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Bookset: Penguin Readers – 51 books (Starter Level to Level 7)
Age Range: 12 – 17 years
Penguin Readers is a series of popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction written for learners of English as a foreign language. Beautifully illustrated and carefully adapted, the series introduces language learners around the world to the bestselling authors and most compelling content from Penguin Random House. The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework and include language activities that help readers to develop key skills.
This set of 51 titles covers Starter Level to Lever 7, spanning Pre-A1 to B2 in the CEFR framework, with story word counts ranging from 500 to 22,600. The stories are well supported by illustrations, which appear on most pages.
₵1,298.00₵1,326.00Bookset: Penguin Readers – 51 books (Starter Level to Level 7)
₵1,298.00₵1,326.00 -
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.
₵120.00 – ₵245.00 -
Bookset: The Adventures of Naughty Kofi (7 books)
Age Range: 6 – 11 years
Kofi Opoku lives in Botikrom. He is a clever boy who likes to play tricks and is always getting into trouble.The church harvest is approaching and Kofi has been on his best behaviour much to everyone’s surprise. Kofi Opoku is up to his old tricks again but this time it seems his latest trick has angered a ghost and the ghost is out to get him! Kofi’s neighbour, Mama Caro, hurts her ankle and cannot take care of her chicken coop so Kofi’s mother enlists him to help out. Kofi’s mother has been asked to sew a wedding dress, for the daughter of one of the richest women in Botikrom. All seems well, until…Kofi and his father play a visit to the Upper East region. It’s Kofi’s first time in the northern part of Ghana and he will never forget meeting a crocodile and encountering an angry guinea fowl!Join Naughty Kofi on his many adventures!The titles in this set are:– Kofi and the Sack of Sticky Feathers– Kofi and the Bucket of Powder– Kofi and the Ghost– Kofi and The Wedding Dress– Kofi and the Poisoned River– Kofi and the Book Thief– Kofi at the Accra Marriot Hotel₵220.00₵245.00Bookset: The Adventures of Naughty Kofi (7 books)
₵220.00₵245.00 -
Voices that Sing Behind the Veil: Anthology of Short Stories from Africa and the Diaspora (Hardcover)
This 684-page collection is published in collaboration with the Pan African Writers Association which is based in Accra and affiliated to the continental body, the African Union.
The fifty-six stories come from fifteen African countries and elsewhere; Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Burkina Faso and East of the continent, Uganda, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo in the Great Lakes region, Ethiopia and Tanzania (in setting). They bring in other voices in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Botswana, Malawi, St. Maarten, United States and Britain. The themes are amok and definitely so in a vein of free expression. There are stories of love (of even a man who finds one whilst visiting a dying cancer-patient wife at the hospital in Lagos) or of a husband wrongfully imprisoned in Malawi who upon escape from jail confronts a wife about to wed again, a story very reminiscent of the main character in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s, Weep Not, Child.
There is hate and there is poverty – one from Kenya which reads like the Zimbabwean novelist, Dambudzo Marechera’s 1978 classic, The House of Hunger. Issues of mental health, corpse donation for scientific research and Coronavirus-19 are addressed alongside Pentecostal redemption, fake prophets and the havoc they exert on societies as do their counterparts in Islam.
Contributing writers include distinguished and award-winning writers, academics and emerging talents such Zaynab Alkali (Nigeria), Ben Okri (UK/Nigeria), Molefi Kete Asante (US), Wesley Macheso (Malawi), Ogochukwu Promise (Nigeria), Grace Maguri (Zimbabwe), Athol Williams (South Africa), Martin Egblewogbe (Ghana), Esther K Mbithi (Kenya), Mary Ashun (Ghana), Wale Okediran (Nigeria) among others.
“These extraordinary stories, mesmerising and beautifully written, are surely connected to a past that remains with us, the experiences of day-to-day living and the limitless imaginings of our futures. The discerning editor combines stories that communicate appreciation with apprehension, presence with essence… a good read.” – Toyin Falola, Historian and the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair, University of Texas, Austin
₵150.00 -
The Widow Who Died With Flowers in Her Mouth
Nobody mixes surrealism, sensuality, and sexuality like Obinna Udenwe. Nobody.
In the 2021 NLNG Prize finalist’s new collection of stories, ordinary people find (and fashion) themselves in (and into) far-from-ordinary situations. A beautiful woman is discovered half-naked and dead but is the killer one of her wealthy suitors? A plumber is treated to an intense sexual experience by a woman with cash, curves, and killer moves—but is she who he thinks she is? A young doctor arrives at the brink of insanity after a forbidden entanglement with a married woman. A sexually promiscuous tailor’s return to her father’s house immediately sparks lust, jealousy, chaos, and violence.
In The Widow Who Died With Flowers in Her Mouth, Obinna Udenwe opens a window into Nigerian life and gives readers an unvarnished look at the country and its people in all of their thrilling, titillating, and terrible glory.
₵145.00 -
The Waiting
A largely allegorical exploration of the loneliness of an existence based on an alien world-view, Martin Egblewogbe’s The Waiting is a collection rooted in metropolitan Ghana, but its primary territory is the human mind. Juxtaposing his training as a physicist against his curiosity about local myth, he creates a universe that’s both entertaining and erudite. In A Photograph of K & S, Smiling, a completely self-obsessed man, returned home after his father’s death, attempts to explain away his unremarkable life based on one perceived slight from his youth; in The Gonjon Pin (title story for the 2014 Caine Prize anthology) a genius working on a program to predict lottery numbers is stumped by the appearance of an intruder’s disembodied genitals on the wall of his computer engine room; The Making, Rain and Back to the Halls explore futility in different ways, while Atta explores life after death – a theme that reoccurs in a much bleaker guise in The Crwoling Caterpillar. Often Kafkaesque in its isolation of characters and a pervading sense of powerlessness, The Waiting nevertheless maintains a constant hum of humour, nowhere more so than in The Going Down of Pastor Mintumi – in which a pastor who has discovered the pleasures of the flesh late in life overindulges with hilarious consequences. The title story, The Waiting, is judgement day in a twisted mind, filled with the kinds of questions that haunt a life on earth, which, ultimately, is the quest of all art.
₵125.00The Waiting
₵125.00 -
Manchester Happened
An ambitious and assured collection of short stories from the internationally acclaimed author of Kintu.
If there’s one thing the characters in Jennifer Makumbi’s stories know, it’s how to field a question.
‘Let me buy you a cup of tea… what are you doing in England?’
‘Do these children of yours speak any Luganda?’
‘Did you know that man Idi Amin?’
But perhaps the most difficult question of all is the one they ask themselves: ‘You mean this is England?’
Told with empathy, humour and compassion, these vibrant, kaleidoscopic stories re-imagine the journey of Ugandans who choose to make England their home. Weaving between Manchester and Kampala, this dazzling, polyphonic collection will captivate anyone who has ever wondered what it means to truly belong.
₵125.00Manchester Happened
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Nearly All The Men In Lagos Are Mad
Nearly All the Men in Lagos are Mad is a collection of twelve short stories featuring characters with unique voices and stories that represent the diverse class, gender and ethnic melting pot that is Lagos.
There’s a story of a young lady who tries to find her oyibo soulmate on the streets of Lagos; another of a pastor’s wife who defends her husband from an allegation of adultery; a wife takes a knife to her husband’s penis; a night of lust between a rising musician and his Instagram baddie takes an unexpected turn.
From Ikorodu to Yaba, Ilupeju to Victoria Island, the stories underscore with wit, humour, wisdom and sensitivity, the perils of trying to find lasting love and companionship in Africa’s most notorious city that will prove universal and illuminating.
There’s a story behind every hustling, hopeful, striving Lagosian trying to make their way to a better life and Damilare Kuku’s characterisations are brilliant distillations of this recognisable mind-set.
Every story is layered; these are people and choices you may recognise in yourself and people you know. Ultimately, these stories will make you laugh, think, feel and remind us all that we are not alone.
₵120.00 -
The Daughters of Nandi
As she took her dying breath, Nandi Mhlongo, mother of Shaka kaSenzangakhona, cursed the house of Zulu and her family, the Mhlongos, for the disrespect she endured at their hands. In the ancestral realm, Nandi worries that her malediction may have been rash and too dangerous for the descendants of the two houses. The curse can be undone but it will need a human medium to convey the message to the progeny.
Through three historical periods, three women who are extraordinary in their different ways will seek to get restitution for Nani. Gentle Keeya, a Motswana woman of the House of Moagi who marries one of Nandi’s descendants as the English, the Boers and the Zulu go to the war in the 19th century; Uju, a spirited married woman who carves a space for herself in history during the forced removals of Sophiatown in the 20th century; and in the 21st century Amangwe, who reluctantly joins her fellow students as they speak up against a meaningless freedom during the #FeesMustFall protests.
Will any of these three women manage to ensure Nandi Mhlongo is appeased and if not, what shall be the consequences to the Houses of Mhlongo and Zulu and to the three Daughters of Nandi themselves?
An engaging debut which seamlessly weaves fact, fiction and spiritualities while subverting the way the reader perceives history.
₵100.00The Daughters of Nandi
₵100.00 -
Safe House: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction
In a collection of creative essays that ranges from travel writing and memoir to reportage, Ellah Wakatama Allfrey brings together some of the most talented writers of creative nonfiction from across Africa.
A Ghanaian explores the increasing influence of China across the region; a Kenyan student activist writes of exile in Kampala; a Liberian scientist shares her diary of the Ebola crisis; a Nigerian writer travels to the north to meet a community at risk; a Kenyan travels to Senegal to interview a gay rights activist and a South African writer recounts a tale of family discord and murder in a remote seaside town.
This anthology contains a range of unforgettable stories by authors from across Africa and presents personal views of contemporary issues in an accessible and thought-provoking manner.
₵100.00 -
The Whispering Trees
The magical tales in The Whispering Trees capture the essence of life, death and coincidence in Northern Nigeria. Myth and reality intertwine in stories featuring cat-eyed English witches, political agitators, newly-wedded widows, and the tormented whirlwind, Kyakkyawa. The two medicine men of Mazade battle against their egos, an epidemic and an enigmatic witch. And who is Okhiwo, whose arrival is heralded by a pair of little white butterflies?
₵95.00The Whispering Trees
₵95.00 -
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
₵85.00 -
The Enemy of the State and Other Stories
Set in the fictional African country of Ghaspata, a country a bit too suspiciously like Ghana, these eleven short stories hinge on themes of identity, violence, love and cruelty, fear, desperation, and man’s search for happiness and meaning.
Adolika Nenah Sowah’s quirky imagination produces an oddly familiar world, laced with bolts of striking new realities that the author weaves into her stories – a teacher strangled by the very trees whose branches he uses to cane children, and a mysterious okro plying the skies of Ghaspata.
Compelling, ironic, bizarre, and immensely humorous, The Enemy of the State and Other Stories is sure to leave readers highly entertained.
₵85.00 -
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)
₵85.00We Won’t Budge
₵85.00 -
Love Is Power, or Something Like That: Stories
When it comes to love, things are not always what they seem. In contemporary Lagos, a young boy may pose as a woman online, and a maid may be suspected of sleeping with her employer and yet still become a young wife’s confidante. Men and women can be objects of fantasy, the subject of beery soliloquies. They can be trophies or status symbols. Or they can be overwhelming in their need.In the wide-ranging stories in Love Is Power, or Something Like That, A. Igoni Barrett roams the streets with people from all stations of life. A man with acute halitosis navigates the chaos of the Lagos bus system. A minor policeman, full of the authority and corruption of his uniform, beats his wife. A family’s fortunes fall from love and wealth to infidelity and poverty as poor choices unfurl over three generations. With humor and tenderness, Barrett introduces us to an utterly modern Nigeria, where desire is a means to an end, and love is a power as real as money.₵85.00