, mother of Shaka kaSenzangakhona, cursed the house of Zulu and her family, the Mhlongos, for the disrespect she endured at their hands. In the ancestral realm, Nandi worries that her malediction may have been rash and too dangerous for the descendants of the two houses. The curse can be undone but it will need a human medium to convey the message to the progeny.

    Through three historical periods, three women who are extraordinary in their different ways will seek to get restitution for Nani. Gentle Keeya, a Motswana woman of the House of Moagi who marries one of Nandi’s descendants as the English, the Boers and the Zulu go to the war in the 19th century; Uju, a spirited married woman who carves a space for herself in history during the forced removals of Sophiatown in the 20th century; and in the 21st century Amangwe, who reluctantly joins her fellow students as they speak up against a meaningless freedom during the #FeesMustFall protests.

    Will any of these three women manage to ensure Nandi Mhlongo is appeased and if not, what shall be the consequences to the Houses of Mhlongo and Zulu and to the three Daughters of Nandi themselves?

    An engaging debut which seamlessly weaves fact, fiction and spiritualities while subverting the way the reader perceives history.

  • New Currency: A Historical Novella

    New Currency: A Historical Novella celebrates Akan social norms and values, particularly the “wonderful feeling of togetherness” and communal living, uniquely associated with the extended family system and invites the reader to be culturally sensitive and to worry about the Ghanaian culture degradation.

    Apart from capturing the chilling, historical realities of the 1979 demonetisation, it successfully regains and celebrates the otherwise fading, but precious extended family values.

    In the book, the seasoned author chronicles some aspects of the harrowing military rule of 1979, and narrates the ordeal of a woman about to lose an entire lifetime savings. Specifically, it recounts the widespread commotion and hardships associated with the introduction of a new monetary currency in Ghana from March 13–26, 1979.

    The historical novella, set in Sunyani, the Brong-Ahafo regional capital in the same year, captures the widespread public despondency and turbulence associated with the exercise.

    The book provides some insight into the period of the country’s history for adults who lived through the turbulence of 1979 as a necessary reminder; and to the present-day youth some awareness of the happenings then.

    The thrilling lime green-looking book with yellow and white title inscription on the cover, and thinly opaque adinkra symbols – Mpatapo (knot of reconciliation) and Sesa wo suban (change or transform your life), reflects the theme of the book published by Smartline Publishers.

  • A Time to Part

    Age Range: 13+ years

    The Ayi Kwei Armah Novel 1st Prize” Award Winner, GAW Awards 2018 
    She’s chasing shadows, running from the past. He’ll be there to catch her when she falls.
    Seven years ago, Jasmine left everything she knew behind. Her mother was dead, her father was terminally ill, and she had broken Hagan, the only man who ever loved her. It was the perfect time to start over. Except she never left any of it behind. When an echo from the past and the search for a killer pull her back into the chaos, she’ll have to decide if letting go is too high a price to pay for her life.
    This is a story of second chances, of love that survives the worst, and the fight to hold on to the light, in the face of darkness.

    A Time to Part

    30.00
  • No Vengeance

    Age Range: 13+ years

    Colonel Barlow had cheated death many years back. He had been forced into exile by the man who had wanted him dead at the time of the uprising. He is back and must meet his adversary. He has returned with his son Kit, a battle tested soldier.

    Why does Sonday refuse to meet him face to face? Does he fear reprisal? And what is the cause of his nightmares? Meanwhile where is the blue diamond ring?

    No Vengeance

    40.00
  • 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

    Infinite Roots

    80.00100.00
  • The Madhouse

    A house brings two unique people together by the unlikeliest of chances. In their union, that of an almost priest and a prodigal daughter, two brothers whose bond transcend the laws of nature are born.

    André and Max have a seemingly blissful life until the boys start sharing dreams and their lives begin to unravel. Murderous thoughts, manic dreams, and their somewhat unbreakable wandering between reality and reverie, would lead them down unknown paths that threaten to severe their family ties.

    In this exhilarating and dreamy narration set against the backdrop of a tumultuous era of military rule in Nigeria, TJ Benson weaves a spellbinding tale about the clashes between cultures, the impact of fragile political situations on everyday people, and the lengths we are willing to go in order to save our loved ones. 

    The Madhouse

    135.00
  • Nearly All The Men In Lagos Are Mad

    Nearly All the Men in Lagos are Mad is a collection of twelve short stories featuring characters with unique voices and stories that represent the diverse class, gender and ethnic melting pot that is Lagos.

    There’s a story of a young lady who tries to find her oyibo soulmate on the streets of Lagos; another of a pastor’s wife who defends her husband from an allegation of adultery; a wife takes a knife to her husband’s penis; a night of lust between a rising musician and his Instagram baddie takes an unexpected turn.

    From Ikorodu to Yaba, Ilupeju to Victoria Island, the stories underscore with wit, humour, wisdom and sensitivity, the perils of trying to find lasting love and companionship in Africa’s most notorious city that will prove universal and illuminating.

    There’s a story behind every hustling, hopeful, striving Lagosian trying to make their way to a better life and Damilare Kuku’s characterisations are brilliant distillations of this recognisable mind-set.

    Every story is layered; these are people and choices you may recognise in yourself and people you know. Ultimately, these stories will make you laugh, think, feel and remind us all that we are not alone.

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