• 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?

  • 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 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 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?

  • 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.

  • Perfectly Imperfect

    Yayra Amenyo’s life is no longer perfect and these are the reasons why:

     

    1. She killed her father

    2. Her mother acts like everything is normal when it isn’t

    3. Her boyfriend is on ‘a break’ with her

    4. She looks like a freak

    5. She’s moved to a town far from anyone she knows

    6. She has to repeat Form Two in SHS.

     

    Could her life get any worse? Will she ever get her life to be as perfect as it once was?

  • The Lost Royal Treasure

    “As soon as the children entered the cave, several pairs of rough hands grabbed them and bound them. Yaa was too scared to talk, she fainted.”

    When Koku and Kakra eagerly agree to accompany Prof Kumah and his daughter Yaa Asantewaa on an archeological expedition, they are unaware of the dangers that lie ahead of them. Whatever will the children do when they are lured into the mountain containing the lost royal treasure of Bepowase and are trapped by Boss, the evil head of a galamsey syndicate?

  • Trinity High: Investigation Galore (Trinity High Vol 3)

    The third novel in the Trinity High Series, Investigation Galore is equally full of adventure, mischief and fun as its predecessors. Naa Atswei and her compatriots have finally escaped nino status and are seniors in their own right! The book is about life in form two at Trinity High. Join Naa, the sleuth and her associates as they stretch their investigative limits while they strive to keep seniors in check!

  • The Teller of Secrets (Ouida Edition)

    In this stunning debut novel—a tale of self-discovery and feminist awakening—a feisty Nigerian-Ghanaian girl growing up amid the political upheaval of late 1960s postcolonial Ghana begins to question the hypocrisy of her patriarchal society, and the restrictions and unrealistic expectations placed on women.

    Young Esi Agyekum is the unofficial “secret keeper” of her family, as tight-lipped about her father’s adultery as she is about her half-sisters’ sex lives. But after she is humiliated and punished for her own sexual exploration, Esi begins to question why women’s secrets and men’s secrets bear different consequences. It is the beginning of a journey of discovery that will lead her to unexpected places.

    As she navigates her burgeoning womanhood, Esi tries to reconcile her own ideals and dreams with her family’s complicated past and troubled present, as well as society’s many double standards that limit her and other women. Against a fraught political climate, Esi fights to carve out her own identity, and learns to manifest her power in surprising and inspiring ways.

    Funny, fresh, and fiercely original, The Teller of Secrets marks the American debut of one of West Africa’s most exciting literary talents.

  • Weep Not, Child (African Writers Series, AWS7)

    A powerful, moving story that details the effects of the infamous Mau Mau war, the African nationalist revolt against colonial oppression in Kenya, on the lives of ordinary men and women, and on one family in particular. Two brothers, Njoroge and Kamau, stand on a rubbish heap and look into their futures. Njoroge is excited; his family has decided that he will attend school, while Kamau will train to be a carpenter. Together they will serve their country – the teacher and the craftsman.

    But this is Kenya and the times are against them. In the forests, the Mau Mau is waging war against the white government, and the two brothers and their family need to decide where their loyalties lie. For the practical Kamau the choice is simple, but for Njoroge the scholar, the dream of progress through learning is a hard one to give up.

  • Beyond the Horizon (African Writers Series)

    Gazing at her naked body in the mirror, Mara reflects on her transformation from naive Ghanaian village girl into a prostitute in a German brothel. Mara has been deceived by her husband, Akobi, into coming to Europe to find a “paradise,” but, as the truth about Akobi and her new life unfolds, she realizes she is trapped. The expectations of her family in Africa force her to remain, living a lie. As she fights back, she finds the revenge she takes can in no way compensate for her loss of innocence and lifetime exile from her homeland.This is a natural storyteller’s compelling and sobering account of the ruthless exploitation of women in Africa and Europe.

    Amma Darko was born in Tamale, Ghana, and grew up in Accra. After living in Germany, she returned to Ghana. Beyond the Horizon, first published in German, is Amma Darko’s first novel.

  • 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.
  • 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.

Main Menu