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Equiano’s Travels (African Writers Series, AWS10)
Olaudah Equiano was born in 1745 in a village east of the Niger River in what is now Nigeria. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African was published in London in 1789. This is his own account of a remarkable life.
At the age of ten he was captured by slave traders and taken to the southern states of America. He was sold to a planter in the West Indies and worked there and abroad slave ships sailing between the Caribbean and England. At the age of twenty-one he had saved enough money to buy his freedom. He visited the Mediterranean, took part in Phipps’ expedition to the Arctic in 1773 and crossed the Atlantic several times. He was an ardent member of the Movement for the Abolition of Slavery and was appointed Commissary for Stores when the freed slaves were settled in Sierra Leone.
This abridged edition has a new introduction by Professor Ogude of the University of Benin, together with explanatory notes on the text.
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A Question of Power (African Writers Series, AWS149)
“Your mother was insane. If you’re not careful you’ll get insane just like your mother. Your mother was a white woman. They had to lock her up, as she was having a child by the stable boy who was a native.”
It is never clear to Elizabeth whether the mission school principal’s cruel revelation of her origins is at the bottom of her mental breakdown. She has left South Africa with her son and is living in the village of Motabeng, the place of sand, in Botswana where there are no street lights at night. In the darkness of this country where people turn and look at her with vague curiosity as an outsider she establishes an entirely abnormal relationship with two men. A mind-bending book which takes the reader in and out of sanity.
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Against the Odds: A Novel
Young Kwaku Obeng, falsely accused of a crime, comes to Accra to seek his fortune and find a means of clearing his name.
Homeless and penniless, virtually alone in the world, he strives against the odds in a world that owes him no favours. Will he be able to achieve his dream of becoming a medical doctor? Will his tarnished image be restored?
Will he ever be able to go home again?
₵40.00Against the Odds: A Novel
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The Hunt
Sackey and Nyarko had always pitched their wits against each other. When Nyarko beat Sackey at a quiz competition, Sackey sought a way of proving that he was better than his rival. The opportunity came in a quest to find the emerald stool of the Krobos. The two rivals, with their friends, set out to the first to discover this ancient stool separately. Even more, unknowing to them, Sackey and Nyarko were related.
₵40.00The Hunt
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Between Wars
In a single twist of war, two sister, Enkaakye and Timaa, find their lives turned upside down. Enkaakye resiliently waits for the return from war of the one she loves. Timaa chooses to give up hope and patience, and move on with her life. The sisters’ choices lead to consequences that threaten their bond of sisterhood to its core.
As war drums begin to beat in their community once more, will their relationship survive the imminent danger?
Between Wars is a heartwarming story of love, loss, family, and friendship. Above all, it shows how wisdom and courage can be found in the most unexpected of places.
₵40.00Between Wars
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Faceless
Street life in the slums of Accra is realistically portrayed in this socially-commited, subtle novel about four educated women who are inspired by the plight of a 14-year old girl, Fofo. As the main characters convert their library center into a practical street initiative, the novel invokes the squalor, health risks, and vicious cycles of poverty and violence that drive children to the streets and women to prostitution; and, from which, ultimately, no one in the society is free.
₵45.00Faceless
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Blood Invasion
Cudjo completes his nursing training and internship in a city hospital and is delighted to be posted to his hometown to serve his people. But, after only a few years of dedicated service, he is confronted by a devastating disease that stigmatises and destroys without mercy.
He weeps in silence for his friend Babio and lives in perpetual shock over Adam and Akuvi, two companions who forgot one basic principle of staying alive in risky times.
So daring is the invading virus that not even Cudjo himself, the passionate campaigner, is spared. Now what will happen to him and Arabe, his fiancée, when no cure has been found for this bloody ailment?
Blood Invasion is an unforgettable tale, the disturbing saga of a deadly disease that puts family, friendship, and love on trial…a powerful reminder that living must be done more carefully.
₵25.00Blood Invasion
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First Term Surprises (Senior High School Days #1)
Kukua can’t believe what she sees when she goes to the internet café to check her BECE results. Aggregate 14? What happened to the Ten Ones she worked hard for?
And when the posting arrive and she realizes she’s been sent to her third-choice school, she feels completely devastated. Where is this Eternity Senior High School, anyway?
But when courage overrides frustration, Kukua packs reluctantly and arrives at Eternity, the school on the hill along the beach road.
It is here that a series of surprises welcome her throughout the first term.
The biggest surprise of all is Samira, the girl Kukua meets who has a bigger-than-life story. Can a baby be thrown away at birth and still manage to grow up and enter senior high school?
Surely, first term in the senior high school is full of surprises!
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Second Term Expectations (Senior High School Days #2)
In the second term, Kukua and her mates run into several experiences that blow their minds away. Did you ever hear about a Virgins’ Club? And why is Samira about to be sent home at the beginning of term?
Enter Miss Kudjo’s Literature class for excitement. But don’t mess with Mr. Bayo, the senior housemaster of Sabanna. Ask the three students why Mr. Bayo sees to it that they are suspended for one term.
Kukua never thougt that examination fever can cause her to do what she does to make Mr. Binka punish her severely.
Second term at Eternity Senior High School turns out to be highly eventful, with lots of expectations to pursue.
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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.
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A Cowrie of Hope (African Writers Series)
“These were the nineties,” reflects the narrator of A Cowrie of Hope, and for the young widow Nasula they are years of relentless economic hardship and privation. She dreams of a better life for her beautiful daughter, Sula, free from poverty and independent of marriage. But when Nasula finds herself unable to pay for Sula’s education, her hopes seem to have been extinguished – until a friend advised her to go to Lusaka and sell her last sack of highly sought-after Mbala beans. Nasula makes the journey, but in the city she finds herself exposed to new, and predatory, dangers.
In A Cowrie of Hope Binwell Sinyangwe captures the rhythms of a people whose poverty has not diminished their dignity, where hope can only be accompanied by small acts of courage, and where friendship has not lost its value.
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The Return of the Water Spirit (African Writers Series)
Set in Angola in the late 1980s, a time of war, and when the Marxist-orientated ruling elite became engulfed by corruption, nepotism and rampant capitalism.Three centuries earlier, a hideous crime occurred, the beheading of a slave who had had inappropriate relations with his Master’s daughter. Now, in the very same Kinaxixi Square in the city of Luanda buildings are falling down one by one baffling the country’s engineers. Many describe this mysterious process as ‘Luanda Syndrome, God’s punishment on a degenerate society.
Drawing on the essence of African mythology which had all but been obliterated by history, could this be explained by the return of a Water Spirit (the ‘kianda’)?
The novel focuses on the interplay between these two forces-the forces of old and new. Just like faith can move mountains, the spirit of the water can move cities.
This book is a scathing critique of Angola’s ruling elite, for abandoning their socialist principles in favour of rampant capitalism.
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Houseboy (African Writers Series, AWS29)
Toundi Ondoua, the rural African protagonist of Houseboy, encounters a world of prisms that cast beautiful but unobtainable glimmers, especially for a black youth in colonial Cameroon.Houseboy, written in the form of Toundi’s captivating diary and translated from the original French, discloses his awe of the white world and a web of unpredictable experiences. Early on, he escapes his father’s angry blows by seeking asylum with his benefactor, the local European priest who meets an untimely death. Toundi then becomes “the Chief European’s ‘boy’–the dog of the King.” Toundi’s attempt to fulfill a dream of advancement and improvement opens his eyes to troubling realities. Gradually, preconceptions of the Europeans come crashing down on him as he struggles with his identity, his place in society, and the changing culture.₵45.00 -
The Clothes of Nakedness (African Writers Series)
Winner of The Commonwealth Writers Prize 1999 and The Commonwealth Writer’s Prize Best First Book Africa 1999.Gabriel Bukari is an out-of-work taxi driver living from hand-to-mouth in a poor suburb of Accra: honest, kind-hearted, and faithful to his wife. When he meets Mystique Mysterious, the ‘big man’ who can get him a job, he is exposed to temptations he has never faced before.In this lively portrait of relations between rich and poor in urban Ghana, Benjamin Kwakye explores the seductive power of corruption and shows how ordinary people can be manipulated to make choices which threaten their community life.₵45.00 -
The Enemy Within (African Writers Series)
Set in South Africa in the early 1990s, against a backdrop of de Klerk’s rise to power, Steve Jacobs tells the story of Jeremy Spielman, a Jewish junior barrister, and his defense of a Xhosa man accused of murder.
The murder trial, an Afrikaner girlfriend, and a mother who has tried to keep him from gentiles his whole life, all force Jeremy to confront his own love-hate relationship with the anti-apartheid struggle, South Africa’s almost unconscious racism, anti-Semitism, and his faith in an unjust legal system.
Steve Jacobs trained as a lawyer but left his legal career to concentrate on writing. He is an active campaigner against cruelty to animals and has worked with squatters at Crossroads and in a local group opposing a nuclear power station.
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