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Literary Criticism & Theory (13)
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Regional & Cultural (23)
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Avo Nee Koasi Ama Ekyi (Nzema)
This book deals with the emergence of two states within the Nzema state.
Originally, the Nzema state was one entity but as the succession to the throne changed hands, one Paramount Chief moved the throne to another capital within the Nzema state.This brought a bitter quarrel between two opposing factions which later generated into a civil war in the whole Nzema State.
The two opposing factions fought well over six years and after the then Governor of the Gold coast had intervened, a parley was convened and after they had settled their differences in the interest of peace and mutual co-existence, they agreed to the creation of two states, i.e. Eastern and Western Nzema, with two Paramount Chiefs.
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Unexpected Joy at Dawn
Unexpected Joy at Dawn received a commendation in the Best First Book Prize, Africa Region, of the Commonweath Writers Prize.
‘Fifteen years ago’, Mama said, starting her story, ‘I came to Lagos from Ghana. I came to Nigeria because I was considered an alien in that country. The government of Ghana passed a law asking all aliens without resident permits to regularise their stay in the country. You see, my great, great grandparents had migrated to Ghana several years before, and regarded Ghana as their home…as for the reason possibly, it was because the opposition party then had hyped to monstrous heights that aliens were ruining the country; or the government of the time…blamed their failure to do things right on us ‘alien’ scapegoats… It was difficult to start life all over again, and even more difficult to learn that we were unwanted in a country we had come to regard as our own.’
This story of migration, identities and lives undermined by cynical and xenophobic politics pushed to its logical and terrible conclusion pertains to the Ghanaian orders of ‘alien compliance’ issued in 1970-1971, which was designed to force all non-ethnic Ghanaians, so called illegal immigrants, to return to their – so stipulated – ‘home’. the novel thus touches on concerns of deeper relevance to the politics of race and migration in the twenty first century.
₵40.00Unexpected Joy at Dawn
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Tour of Duty: Journeys Around Nigeria
In March 2009 travel writer Pelu Awofeso laced his boots and set out on a solo trip across Nigeria; he christened the mission the ‘Beautiful Underbelly’ project, a brave attempt to re-discover his home country, which is more known abroad as the breeding ground for scam-artists than for its friendly and hospitable citizens. With just a backpack and a camera, Awofeso crisscrossed 18 states in eight months, wandering the capital cities and chatting up total strangers, all so that he can learn something new from the locals.After three months and eight capital cities, he already clocked over 6000 kilometres, a distance his movement tracker dopplr.com describes as being the equivalent of “one percent of the distance to the moon”. This volume is a record of a slice of Nigeria and Nigerians as seen through the eyes of a Nigerian writer with an abiding love for everyday people
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Swahili Made Easy: A Beginner’s Complete Course
This handy book is a beginner’s complete course in the Swahili language, designed especially for foreigners. The book is a result of the author’s many years of teaching experience. It is divided into two parts: part one covers pronunciation; Swahili greetings and manners; classification of nouns; adjectives, verbs, adverbs, etc. in twenty-eight lessons and thirty-six exercises. part two includes a study of Swahili usage in specific situations (e.g. at home, in the market, on the road, at the airport, etc.); eleven further lessons and thirteen exercises; the key to the exercises in Parts One and Two; and a Swahili-English vocabulary of words used in the book.
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English-Swahili Pocket Dictionary
A concise and portable dictionary developed by two experienced and well respected teachers of Swahili. In this work they have taken into account not only the difficulties which non-Swahili speakers from many different language backgrounds have in learning the language, but also the importance of making Swahili equivalents of English words, correspond to those of the best speakers of Swahili.The English-Swahili Pocket Dictionary will be of benefit to English speakers who are learning Swahili, while Swahili speakers who are learning English will also find it invaluable.₵50.00 -
Say It in Swahili
Contains over 1,000 useful sentences and phrases for travel or everyday living abroad: food, shopping, medical aid, courtesy, hotels, travel, and other situations. Gives the English phrase, the foreign equivalent, and a transliteration that can be read right off. Also includes many supplementary lists, signs, and aids. All words are indexed.₵50.00Say It in Swahili
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When Rain Clouds Gather (African Writers Series, AWS247)
In the heart of rural Botswana, the poverty stricken village of Golema Mmidi is a haven to exiles from far and wide. A South African political refugee and an Englishman join forces to revolutionise the villagers traditional farming methods, but their task is fraught with hazards as the pressures of tradition, opposition from the local chief and the unrelenting climate threaten to divide and devastate the fragile community.₵55.00 -
Voices of Ghana: Literary Contributions to the Ghana Broadcasting System, 1955-57 (Second Edition)
Ghana’s first radio programme of original literature, Singing Net, began in 1955 as part of the development of a national radio station in the years leading to independence in 1957. Its centralaim was to bring Ghanaian writers to the forefront of cultural programming as part of the Africanisation of radio in Ghana. It was a critical cultural expression of the radical changes that were unfolding across the colonial world. The programme successfully introduced listeners to a series of pioneering Ghanaian authors who would go on to become significant figures of Anglophone West African literature in the early postcolonial decades: Efua Sutherland, Frank Parkes, Amu Djoleto, Geormbeeyi Adali-Mortty, Albert Kayper-Mensah, Kwesi Brew, Cameron Duodu, J.H. Nketia and many others.
The anthology, Voices of Ghana (1958) is a collection of the poetry, short stories, play scripts and critical discussions that were aired on the Gold Coast (later Ghana) Broadcasting System (1954-1958).Both Singing Net and Voices of Ghana were edited by the BBC producer, Henry Swanzy.
The context of Ghana’s independence, the singularity of the anthology’s history, and the significance of many of the writers all contribute to the importance of this text. This second edition is a timely intervention into recent debates within postcolonial studies and world literature on the importance of broadcast culture in the dissemination of “new literatures” from the colonial world. It includes an unabridged version of the 1958 text, a new introduction and footnoted annotations,which draw on extensive research undertaken in Ghana and Britain. It will appeal to a general readership with an interest in Ghanaian literature, 1950s broadcast culture, the figure of Dr Kwame Nkrumah and the making of a national literature in the era of decolonisation, as well as engaging scholars. The new edition presents a deeply insightful and engaging history of Voices of Ghana and reintroduces the original works on the occasion of the anthology’s 60th anniversary.
Victoria Ellen Smith is a Lecturer in the Department of History, University of Ghana, Legon
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Nyakyusa-English-Swahili & English-Nyakyusa Dictionary
Unhappy with the policy of using English as the medium of instruction in secondary schools in Tanzania which left his students bewildered, a Norwegian volunteer teacher in Ipinda, Tukuyu, south western region of Tanzania decided that his students would probably cope with the foreign language only after they were grounded first in the structure of their own languages — Nyakyusa and Swahili. As a trilingual dictionary was not available, he set out to compile one and this well-produced dictionary is the product. Words, examples and usages are included.
₵75.00 -
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
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These Bones Will Rise Again
What are the right questions to ask when seeking out the true spirit of a nation?
In November 2017 the people of Zimbabwe took to the streets in an unprecedented alliance with the military. Their goal, to restore the legacy of Chimurenga, the liberation struggle, and wrest their country back from over thirty years of Robert Mugabe’s rule.
In an essay that combines bold reportage, memoir and critical analysis, Zimbabwean novelist and journalist Panashe Chigumadzi reflects on the ‘coup that was not a coup’, the telling of history and manipulation of time and the ancestral spirts of two women – her own grandmother and Mbuya Nehanda, the grandmother of the nation.
Chigumadzi successfully nests the intimate charge of her poignant personal story in the sweeping historical account and mythology of Zimbabwe. – Brian Chikwava, author of Harare North
Chigumadzi’s exploration of personal, family and national history reincarnates in stark, vivid images, many of those interred in the shadows of her country’s ‘Big Men’. – Tsitsi Dangarembga, author of Nervous Conditions
₵80.00These Bones Will Rise Again
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Flood Season
After over a decade working as a musician under the name Kae Sun, Kwaku Darko-Mensah Jnr. makes a full-blooded return to poetry. His début Flood Season explores diasporic lives, the tensions between who we are and the clichés that surround our nation states, and hybridity. These are poems that carry their weight easily, fizz with the joy of a burst man.
₵80.00Flood Season
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We Won’t Budge
Part autobiographical, part social commentary, this is a powerful and insightful look at the situation of border intellectuals at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
In this searing memoir, Manthia Diawara revisits his early years as an emigrant in love with Swedish girls and Western rock and roll music, taking us from the nightclubs of his hometown Bamako to the cafes of Boulevard Montparnasse and the black neighbourhoods of 1970s Washington DC, USA.
This book is about the developed world – that is the former colonisers of the African continent now busy slamming shut its doors to African and Arab immigrants.
It is also about human rights violations and racism against people of colour. Diawara writes that he wanted to give a human face to African immigration in today’s global world. He describes the reasons why many Africans leave the continent – such as poverty, persecution and lack of opportunities – and writes sometimes angrily and sometimes very movingly, about their predicament in Europe and the US, where they are caught between their traditions and the West’s vacuous modernity.
“With humour and the intimacy of a conversatonal tone, Diawara writes of the ‘global’ African as a nomad at the mercy of whirlwinds of economic and political dislocation at home and racism and intolerance abroad. He is not at home in his country; he is not at home abroad. But the nomad refuses to bow down to those whirlwinds, to let evil turn him around, and against all the odds becomes an active contributor to the multiculture of the globe. This is the story of a diasporic soul that finds home in its own resilience and in so may ways it is all our story.” – Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Author of A Grain of Wheat et al)
“We Won’t Budge is destined to become a classic – it is one of the most insightful, layered and moving accounts of the modern African Diaspora.” – Patricia Williams (Author of The Alchemy of Race & Rights et al)
₵85.00We Won’t Budge
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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
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Hɔmɔwɔ: Ga Lalawiemɔi
Hɔmɔwɔ: Ga Lalawiemɔi is a collection of Ga poetry by thirteen (13) contemporary poets.
Featuring nineteen (19) poems, the poems cover different themes such as pandemics, Ga heritage, family, memory, childhood and love.
Written completely in Ga, the book is a groundbreaking addition to the Ga language literary scene.
₵94.00Hɔmɔwɔ: Ga Lalawiemɔi
₵94.00