• 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.

  • From Dar es Salaam to Bongoland: Urban Mutations in Tanzania

    The name Dar es Salaam comes from the Arabic phrase meaning house of peace. A popular but erroneous translation is ‘haven of peace’ resulting from a mix-up of the Arabic words “dar” (house) and “bandar” (harbour). Named in 1867 by the Sultan of Zanzibar, the town has for a long time benefitted from a reputation of being a place of tranquility. The tropical drowsiness is a comfort to the socialist poverty and under-equipment that causes an unending anxiety to reign over the town. Today, for the Tanzanian, the town has become Bongoland, that is, a place where survival is a matter of cunning and intelligence (bongo means ‘brain’ in Kiswahili). Far from being an anecdote, this slide into toponomy records the mutations that affect the links that Tanzanians maintain with their principal city and the manner in which it represents them.

    This book takes into account the changes by departing from the hypothesis that they reveal a process of territorialisation. What are the processes – envisaged as spatial investments – which, by producing exclusivity, demarcations and exclusions, fragment the urban space and its social fabric? Do the practices and discussions of the urban dwellers construct limited spaces, appropriated, identified and managed by communities (in other words, territories)? Dar es Salaam is often described as a diversified, relatively homogenous and integrating place. However, is it not more appropriate to describe it as fragmented?

    As territorialisation can only occur through frequenting, management and localised investment, it is therefore through certain places – first shelter and residential area, then the school, daladala station, the fire hydrant and the quays – that the town is observed. This led to broach the question in the geographical sense of urban policy carried out since German colonisation to date. At the same time, the analysis of these developments allows for an evaluation of the role of the urban crisis and the responses it brings.

    In sum, the aim of this approach is to measure the impact of the uniqueness of the place on the current changes. On one hand, this is linked to its long-term insertion in the Swahili civilisation, and on the other, to its colonisation by Germany and later Britain and finally, to the singularity of the post-colonial path. This latter is marked by an alternation of Ujamaa with Structural Adjustment Plans applied since 1987. How does this remarkable political culture take part in the emerging city today?

    This book is a translation of De Dar es Salaam à Bongoland: Mutations urbaines en Tanzanie, published by Karthala, Paris in 2006.

  • Live Your Dream: A Manual to Help bring Your Dreams into Reality

    There are lots of people who have conceived powerful and amazing dreams but are wallowing in uncertainty, doubt and fear. This classic book has extracted and unveiled the core values of true wealth ; and that living a purposeful life means living your dream. It doesn’t matter how small or big your dream is; you’ve got to live it until you become it.

    Live Your Dream is a divinely inspired manual uniquely crafted to inspire the young and the old to take huge strides in their God-given dreams.

  • Inspirational Master Pills: Collection of Divinely Inspired Quotes

    The Author writes to create a world of awareness on how great the Creator has given each and everyone an inspirational master pill to nurture our lives and to colour our worlds.

    In this script, one will realise the immense contribution and the vital role each pill plays in our lives as the nutrients of life.

    “Who you are is who you decide to be. Where you are is where you decide to be. Nobody can stop you from becoming who you were created to be and what you were created for except you. The greatest impediment on your progressive life is not the devil but the decisions you make. Every right decision you make has a tangible effect and produces the right result”.

  • I Dare You

    The Author in the timeline of the book, “ I Dare You” is the fighting spirit found in you. As humans, we need to unearth the positions of our inner spirit to enable us find our true strength of spirit.

    Loaded in this script, you will decode mysteries of your inner self and intriguing life-long stories of great personalities around the world who were not born into privilege but managed to become great successes today.

    Whereas some people might be born with “silver spoons” in their mouth, the chunk will have to strike hard  in order to make it. These blockages prevalent and come what may, you surely have to discover yourself and work on it.

    I Dare You

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  • Homage Africa: An African Tribute

    An integrated contemporary satire of the African experience, unravelling the crucial role Africans play in their suffering or wellbeing. HOMAGE AFRICA put into perspective the cumulative effects of ignorance and wrong enculturation, and as well reimagine Africans, with a reserve of knowledge, credible enough for a rebuild. HOMAGE AFRICA is the most innovative tool to help curb Africa’s highest debris and institutional deficits, now and beyond.

  • The Law Is An Ass: A Collection of Short Stories

    “They say fiction is an extension of the factual. Niran Adedokun’s The Law is an Ass, features nine short stories that seem like fictional manifestations of the concerns in his second book, The Danfo Driver in All of Us. In this collection, Niran continues his jeremiad about Nigeria, with stories about sexual shenanigans (both real and imagined), corruption, poverty and deprivation as well as a heady cocktail of other problems that beset a third world country like Nigeria. These stories, told in simple but gripping prose, will hold you in thrall like the tale of the Ancient Mariner.” – Toni Kan, author, The Carnivorous City

    “These stories have tricky plots, appearing simple and linear in design with seductive and elegant prose. Line after line, paragraph after  paragraph, we grow to love the protagonists.” – Jahman Anikulapo, former Arts Editor and Editor  of The Guardian on Sunday

    “The author leads you from randomness to some unexpected cataclysmic event in his stories. One minute you are innocently traipsing through the gullies of life and the next thing, Nigeria happens to you. The stories are like short films, vivid and captivating.” – Mildred Okwo, filmmaker and writer

    “Niran’s stories are populated by characters who are our neighbours, our friends, our colleagues and members of our family. He offers us  an entertaining and educative read that is vivid,  engaging and throbbing.” – Olukorede Yisha, author, In The Name of our Father and Secret Vaults

  • Peppa Pig: The Family Computer (Read It Yourself with Ladybird, Level 1, Hardcover)

    Age Range: 2 – 5  years

    Brand new titles for 2016 from the best-selling Read it yourself with Ladybird

    Mummy Pig is working at home on the family computer but Peppa and George want to play ‘Happy Mrs Chicken’. Can Daddy Pig come to the rescue and fix the frozen computer?

    For over thirty-five years, the best-selling Read it yourself with Ladybird has helped children learn to read.

    All stories feature essential key words. Story-specific words are repeated to practise throughout.

    Designed to be read independently at home or used in a guided reading session at school.

    All titles include comprehension puzzles, guidance notes and book band information for schools.

    This Level 1 title is suitable for very early readers who are ready to take their first steps in reading real stories. Each simple story uses a small number of frequently repeated words.

  • Prince of Monkeys

    Growing up in middle-class Lagos, Nigeria during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ihechi forms a band of close friends in his neighbourhood. They discover Lagos together as teenagers whose differing ideologies come to the fore over everything from film to football, Fela Kuti to God, sex to politics. They remain close-knit until Ihechi’s girlfriend, is killed in an anti-government riot.

    Exiled by his concerned mother, Ihechi moves in with his uncle’s family, where he struggles to find himself outside his former circle of friends. Ihechi eventually finds success by leveraging his connection with a notorious prostitution linchpin and political heavyweight, and earning favour among the ruling elite.

    But just as Ihechi is about to make his final ascent into the elite political class, he encounters his childhood friends and experiences a crisis of conscience that forces him to question his motives and who he wants to be. Nnamdi Ehirim’s debut novel, Prince of Monkeys is a lyrical, reflective glimpse into Nigerian life, religion, and politics at the end of the twentieth century.

  • Clearing Your Mental Deck

    A lot of people are constantly on a quest to find the secret to achieving self-actualization, which is a term synonymous with success in life. The reality is that, success in life is firstly, a product of how you think and then secondly, of what you do. Your thoughts determine your action. We become what we think about. We manifest physically and constantly behold our minds.  That is why this book, Clearing Your Mental Deck, has been put together to help you truly concentrate on arriving at the most important attributes that help every human attain their greatest desires. These attributes are considered by many people as the most important qualities that help us, not only to become successful, but also attain self-actualization.

  • The Riddle of The Oil Thief

    It is the untold story of several decades of oil and gas exploitation in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. It x-rays the root causes of insecurity in Nigeria and presents the recipe for the restoration of peace in Nigeria and the entire West African Sub-region.

  • We Won’t Budge

    Part autobiographical, part social commentary, this is a powerful and insightful look at the situation of border intellectuals at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

    In this searing memoir, Manthia Diawara revisits his early years as an emigrant in love with Swedish girls and Western rock and roll music, taking us from the nightclubs of his hometown Bamako to the cafes of Boulevard Montparnasse and the black neighbourhoods of 1970s Washington DC, USA.

    This book is about the developed world – that is the former colonisers of the African continent now busy slamming shut its doors to African and Arab immigrants.

    It is also about human rights violations and racism against people of colour. Diawara writes that he wanted to give a human face to African immigration in today’s global world. He describes the reasons why many Africans leave the continent – such as poverty, persecution and lack of opportunities – and writes sometimes angrily and sometimes very movingly, about their predicament in Europe and the US, where they are caught between their traditions and the West’s vacuous modernity.

    “With humour and the intimacy of a conversatonal tone, Diawara writes of the ‘global’ African as a nomad at the mercy of whirlwinds of economic and political dislocation at home and racism and intolerance abroad. He is not at home in his country; he is not at home abroad. But the nomad refuses to bow down to those whirlwinds, to let evil turn him around, and against all the odds becomes an active contributor to the multiculture of the globe. This is the story of a diasporic soul that finds home in its own resilience and in so may ways it is all our story.” – Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Author of A Grain of Wheat et al)

    “We Won’t Budge is destined to become a classic – it is one of the most insightful, layered and moving accounts of the modern African Diaspora.” – Patricia Williams (Author of The Alchemy of Race & Rights et al)

  • SHARDS and other poems

    Shards is a metaphor for everything life has to offer. This collection of poems is a potpourri of emotions, hopes, aspirations, heartaches, and dreams. In these pages, everyone finds a sliver of themselves. Each poem represents relics from the personae, like a carefully customized and time-stamped memento. It is an act of worship and praise for the courage that everyday heroes, like mothers, show. It is a testament to the fortitude of sons and daughters determined to forge new destinies, and blaze different trails. It is a poetic testament to the human struggle, its thousand defeats and its definitive triumphs

  • A Play of Giants

    Described by the author as a ‘Fantasia on Aminian theme’, Wole Soyinka’s new play presents a savage portrait of a group of dictatorial African leaders at bay in an embassy in New York. The resemblance between them and recent historical characters is only too pronounced.

  • ….and so, She Wrote (A little book of poetry)

    A book of poetry that draws on nature as well as the poet’s personal experiences, conversations and observations, it includes a variety of poems that will elicit tears, laughter and provoke thought

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