• African Cultural Literature

    African Cultural Literature (24)

  • 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.

  • Unfinished Business (Amaka Thriller #3)

    Dead pastors. Corrupt government officials. And over 100 million dollars unaccounted for. Amaka is back in this electrifying third instalment in the Amaka Thrillers series.

    A frantic phone call interrupts Amaka Mbadiwe’s new life in London. A renowned pastor has been assassinated in his hotel room while one of her girls, Funke, hid naked and terrified inside a sofa. Amaka is headed back to Lagos, and to a new world of private jets, money-laundering and mega-churches. With her trusted ally Police Inspector Ibrahim out of the country, and the hostile Inspector Musa breathing down her neck, Amaka must race against the clock to rescue Funke and untangle this twisted web of religion, power and politics.

    With a punishing intensity, full of twists and turns, Unfinished Business oscillates with scandal, corruption and sleaze.

  • 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.

  • Mindset Revolution III: To Build the Africa We Want; Our Move

    *Lead time for delivery – 4 weeks

    This is the handbook to the most important key to unlocking Africa’s power? Mindset.

    Akosua Bame continues her popular Mindset Revolution series with this latest book, noting that everything that has ever been created began as a thought and thoughts are driven by mindsets. Without the right mindsets, Africa will remain caught up in this ever-vicious cycle of poverty and dependence on aid. In this book, the author seeks to empower her audience to play their part in resetting and rebuilding Africa, by sharing strategies for developing and embedding the seven mindsets that are necessary to realising the continent’s potential.

    Here she discusses a visionary mindset, an evolutionary mindset, a legacy mindset, a knowledge-seeking mindset, a wealth-creation mindset, an entrepreneurial mindset and a health mindset. Akosua declares that Africa has been a cocoon for far too long; it is time for the butterfly to emerge. For that to happen, the people of Africa must turn inward, change the way they think, and then take steps to transform the continent. It is time for a paradigm shift. It is time for Africa to stop apologetically seeking a voice on the global stage. It is time for Africa to stop seeking solutions to its socio-economic problems by looking externally.

    It is time for Africa to realise that the power and indeed the only way to transform comes from within. To build the Africa we want, to transform the continent, all it takes is this?

    MINDSET REVOLUTION.

  • Akan Proverbs: Their Origins, Meanings, and Symbolical Representations in Ghanaian Material Cultural Heritage

    In the Akan language, as in other Ghanaian and indeed African languages, proverbs (pieces of figurative language) serve as the spice with which thoughts are expressed. This book brings together thirty such proverbs. The author’s excellent exposition of these proverbs enables the reader to appreciate the philosophy of the Akan people which is illustrated by, and embodied in, these proverbs.

    All users of the Akan language, literary artists, students, communicators and all who are interested in the Akan, indeed African cultural heritage, will gain valuable insights from reading this text.

     

  • Mindset Revolution: Master Your Thoughts and Master Your Life (Hardcover)

    Everything that has ever been created or achieved began as a thought. Living a life of destiny requires one to gain mastery over their thoughts through a process of harmonising their spirit, soul and body. This means change, which although a constant in life, can be challenging; changing a mind-set even more so.
    This book is aimed at giving readers, especially Africans, a different perspective of their circumstances. It challenges the subconscious beliefs they may have which may be holding them back from living their potential. Although set within an African context, the truths presented is the minimum daily dose of inspiration and life coaching anyone needs to kick start the revolution of their minds.
    Through a pragmatic, humour filled, conversational style, Akosua exposes truths, laws and secrets for living a ‘truly’ winning life. In here she shares:
    Why the natural state is a life of abundance
    Why having a vision and dreaming is important
    How the ‘secret’ to living your potential lies in your thoughts
    How to discover and become more of the REAL you
    Akosua says ‘come with an open mind, embrace the truths presented and you will begin to discover how gaining mastery over your thoughts can propel you into living your wildest dreams’.

  • 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.

  • 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.

    Flood Season

    80.00
  • 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.
  • Swahili-English 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

  • 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.

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