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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 -
Kongi’s Harvest (A Play)
Kongi’s Harvest is to be the official start of the five-year plan. Kongi is the president of Isma. He has the spiritual leader King Danlola under ‘preventive detention’. Kongi has insisted that Danlola should be seen by the people at the festival to bring him the New Yam with his own hands. Kongi has been increasingly involved in image building, before the festival comes to a shattering climax.
₵55.00Kongi’s Harvest (A Play)
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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.
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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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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
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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
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The Battle of Words: Convergence of Akan Cultural Ethos and Scripture- Why Individuals, Families and Nations Suffer Spells and Ways to Prevent and Nullify Generational Curses (Hardcover)
The book intriguingly establishes parallels between the Holy Bible and the indigenous knowledge of the Akan people of West Africa regarding the power of spoken words.
The powerful declarative statements in the form of prayer of restitution and restoration in the final chapter seek to help restore the reader’s soul for spiritual fulfilment. ‘This important book blends profound truths in the holy scriptures and indigenous knowledge of the Akans to highlight the power of words. From the fact of creation when words were used to bring every creature into being to Akan traditional injunctions on mis(use) of spoken words, the author coherently emphasises the double-edged nature of words: a tool for building and for destroying. This is a must-read book for people who are determined to turn around their destinies.’
Johnny Andoh-Arthur (PhD), Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology, University of Ghana–Accra
₵100.00