• African Novels

    African Novels (246)

  • US/Canadian Novels

    US/Canadian Novels (1)

  • A Saint in Brown Sandals

    Age Range: 8 and 11 years

    Eleven-year old Rabi thinks it would be wonderful to be like her classmate Maybelline – rich, pretty and popular with everyone in school. As her school’s big event on television draws closer, Rabi realises she has only one chance to be a star. Where she will shine best? Will it be if she follows in Maybelline’s dainty footsteps? Or will it be if she dares to run along as herself?

  • Aseye’s Journey

    Aseye’s expected vacation takes an unfortunate twist when she loses both parents in a car crash. Her uncle extends a hand of support to her and her twin siblings, Elorm and Enam. Aba, Uncle Raymond’s wife, makes Aseye’s stay a horrifying one. When Aseye is forced out of her uncle’s house, she leaves behind her siblings for no fault of hers, and suffers at the hands of Joojo, a benefactor who later abuses her.

    Through a life of dejection, betrayal, and suffering, Aseye finally meets Amartey Hammond, a young man who offers her genuine assistance to see Aseye attain her dream.

    Aseye’s Journey is a one of uncertainty, pain, gloom and, finally, 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.

  • The Hundred Wells of Salaga

    Aminah lives an idyllic life until she is brutally separated from her home and forced on a journey that turns her from a daydreamer into a resilient woman. Wurche, the willful daughter of a chief, is desperate to play an important role in her father’s court. These two women’s lives converge as infighting among Wurche’s people threatens the region, during the height of the slave trade at the end of the 19th century.

    Set in pre-colonial Ghana, The Hundred Wells of Salaga is a story of courage, forgiveness, love and freedom. Through the experiences of Aminah and Wurche, it offers a remarkable view of slavery and how the scramble for Africa affected the lives of everyday people.

  • The Dorm Challenge

    Age Range: 9 years and above

    One bad friend and one desperate friend.

    Mercy could change their lives.

    The problem is she doesn’t know it.

    Mercy isn’t going to embarrass herself by speaking in a school competition just so her House can win the Dorm Cup.

    No way!

    There are better things she could do− like hanging out with her ultra-cool buddy Perry.

    But when she is thrust into the Dorm Challenge she discovers that the prize for speaking up is more precious than a trophy. And the prize for listening properly can mean more than anything in the world.

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

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    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.
  • Changes (African Writers Series)

    Changes is a spirited and poignant story about Esi, an independent woman who leaves her husband, Oko, because he intrudes on her time and personal space.

    Confronted with the difficulty of finding love and companionship on acceptable terms, Esi meets Ali and falls in love, but she must decide if she is willing to make the changes necessary for a relationship.

    In Changes, the renowned Ghanaian writer, Ama Ata Aidoo, addresses various issues in contemporary African women’s lives: love, career, betrayal and family, without offering simple solutions.

  • The Shimmer In the Photo Album

    The Hewale children make a mind-blowing discovery and are whipped 50 years into the past to solve a mystery that has broken their family up for decades. Porting back and forth across dimensions and timelines, solving missions large and small, can they live up to the expectations of this phenomenon?

  • The President’s Son (Winmat Senior Readers)

    The two rogues would like to reap where they have not sown. Will Tabi be able to impersonate the President’s son successfully? Will the sugarcoated words and grabbing hands be enough to get them to the land of milk and honey?

  • The Step-Monster

    Everyone knows stepmothers are bad, wicked and just plain evil. Buerki Puplampu cannot believe that her widowed father is getting remarried when her mother has not even been dead for long! She just knows that Naadu Nartey is wrong for her father. It isn’t even because Naadu is bigger than a hippo or because she laughs like a cow or has hair on her face and chest like a cavewoman. She just knows. Some people call that feeling intuition, some call it superstition, soem even say it’s a gift. Call it what you want but Buerki’s gut feelings have never failed her. She vows to do everything in her power to save her younger brother and herself from the fate she knows is awaiting them. They will not be maltreated or abused by this new woman. She will make sure of it.

  • The Girl Who Can (African Writers Series)

    In The Girl Who Can, the irrepressible Ama Ata Aidoo looks at the roles and rules, and the games people find themselves playing, often unwillingly. She analyses African women’s struggle to find their rightful place in society. Her stories raise issues of choice and conflict, teasing about the issues with disarming frankness. How do people behave in cross-cultural relationships? In the modern world, where a plastic label identifies us, what is our identity? Will African women be in the driving seat in the twenty-first century? With the zest and humour, Aidoo raises these questions and provides some challenging answers.

    In this collection of short stories, Aidoo elevates the mundane in women’s lives to an intellectual level in an attempt at challenging patriarchal structures and dominance in African society. Written from a child’s perspective, Aidoo subverts the traditional beliefs and assumptions about the child’s voice. Her inimitable sense of style and eloquence, explores love, marriage and relationships with all the issues they throw up for the contemporary African woman. In doing so, she manages to capture the very essence of womanhood.

  • The Twelfth Heart

    When Mercy came to her new school near Accra, she knew exactly the sort of friends she wanted to make: certainly no-one who reminded her of the small town she had left behind – poor, ugly and dull. She did not realise that true friendship comes from the heart, and that the least likely of the twelve girls in her dormitory would come to mean the most to them all.

    Anyone who has been to a boarding school will identify with the characters in the story until its poignant end.

  • The Courage to Say No (Winmat Senior Readers)

    Asebu, a student of one of the best schools in the country, takes to bad company and hard drugs. Will he listen to the advice of his parents, pastor and girlfriend? Or will he succumb to the influence of bad friends?

  • The Silver Spoon (Peggy Oppong Novel)

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    Sekyiwaa is a product of a broken home characterised by hardships, heartaches and deprivation. When she receives an all-expenses covered scholarship to study medicine overseas, she sees this not only as the realisation of her life’s ambition but also as the gateway to a bright future. She is determined that nothing will come between her and the fulfilment of this dream.

    Sekyiwaa’s rich fiance, Jeremiah, is determined to marry before the completion of her eleven years of education and pursues this objective relentlessly using all resources available to him — his irresistible charm, time, energy and money — in his efforts to break her resolve.

  • Adventures of Cleopas (Peggy Oppong Novel)

    When Cleopas Onini was born, he had two front teeth and drank a big cup of porridge. At his naming ceremony, his uncle who had lived on top of a tree for 30 years climbed down to witness the occasion. As the family argued about the appropriate name for the baby, eight-day-old Cleopas sat up in his bed and clapped his tiny hands to show his preference for the name his uncle Ofutu announced. Everybody, including the catechist, took to their heels as they witnessed the strange scene. At three months, he could sit up, crawl and talk.

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