• African Cultural Literature

    African Cultural Literature (24)

  • Bu Me Bɛ: Proverbs of the Akans (Hardcover)

    Bu Me Bε: Proverbs of the Akans is the most extensive bi-lingual Twi Proverbs Dictionary published since JG Christaller’s A Collection of 3600 Twi Proverbs (1879). Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Introduction demonstrates how these proverbs can be interpreted within the tested and contested theories of meaning and literary production to show how they compare with philosophical musings from ancient Greece to England. To understand these proverbs, one needs to understand the culture from which they come. The matrilineal culture traces the familial lineage from the mother’s side hence the Akan saying that; ‘a child may resemble the father, but he has a family’ – the family being a reference to one’s mother and others within the mother’s bloodline.

    This is invaluable. Our languages cannot grow as literary languages unless we also develop tools that will enable their effective use. Our languages must be in dialogue with not only the languages of Europe but also those of Africa and Asia. This dictionary is an important step in that direction. – Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Director, International Centre for Writing and Translation, University of California

    If language is a window to reality, then Appiah’s Bu Me Be may be justly described as an opening to an entire universe. This collection will be useful not only for linguists, but for anyone that takes Akan culture seriously, from anthropologists to historians, to cultural critics and even to modern-day product advertisers. It is a veritable treasure trove. – Ato Quayson, Director, Centre for Diaspora & Transnational Studies, University of Toronto

    An invaluable collection of some 7000 proverbs that speak to the depth and nuance of Akan and Asante life, thought, belief and social organisation. – Emmanuel Kwaku Acheampong, Professor of History and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University

    Key Selling Points

    • The bi-lingual arrangement makes this dictionary unique and user-friendly to non-Akan speakers. A specialist African language text that will be of interest to academics and students on African history and language courses.
    • An informed collection of over 7000 proverbs published over a century after Christaller’s book of 3600 proverbs was first published.
    • Appiah’s Introduction contextualises the nuanced meaning of the proverbs to reveal the wit and wisdom of the Akan language and how it compares with other world languages.
  • 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’.

  • 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.

  • 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
  • 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.

  • Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree

    *Available from 15th September 2019.

    Based on interviews with young women who were kidnapped by Boko Haram, this poignant novel by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani tells the timely story of one girl who was taken from her home in Nigeria and her harrowing fight for survival. Includes an afterword by award-winning journalist Viviana Mazza.

    A new pair of shoes, a university degree, a husband–these are the things that a girl dreams of in a Nigerian village. And with a government scholarship right around the corner, everyone can see that these dreams aren’t too far out of reach.

    But the girl’s dreams turn to nightmares when her village is attacked by Boko Haram, a terrorist group, in the middle of the night. Kidnapped, she is taken with other girls and women into the forest where she is forced to follow her captors’ radical beliefs and watch as her best friend slowly accepts everything she’s been told.

    Still, the girl defends her existence. As impossible as escape may seem, her life–her future–is hers to fight for.

     

     

  • 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.

  • An Introduction to Symbolic Theology: The Case of Adinkra Symbols of the Akan People of Ghana

    Akoa Kofi Amoateng strongly believes that Jesus’ incarnation into Jewish-specific culture and humanity as God’s communication to the world (Hebrews 1:1-3), implies the theological and understanding that God wants culture-specific peoples around the world to identify and relate to Him from their cultural and historic experiences and backgrounds. He, therefore, submits that theology and hermeneutics  must be both contextual and rooted in ethnic epistemological realities. Akoa, therefore, calls for ethnothelogy and ethnohermeneutics, believing that, generally, there is nothing like one theological jackets that fits all peoples.

    This work is a masterpiece and a paradigm shift into offering how peoples’ theologies and indigenous hermeneutical enterprises can be constructed in contextualization for the different peoples of the world.

    “Amoateng draws attention to the critical role symbols play for African theology. He bemoans the neglect of the early missionaries to the symbolic realm which has left a paucity of theological reflections on the Adinkra symbols. He uses this lacuna to highlight symbolic theology within the wider purview of ethnotheology, which some scholars are calling ethnohermeneutics. The Adinkra symbols can thus be analyzed within the broader lenses of Africa’s rich oral history, especially if we understand orality much larger than verbal utterances, but to include symbols that speak even when words are absent.” — Gregg Okesson, Ira Galloway and D.M. Beeson Chair of Leadership Development and Evangelism; Dean, E. Stanley Jones School ofWorld Mission and Evangelism; Presidential Envoy and Director of Global Partnerships, Asbury Theological Seminary

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Becoming Nigerian: A Guide

    In Be(com)ing Nigerian: A Guide, Elnathan John provides an affecting, unrestrained and satirical guide to the Nigerians you will meet at home and abroad, or on your way to hell and to heaven. It is a searing look at how power is performed, negotiated and abused in private and in public; in politics, business, religious institutions and in homes. From the exploration of religious hypocrisy to inequality in matters of the heart, the collection is a jab at Nigerian society and what it means to be a Nigerian. Beyond poking fun at the holders of power, it is a summons, a provocation and a call for introspection among all levels of society. As is often said in Nigeria, when you point with one finger, there are four others pointing back at you.

    This engrossing read is a must-have for Nigerians on how to move beyond shame and arrogance, and for non-Nigerians, a uniquely informative guide on how to accept their awe and envy of Nigerians. It is an invitation for everyone to embrace and rejoice in their inner Nigerian.

    Here is your definitive guide to Be(com)ing Nigerian.

    “As a proper Nigerian whose father is God, you must commit all meetings to His hands. You may work hard but it is God that is in charge of blessing your hustle. Never forget to say at least two prayers in every meeting. One Christian, one Muslim.”

  • 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
  • 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

  • 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
  • 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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