• So Long a Letter (African Writers Series)

    Written by award-winning African novelist Mariama Ba and translated from the original French, So Long a Letter has been recognized as one of Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century. The brief narrative, written as an extended letter, is a sequence of reminiscences—some wistful, some bitter—recounted by recently widowed Senegalese schoolteacher Ramatoulaye Fall. Addressed to a lifelong friend, Aissatou, it is a record of Ramatoulaye’s emotional struggle for survival after her husband betrayed their marriage by taking a second wife. This semi-autobiographical account is a perceptive testimony to the plight of educated and articulate Muslim women. Angered by the traditions that allow polygyny, they inhabit a social milieu dominated by attitudes and values that deny them status equal to men. Ramatoulaye hopes for a world where the best of old customs and new freedom can be combined.Considered a classic of contemporary African women’s literature, So Long a Letter is a must-read for anyone interested in African literature and the passage from colonialism to modernism in a Muslim country.

    Winner of the prestigious Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.

  • The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (African Writers Series, AWS43)

    01
    A railway freight clerk in Ghana attempts to hold out against the pressures that impel him toward corruption in both his family and his country. The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born is the novel that catapulted Ayi Kwei Armah into the limelight. The novel is generally a satirical attack on the Ghanaian society during Kwame Nkrumah’s regime and the period immediately after independence in the 1960s. It is often claimed to rank with Things Fall Apart as one of the high points of post-colonial African Literature.
  • The Concubine (African Writers Series, AWS25)

    Ihuoma, a beautiful young widow, has the admiration of the entire community in which she lives, and especially of the hunter Ekwueme. Obedient to the expectations of the traditional society they belong to, they forswear their love so that Ekwueme can marry the girl to whom he had been betrothed since birth. But their passion is fated and jealousy, a love potion and the closeness of the spirit world lift this simple tale on to a tragic plane.
  • Mine Boy (African Writers Series, AWS6)

    When Xuma move to Johannesburg he is a naive country boy, but the impact of harsh city life awakens him to the new ways and values of  radically different world. His vision of a ‘man without colour’, a raceless society, is shattered by the realities of his underprivileged existence.
    First published in 1946, this novel was one of the first books to expose universally the condition of black South Africans under a white regime. Abrahams’ forceful but restrained images of discrimination in the gold mines, the appalling housing and Xuma’s simple, humanitarian act of defiance, struck a chord around the world. Mine Boy has remained a central influence on South African fiction for over fifty years.
  • A Man of the People (African Writers Series, AWS31)

    As Minister for Culture, the Honourable M. A. Nanga is ‘a man of the people’, as cynical as he is charming, and a roguish opportunist. At first, the contrast between Nanga and Odili, a former pupil who is visiting the ministry, appears huge. But in the ‘eat-and-let-eat’ atmosphere, Odili’s idealism soon collides with his lusts – and the two men’s personal and political tauntings threaten to send their country into chaos. Published, prophetically, just days before Nigeria’s first attempted coup in 1966, A Man of the People is an essential part of his body of work dealing with modern African history.

  • The Housemaid (African Writers Series)

    A dead baby and bloodstained clothes are discovered near a small village. Everyone is ready to comment on the likely story behind the abandoned infant. The men have one opinion, the women another. As the story rapidly unfolds it becomes clear that seven different women played their part in the drama. All of them are caught in a web of superstition, ignorance, greed and corruption.

  • The Boy In Love

    In what could’ve been love or infatuation, his life rose and sunk from as early as 6 years old. His life from that point on was about who loved him and who he loved: to study, eat, dream, make friends, to excel.

    Yes, why would he eat, study or excel at anything when he has had a broken heart or is deeply satisfied with an affection for a certain girl?

    30 years on and looking at Rebecca now, he can finally and clearly tell what he felt then to now. He sees beyond feelings. He sees his capacity to provide for a woman; to understand them and care for them; to reason with them and plan a life worthwhile. And he sees it not in gruesome years of waiting (amidst the impatience) but just a decision away.

    The joy to finally marry in love and with the loved was abounding. But his fear of the emotional turmoil of his past made him doubt his capacity to love and cherish this woman so.

    Only if he had had patience…

    Only if he had waited…

    Only if he had talked to someone…

    The Boy In Love

    20.00
  • The Wizard of Asamang

    In The Wizard of Asamang, Asare Konadu presents a lasting picture of Ghanian society in the rural area welded together by love, humored innocence and gaiety. The strange events and places in the hero’s young mind are recorded realistically combining inventive imagination with technical sills.
  • A Woman in Her Prime (African Writers Series, AWS40)

    A young woman makes that all-important rite of passage from adolescence to adulthood. However, her early adult life is marred by childlessness in a society that places a great premium on children and motherhood as the ultimate mark of womanhood.
  • Ordained by the Oracle (African Writers Series, AWS55)

    Boateng, a prosperous trader in Elmina, has the beginnings of disbelief in the old customs. His wife dies suddenly and he is put through forty days and forty nights of rituals. The conflicting strains of emotion on social behavior are vividly shown by this practised writer.
  • The ‘Coup’ Makers

    Engaging, moving, and very effective, this is the diary of a thirty seven year old widow whose record of the coups through thirty years of independence remains as fresh and immediate as when the author first experienced them. Usually frank, it represents a vivid and convincing picture of the day to day suffering of the people in coups and recaptures the grim atmosphere of the hard and bitter struggle.
  • The Return of the Falcon

    Drobonso stands at the crossroads. The paramountcy and the chief priest, custodian of the traditional and cultural customs of the state are entangled.

    The emerging Christian churches misconstrue the reasons for enactment and consolidation of these ancestral relics.

    In the ensuing struggle, the writer presents an exposition on the rather “Primitive” values of our tradition and the effect of modernization on our society.

    The narrator explores memories and engages the reader in dialogue.

  • Anthills of the Savannah (African Writers Series)

    Chris, Ikem and Beatrice are like-minded friends working under the military regime of His Excellency, the Sandhurst-educated President of Kangan. In the pressurized atmosphere of oppression and intimidation they are simply trying to live and love – and remain friends. But in a world where each day brings a new betrayal, hope is hard to cling on to.

    Anthills of the Savannah (1987), Achebe’s candid vision of contemporary African politics, is a powerful fusion of angry voices. It continues the journey that Achebe began with his earlier novels, tracing the history of modern Africa through colonialism and beyond, and is a work ultimately filled with hope.

  • Things Fall Apart (African Writers Series, AWS1)

    Okonkwo is the greatest warrior alive, famous throughout West Africa. But when he accidentally kills a clansman, things begin to fall apart. Then Okonkwo returns from exile to find missionaries and colonial governors have arrived in the village. With his world thrown radically off-balance he can only hurtle towards tragedy.

    Chinua Achebe’s stark novel reshaped both African and world literature. This arresting parable of a proud but powerless man witnessing the ruin of his people begins Achebe’s landmark trilogy of works chronicling the fate of one African community, continued in Arrow of God and No Longer at Ease.

  • Tales from Different Tails

    If anyone can paint a vivid image with words, breathe life into a collection of alphabets, create a vivid imagination in one’s mind with intricately and well woven tales brewed in the Ghanaian soot-coated aluminium cooking pot, then it is Nana Awere Damoah.
    This collection of short stories is an embodiment of class, style, humor, sarcasm, truth, knowledge, religion, self-realization and inspiration.
    Tales from Different Tails is a must-have book for every literature addict, anyone looking for a new lease of life in African literature and the general reading populace.

Main Menu