• An African Abroad: A Travel Memoir

    When Ajala is not escaping an assassination attempt and dodging the bullets of eager security agents around the Duke of Edinburgh in Sydney, he is crashing his scooter, amid a hail of gunfire, through a border between Jordan and Israel—or he is cutting through security to shake the hands of Nikita Khrushchev. And when Ajala is not trying ‘African ju-ju’ on pretty Russian girls, he is enjoying a tense audience with Golda Meir in Israel and hobnobbing with Fúnmiláyọ̀ Ransome-Kútì in Moscow.

    The Original One-Man Daredevil-Traveller, Moshood Ọlábísí Àjàlá saw it all, did it all, and lived to tell the tale. Now back in print for the first time since 1963, here are the travel stories of his trips around Europe, the Middle East, and Australia as told by the man himself. This new edition comes with a preface by Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún and a foreword by Joane Àjàlá.

  • 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.

  • Men Across Time: Contesting Masculinities in Ghanaian Fiction and Film

    Men Across Time: Contesting Masculinities in Ghanaian Fiction and Film examines the various constructions and manifestations of masculinities from precolonial, colonial, independent and post-independent Ghana as portrayed in selected Ghanaian fiction, film and music videos. Two main questions are engaged here:

    • What predominant masculine images are present in Ghanaian texts?
    • In what ways has the passage of time affected the subversion of dominant masculine images, contested hegemony and created room for the presence of alternative masculinities?

    This book submits that in questioning the various masculine modes of behaviours portrayed in these texts, and negotiating their own masculine identities, the male characters showcase the mutations that are taking place within masculine representations over time and aver that other models of masculine expression are possible.

    This study’s engagement with the theory of hegemonic masculinity represents an important contribution to the discourse in gender studies in Ghana and Africa. In addition, it is well researched and presents a cutting-edge analysis of masculinity across genres. I cannot think of any other study in Ghanaian literary and cultural studies that provides such a broad historical background context and the book is certainly original in its approach.” — Professor Mansah Prah, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Cape Coast, Ghana

    “The book’s major strength is in adding significantly to an area of study that is currently under theorised. This has the potential to make a robust and important contribution to the field of knowledge on representation of masculinities in African and specifically Ghanaian popular culture.” — Associate Professor Nicky Falkof, Media Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

  • How Big is the Sun

    Age range: 6-10 years

    Little Kukua’s curiosity takes her on an adventure into space, where she lands on the moon and learns about the various elements in the sky.

  • Chasing Waterfalls

    He loves her, but doesn’t know it yet. She loves him, but is too afraid to speak up… Especially with another woman in the picture and another man’s heart on the line. So they go Chasing Waterfalls, and hope they get to catch it.

    The love triangle between two best friends and their mutual friend becomes a tangled web none of them can free themselves from. Who gets the guy in the end?

  • Asantewaa

    Age Range: 12-16 years

    Asantewaa was once the most brilliant girl in school. She won all the prices as well as the administration of all. But everything changed when she joined the boarding school.

    With no one to tell her what to do at what time, she took her own path, which led her elsewhere.

    Follow Asantewaa as she discovers that all that glitters is not gold and success is only a few disciplines practiced everyday.

    This dramatic story will keep you on your toes and give you a lot to laugh about.

    Asantewaa

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  • Sam’s Wish

    Age Range: 6-10 years

    If I could, I would

    fly high and fly low…

    Sam’s wish is to see the world; so, he goes on an adventure into the wild.

    What would make him want to come back home?

    Sam’s Wish

    20.00
  • Adiza’s Dazzle

    Age Range: 9-16 years

    Adiza, the charcoal seller’s daughter, was constantly called ugly just because of her skin colour.

    Since there was nothing she could do to change her appearance, she channelled her energy into changing their opinion about her.

    How did she do it?

    Follow Adiza’s journey as she dazzles you on her way to the top.

     

  • SeedTime: Selected Poems I

    In memory of all the Ancestral Voices who prepared the field for our SeedTime…

    SeedTime I brings together Selected Poems from Kofi Anyidoho’s first five collections, beginning in reverse order with poems from AncestralLogic & CaribbeanBlues (1993), A Harvest of Our Dreams (1984), EarthChild (1985), Elegy for the Revolution (1978), and BrainSurgery (1985). BrainSurgery, the earliest of these collections, was never published as a collection until it came out together with EarthChild (Woeli Publishing Services, 1985), even though several of the poems had appeared in various journals, magazines and anthologies.

    SeedTime: Selected Poems I is a backward glance to those magical years of birth waters flowing across a landscape filled at once with danger and hope, with dying and rebirth in the mystery and miracle of new beginnings so soon after countless brushfires. But the doubt returns again so close behind the hope as we offer trembling prayers in new poems from an old loom: See What They’ve Done To Our SunRise. Yet, somehow, we must open our minds and souls to the Forever Promise of New SeedTimes. This world cannot, must not crumble under our watch.

    “Quintessential Anyidoho…a harvest of the master craftman’s gems across time and space. SeedTime brings a refreshing newness to old songs, and, for new ones, a touch of creative genius we have come to associate with the poet’s pedigree; a timeless legacy of a poet-laureate, whose voice waxes even stronger in his twilight years.” − Mawuli Adjei, author, poet and literary scholar

    “A collection of haunting poems in which we SEE the turbulent variety of our history, and HEAR the English language teased to express the many rhythms of the African’s eternal homesickness.” − Prof. A. N. Mensah, Department of English, University of Ghana

  • 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.

  • Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism

    In Oxford Street, Accra, Ato Quayson analyzes the dynamics of Ghana’s capital city through a focus on Oxford Street, part of Accra’s most vibrant and globalized commercial district. He traces the city’s evolution from its settlement in the mid-seventeenth century to the present day. He combines his impressions of the sights, sounds, interactions, and distribution of space with broader dynamics, including the histories of colonial and postcolonial town planning and the marks of transnationalism evident in Accra’s salsa scene, gym culture, and commercial billboards.

    Quayson finds that the various planning systems that have shaped the city—and had their stratifying effects intensified by the IMF-mandated structural adjustment programs of the late 1980s—prepared the way for the early-1990s transformation of a largely residential neighborhood into a kinetic shopping district. With an intense commercialism overlying, or coexisting with, stark economic inequalities, Oxford Street is a microcosm of historical and urban processes that have made Accra the variegated and contradictory metropolis that it is today.

    “Oxford Street, Accra offers a fresh portrait of a rising African metropolis by one of the most original and skilled critics of the African condition. Deeply researched and packed with detail and bold in scope and analysis, Oxford Street, Accra is a unique addition to the growing body of work on contemporary African Urbanism. This extraordinary book shows the extent to which the future of urban theory might well lie in the global South.” – Achille Mbembe, author of Critique de la raison négre.

    KEY SELLING POINTS:

    • Oxford Street, Accra is a must-buy as an invaluable companion and compass for both newcomers and returning visitors to Accra.
    • Oxford Street, Accra was chosen as one of the ‘UK Guardian’s 10 Best City Books of the World in 2014.’
    • Oxford Street, Accra was also the Co-Winner of ‘The Urban History Association’s Top Award in the International Category For Books Published About World Cities in 2013 – 2014.’
    • Oxford Street, Accra contains an encyclopedic knowledge of the City of Accra, tracing the city’s evolution from its settlement in the mid-seventeenth century to the present day.
    • The book offers a microcosm of historical and urban knowledge of the making of the city that have transformed Accra into the sophisticated metropolis that is it today.
  • The Promise of Hope: New and Selected Poems, 1964-2013

    “Valuable for its vivid attempts to make new, locally rooted forms.”—Publishers Weekly

    “A celebration of the work of one of our important world poets for readers both inside and outside Africa.”—From the foreword by Kwame Dawes

    “We pay homage to Kofi Awoonor as a poet not only with a profound vision and articulation of the world, our world, but also with a gift of words that is at home in poetry, in prose, in critical literary studies, and equally in major essays about our African, our human condition.”—From the introduction by Kofi Anyidoho

    Kofi Awoonor, one of Ghana’s most accomplished poets, had for almost half a century committed himself to teaching, political engagement, and the literary arts. The one constant that guided and shaped his many occupations and roles in life was poetry. The Promise of Hope is a beautifully edited collection of some of Awoonor’s most arresting work spanning almost fifty years.

    A beautifully edited collection of poems spanning almost 50 years (1964-2013) of the author’s poetry, the Promise of Hope includes some of Kofi Awoonor’s arresting work.  Selected and edited by Kofi Anyidoho, himself a poet and academic in Ghana, the book contains much of Awoonor’s last unpublished poetry, along with many of his anthologized and classic poems.  The Promise of Hope was in its final stages in 2013 when at the time of the author’s tragic passing in Nairobi’s West Gate Mall terrorist attack. Published posthumously the following year, this engaging volume serves as a fitting contribution to the University of Nebraska Press’ inaugural cohort of books in the African Poetry Book Series.

  • The Child and the Rainbow: Poems Celebrating Heavens Journey

    Who can express fully the rainbow of experiences that come with living in the cocoon of salvation within the hustle and bustle of this place called ‘the world’? Many books are constantly being written about the Christian experience, so that God’s people may know Him and the power of Jesus’ resurrection. This collection of poetry celebrates the heavenly journey with bite sized testimonies in the form of poetry. It scans personal experiences, evaluation of the truth of the Gospel in contemporary holds barred expression of gratitude for knowing Christ and a hollering about what salvation (SOZO) means. It is my prayer that it will refresh, rekindle and restore faith, hope and love!

  • The Wise Still Hear the Birds: Poems from an African Soul

    Africa has many stories to tell. Tales of love, pain, play and authentic fiery living. They hit you as you travel across the continent and encounter the utter beauty, often strained poverty and yet tenacious joy of perhaps the most expressive race in humanity. These poems were written while savoring the integrity and paradoxes of strength, weakness, pain, beauty, faith, hope and love experienced as an African treading through my home space and other spaces.

    They will touch you as they bring engagement with issues that a contemporary African must constantly acknowledge. Issues such as the profiling of Africa in international news, living as a migrant, politics of corruption, and quite simply, the dance and simplicity of this place. Ever the romantic, the games and excitements of the most complex emotion have always been significant in my outlook. So I say ‘love is a strange color – all colors merge into it!’

    The collection is an exploratory journey of words capturing life and loving in this joyous black skin.

    Let’s enjoy!

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