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When We Were Fireflies
When brooding artist, Yarima Lalo, encounters a moving train for the first time, two serendipitous events occur. First, it triggers memories of past lives in which he was twice murdered—once on a train. He also meets Aziza, a woman with a complicated past of her own, who becomes key to helping him understand what he is experiencing. With a third death in his current life imminent, together they go hunting for remnants of his past lives. Will they find evidence that he is losing his mind or the people who once loved or loathed him?
“A gripping, layered, passionate and haunting novel with tones of otherworldliness. Abubakar’s prose sparkles with poetry, wisdom and compassion. This is a complex and unforgettable story that will keep you up at night.” – Bisi Adjapon
₵165.00When We Were Fireflies
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Avenues by Train (Hardcover)
When seven-year-old Jedza witnesses a tragic incident involving a train and the death of his close boyhood friend in his hometown Miner’s Drift, he is convinced that his life is haunted. Now in his mid-20s, Jedza is a down-and-out electrician, moving to Harare in the hopes that he will escape the darkness and superstitions of the small town. But living in the shadowy restless atmosphere of the Avenues with its mysterious pools of water rising under musasa trees, he is tormented by the disappearance of his sister and their early encounters with ancestral spirits, the shapeshifting power of the njuzu and a vengeful ngozi. To move forward, he must stop running away and confront the trauma of his past.
An eclectic, experimental novel, Avenues by Train is a brash and confident debut by an exciting new voice.
₵160.00Avenues by Train (Hardcover)
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Sànyà
She could either be the saviour of her people,
or the destroyer of their world.Sànyà always felt different. And everyone that knew her—the people in the village she grew up in, her beloved brother, Dada, her Aunt Abike, and even her parents before she was born—knew that there was something special about her, too. After an unspeakable tragedy causes her to leave home and grow up too soon, she is devastated to find that her incredible powers are linked to a future which she must fight, even at the cost of her very soul. She begins life anew, hoping that the dark prophesy would somehow rewrite itself. Soon, however, her carefully crafted life and identity becomes the catalyst for a deadly war that will tear her family apart, and doom everything she holds dear.
Oyin Olugbile’s masterful debut tells the story of dangerous love—lost, found, and lost again—all against the backdrop of a fantastical, enthralling empire that holds even the Òrìsà themselves spellbound.
₵160.00Sànyà
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Rose and the Burma Sky
A gripping and intimate historical novel of a black soldier’s experience in the Second World War – a rare and moving tale of love and sacrifice.
One war, one soldier, one enduring love
1939: In a village in south-east Nigeria on the brink of the Second World War, young Obi watches from a mango tree as a colonial army jeep speeds by, filled with soldiers laughing and shouting, their buttons shining in the sun. To Obi, their promise of a smart uniform and regular wages is hard to resist, especially as he has his sweetheart Rose to impress and a family to support.
Years later, when Rose falls pregnant to another man, his heart is shattered. As the Burma Campaign mounts, and Obi is shipped out to fight, he is haunted by the mystery of Rose’s lover. When his identity comes to light, Obi’s devastation leads to a tragic chain of unexpected events.
In Rose and the Burma Sky, Rosanna Amaka weaves together the realities of war, the pain of first love and how following your heart might not always be the best course of action. Its gritty boy’s-eye view brings a spare and impassioned intensity, charging it with universal resonance and power.
₵150.00Rose and the Burma Sky
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Swallow
It is the early 1830s, the countries of the global north are mired in internecine wars and poverty. The British Empire has set themselves up as the world power through the trans-atlantic slave trade and has started its long-term goal of sequestering and colonising the West Coast of Africa ahead of Germany and France. In their designs for Oduduwa nations, independent city-states in the south-west, they had factored in greed and the use of force, but what they hadn’t bargained for was resistance from the powerful women living in these areas.
These women with intertwined lives will learn of love and betrayal in the fight for survival. Efunsetan Aniwura fights to keep her family’s power. Efunporonye craves a place for herself in a world that is unforgiving to timid women. In trying to make their mark in a society dominated by men and their wars, these women will rise up against the incursions of The British Empire.
Swallow is a vivid reimagining of ancient Yoruba history that tells a sweeping tale of tradition and culture, family, legacy and love.
₵150.00Swallow
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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.
₵145.00₵150.00An African Abroad: A Travel Memoir
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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.
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A Spell of Good Things
Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize
A spellbinding novel about family secrets and bonds, thwarted hope and the brutal realities of life in a society rife with inequality. Featured in Stylist’s best fiction of 2023, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, the Women’s Prize shortlisted author of Stay With Me, unveils a dazzling story of modern Nigeria and two families caught in the riptides of wealth, power, romantic obsession and political corruption.
Ẹniọlá is tall for his age, a boy who looks like a man. His father has lost his job, so Ẹniọlá spends his days running errands for the local tailor, collecting newspapers and begging, dreaming of a big future. Wúràọlá is a golden girl, the perfect child of a wealthy family. Now an exhausted young doctor in her first year of practice, she is beloved by Kúnlé, the volatile son of family friends. When a local politician takes an interest in Ẹniọlá and sudden violence shatters a family party, Wúràọlá and Ẹniọlá’s lives become intertwined.
In this breathtaking novel, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ shines her light on Nigeria, on the gaping divide between the haves and the have-nots, and the shared humanity that lives in-between.
₵145.00A Spell of Good Things
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Aviara: Who Will Remember You
When twenty-five-year-old Anthony Mukoro returns from the city, to his hometown Aviara, it is with news that shatters the hopes of his retired parents – he is dying. This startling revelation sends his family into a frantic search for answers. But the answers they seek will come at a cost.
To save his life, he must confront forgotten memories from a traumatic experience in his past and a darkness that swells and grows unnoticed within the town. Unknown to Anthony, this begins a journey that will lead him into a dark world of murder and a town’s history steep in blood and shadows.
Aviara explores the complex balance between science and spirituality, fate and ancestry, within the labyrinth of one man’s unravelling reality.
₵145.00Aviara: Who Will Remember You
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And Then He Sang a Lullaby
And Then He Sang a Lullaby is a breathtaking and captivating story of two gay men who find each other in Nigeria and are determined to love despite all that stands in their way.
August is a straight-passing track star who has left Enugu, his overbearing sisters, and an apathetic father to find himself at the University of Nigeria Nsukka. Segun is an openly gay student who is reluctant to fall in love with August, wanting only to be with a man who is comfortable with his sexuality and has the capacity to love without shame. But when the Same Sex (Marriage) Prohibition Act is passed, August and Segun must find a way to tend to their blossoming romance in a country determined to eradicate them. And even while they run into harshness and cruelty at the hands of people whose lives and loves are legal, the two young lovers find kindness, understanding, solace and comfort in the arms of each other and in unexpected places.
₵140.00And Then He Sang a Lullaby
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The Beautiful Side of the Moon
It is just a regular day at the office until IT worker Osaretin finds a cryptic note on his desk that sends his day into overdrive, thrusting him into a frantic world of ruthless operatives, shape-shifting villains, portable time turners and futuristic landscapes.Looming over this magical tale are the exploits of a father he barely knew. Osaretin has no choice but to come into his own. Armed with the promise of magical powers and a bunch of eccentric companions, Osaretin must defeat the rampaging forces that threaten all that he holds dear. But is Osaretin who they believe he is? Is he really The One?The Beautiful Side of the Moon is a fantastical adventure filled with weird and wonderful characters and richly-imagined landscapes. A flight of the imagination on every page.₵135.00The Beautiful Side of the Moon
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A Good Name
Twelve years in America and Eziafa Okereke has nothing to show for it. Desperate to re-write his story, Eziafa returns to Nigeria to find a woman he can mold to his taste. Eighteen-year-old Zina has big dreams. An arranged marriage to a much older man isn’t one of them. Trapped by family expectations, Zina marries Eziafa, moves to Houston, and trains as a nurse. Buffeted by a series of disillusions, the couple stagger through a turbulent marriage until Zina decides to change the rules of engagement.
₵135.00A Good Name
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People Live Here
Kanulia is a 25 year old single-mother whose quest for a better job that will help her raise her son in the post-PMS subsidy removal crises of January 2012 lands her a foreign-aid nursing work in Sana’a in the after-math of the Yemeni-Uprising the previous year. With the cast of eccentric yet friendly coworkers from all over the world, she eases into the old city, takes in the architecture. She begins a journey of friendship, trauma and rediscovery that will bring her back to Nigeria a changed woman, even though she is initially unaware of it, it’s a change that will save lives at the crisis stricken Northern borders of her country.
₵135.00People Live Here
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The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa
Fifteen-year-old Andrew Aziza lives in Kontagora, Nigeria, where his days are spent about town with his droogs, Slim and Morocca, grappling with his fantasies about white girls–especially blondes–and wondering who his father is. When he’s not in church, at school or attempting to form ‘Africa’s first superheroes’, he obsesses over mathematical theorems, ideas of black power and HXVX: the Curse of Africa.
Sure enough, the reluctantly nicknamed ‘Andy Africa’ soon falls hopelessly and inappropriately in love with the first white girl he lays eyes on, Eileen. But at the church party held to celebrate her arrival, multiple crises loom. An unfamiliar man claims, despite his mother’s denials, to be Andy’s father, and the gathering of an anti-Christian mob is headed for the church—both set to shake the foundations of everything Andy knows and loves.
The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa announces a dazzling, distinctive, new literary voice. Profound, exhilarating and highly original, this tragicomic novel is a stunning exploration of the contemporary African ‘condition’, the relentless infiltration of Western culture and, most of all, the ordinary but impossible challenges of coming of age in a turbulent world.
The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa won second prize in the 2020 Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award while still in manuscript form.
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The Madhouse
A house brings two unique people together by the unlikeliest of chances. In their union, that of an almost priest and a prodigal daughter, two brothers whose bond transcend the laws of nature are born.
André and Max have a seemingly blissful life until the boys start sharing dreams and their lives begin to unravel. Murderous thoughts, manic dreams, and their somewhat unbreakable wandering between reality and reverie, would lead them down unknown paths that threaten to severe their family ties.
In this exhilarating and dreamy narration set against the backdrop of a tumultuous era of military rule in Nigeria, TJ Benson weaves a spellbinding tale about the clashes between cultures, the impact of fragile political situations on everyday people, and the lengths we are willing to go in order to save our loved ones.
₵135.00The Madhouse
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