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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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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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Daughter in Exile: A Novel
The acclaimed author of The Teller of Secrets returns with a gut-wrenching, yet heartwarming, story about a young Ghanaian woman’s struggle to make a life in the US, and the challenges she must overcome.
Lola is twenty-one, and her life in Senegal couldn’t be better. An aspiring writer and university graduate, she has a great job, a nice apartment, a vibrant social life, and a future filled with possibility. But fate disrupts her world when she falls for Armand, an American Marine stationed at the U.S. Embassy. Her mother, a high court judge in Ghana, disapproves of her choice, but nothing will stop Lola from boarding a plane for Armand and America.
That fateful flight is only the beginning of an extraordinary journey; she has traded her carefree existence in Senegal for the perilous position of an undocumented immigrant in 1990s America.
Lola encounters adversity that would crush a less-determined woman. Her fate hangs on whether or not she’ll grow in courage to forge a different life from one she’d imagined, whether she’ll succeed in putting herself and family together again. Daughter in Exile is a hope-filled story about mother love, resilience, and unyielding strength.
₵120.00Daughter in Exile: A Novel
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The Days of Silence
Osasé has a secret she cannot share.
Not even with her two sisters and mother, as they all battle to cope with the complexities of sisterhood, the fragile balances in mother-daughter relationships, and the deep scars of marriages gone awry. The story traces Osasé’s girl-to-woman journey of self-discovery from Kano, to Abuja, to Grenoble, and her fight for survival as her life slowly comes undone at the seams. The heart-warming narrative is reminiscent of Little Women but modern, urban, and with a blindsiding twist in the tale.
The Days of Silence is a poignant coming-of-age story about identity, the unbreakable bonds of family, displacement, survival, and the triumph of a woman’s spirit.
₵110.00The Days of Silence
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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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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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Travellers
Shortlisted for the 2020 James Tait Black Memorial Prize
Modern Europe is a melting pot of migrating souls: among them a Nigerian American couple on a prestigious arts fellowship, a transgender film student seeking the freedom of authenticity, a Libyan doctor who lost his wife and child in the waters of the Mediterranean, and a Somalian shopkeeper trying to save his young daughter from forced marriage. And, though the divide between the self-chosen exiles and those who are forced to leave home may feel solid, in reality such boundaries are endlessly shifting and frighteningly soluble.
Moving from a Berlin nightclub to a Sicilian refugee camp to the London apartment of a Malawian poet, Helon Habila evokes a rich mosaic of migrant experiences. And through his characters’ interconnecting fates, he traces the extraordinary pilgrimages we all might make in pursuit of home.
₵135.00Travellers
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Ashawo Diaries: Tales of Adwoa Attaa
A most intriguing intercourse of tragedy and sex
The titillating intrigues of a good bad girl…delightful reading: sometimes light, sometimes dark; always with ponderous insights! – Koku Dotse
Ashawo Diaries makes for engaging reading, and beyond connecting with earlier literary forebears, it is important to think about how such a novel enters the Ghanaian social landscape where sex is traditionally a public taboo. Ashawo Diaries is a text that challenges sanitized perspectives of Ghana. – Kwabena Opoku-Agyemang, Lecturer, Department of English, University of Ghana, Legon
[The author] is zealous towards unearthing the ills of society. I describe her as the “perfect role model of today’s world”. I am not surprised she took this bold step to write this story. Though bold for our traditional society, l am of the view that she held the bull by the horn. The story…will surely leave readers scratching their heads with excitement. – Dr (Mrs.) Nana Ama Pokuaa Arthur, Lecturer, KNUST
A thrilling page-turner. Amoafowaa is fluid in narration, and succinct in description. – Rebecca Obuobisa-Darko, Personnel Officer, Ga East Municipal Education Directorate
Cecila’s Ashawo Diaries is storytelling meddled in art, obviously, science and a game of the protagonist. Daring diary entries with erotic sprinkles, gripping and sustaining, which depicts the struggles of a native daughter in contrast to Richard Wright’s native son, the zigzag turns of life and the map of love, friendship, pleasure, identity, re-identity as compasses at each turn. Poetically written and with a feminist undertone. – Grace Ihejiamaizu, Lecturer, University of Calabar, Founder of IKapture and Opportunity Desk, Nigeria
Ashawo Diaries raises queries on why young girls should experience sexual suppression in a cultural context like Ghana where children are valued, moral standards are held high and sexual discussions silenced. – Dr. Georgina Yaa Oduro, Director, Centre for Gender Research, Advocacy and Documentation (CEGRAD), University of Cape Coast
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Taduno’s Song
The day a stained brown envelope arrives from Taduno’s homeland, he knows that the time has come to return from exile.
Arriving full of trepidation, the musician discovers that his community no longer recognises him, believing that Taduno is dead. His girlfriend Lela has disappeared, taken away by government agents. As he wanders through his house in search of clues, he realises that any traces of his old life have been erased. All that was left of his life and himself are memories. But Taduno finds a new purpose: to unravel the mystery of his lost life and to find his lost love. Through this search, he comes to face a difficult decision: to sing for love or to sing for his people.
Taduno’s Song is a moving tale of sacrifice, love and courage.
₵125.00Taduno’s Song
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Freshwater
An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born “with one foot on the other side.” Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of experiencing the world, one that illuminates how we all construct our identities.
Ada has always been unusual. As an infant in southern Nigeria, she is a source of deep concern to her family. Her parents successfully prayed her into existence, but she becomes a troubled child, prone to violent fits of anger and grief, developing separate selves within her. Ada is more than just volatile – she is an ogbanje, born “with one foot on the other side.” When Ada travels to America for college, a traumatic event crystallizes her selves into something more powerful.
Based in the author’s realities and narrated by these selves, Freshwater maps how Ada’s life spirals in a dangerous direction as her alters – now protective, now hedonistic – move into control.
Freshwater dazzles with ferocious energy and serpentine grace, heralding the arrival of a fierce new literary voice.
₵115.00Freshwater
₵115.00