“Men are like yam, you cut them how you like.”
Baba Segi has three wives, seven children, and a mansion filled with riches. But now he has his eyes on Bolanle, a young university graduate wise to life’s misfortunes. When Bolanle responds to Baba Segi’s advances, she unwittingly uncovers a secret which threatens to rock his patriarchal household to the core.
THE SPIRIT OF DANFO, a story of class, power, the legacy of civil war, and maverick gods in Nigeria.
In DANFO, Ebulu, a brilliant student, longs to restore his mother, Nkoli, ostracised by the village at his father’s death. Ebulu makes a tragic mistake and tempts fate by switching majors from medicine to philosophy.
The choice is the first mistake in a chain that imperils his family and his promising career. The gods are saboteurs. Ebulu will learn hard lessons on the streets of Lagos, where the pace is set by the city’s pushy, death-defying, and improvisational danfo drivers.
DANFO is an intimate portrait of Nigerian city life, illustrating the resilient kindness and humanity of everyday people like Binta and striving to capture the voice of Lagos–most dialogue is in local
patois, including Yoruba and Igbo- while aiming a critique at the city’s notorious patronage and corruption.
Taramade Johnson seems to have it all. But she is stuck in a dead-end marriage, consumed by her desire for Adam Okoya, a male colleague, and burdened with a secret that could cause her to lose everything.
Things start to come undone when it is revealed that the Johnsons’ Marine Compact Bank, led by the tyrannical Damelda Johnson, Taramade’s mother-in-law, is not as healthy as it would appear. A bureaucratic reformer, Banke Olumide, soon emerges and takes Damelda’s place as MD of the troubled bank.
Meanwhile, Damelda retires to hatch a plan that will put control of the bank in her grip again. But there are others who want the bank just as much as Damelda does. And for some, it is a battle worth dying – or killing – for.
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.
In “A Private Experience”, a medical student hides from a violent riot with a poor Muslim woman whose dignity and faith force her to confront the realities and fears she’s been pushing away. In “Tomorrow is Too Far”, a woman unlocks the devastating secret that surrounds her brother’s death. The young mother at the centre of “Imitation” finds her comfortable life threatened when she learns that her husband is back in Lagos and has moved his mistress into their home. And the title story depicts the choking loneliness of a Nigerian girl who moves to an America that turns out to be nothing like the country she expected; though falling in love brings her desires nearly within reach, a death in her homeland forces her to re-examine them. Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow and longing, this collection is a resounding confirmation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s prodigious storytelling powers.
Nkechi, Yeni, and Tale all want the same thing: children of their own. But with each passing year, their dreams turn into nightmares of a future they never anticipated. Infertility is the unwanted guest in their homes, mocking all their efforts and feeding on their misery.
But these three women are fighters. They will not stop or back down – no power is too heavy and no strangeness too unacceptable in their quest.
The Waiting Room is a place of unusual strength and courage.
The Will to Win: The Story of Biodun Shobanjo is fundamentally a deliberative evaluation of leadership and enterprise management. It is as much a biographical portrait of Nigeria’s ‘Czar of Advertising’ as it is a story of the major developments in the world of marketing communications in Nigeria as it involves Shobanjo. It sheds light on his persona and gives a comprehensive overview of who he is. It is a lucidly engaging work through which the reader understands his parentage, family life and most poignantly, his professional and business life. In a land with few authentic heroes or achievers, Biodun Shobanjo’s contributions, achievements and place are deservedly presented. The avalanche of information provided, the depth of treatment given to it, and the sources consulted make this work a productive venture. The reader is assured of an excursion in history, career development, ambition, decision – making, entrepreneurship, business management, office politics, people management, success and failure. It is a positive work that is faithful to its theme: the path to success is guided by the will to win.
The Will to Win: The Story of Biodun Shobanjo is fundamentally a deliberative evaluation of leadership and enterprise management. It is as much a biographical portrait of Nigeria’s ‘Czar of Advertising’ as it is a story of the major developments in the world of marketing communications in Nigeria as it involves Shobanjo. It sheds light on his persona and gives a comprehensive overview of who he is. It is a lucidly engaging work through which the reader understands his parentage, family life and most poignantly, his professional and business life. In a land with few authentic heroes or achievers, Biodun Shobanjo’s contributions, achievements and place are deservedly presented. The avalanche of information provided, the depth of treatment given to it, and the sources consulted make this work a productive venture. The reader is assured of an excursion in history, career development, ambition, decision – making, entrepreneurship, business management, office politics, people management, success and failure. It is a positive work that is faithful to its theme: the path to success is guided by the will to win.
Hortensia and Marion are next door neighbours in a charming, bougainvillea-laden Cape Town suburb. One is black, one white. Both are successful women with impressive careers behind them. Both have recently been widowed. Both are in their eighties. And both are sworn enemies, sharing hedge and hostility prined with zeal.
But one day an unforeseen event forces the women together. Could long-held mutual loathing transform into friendship?
Love thy neighbour? Easier said than done.
Hortensia James and Marion Agostino are neighbours. One is black, one white. Both are successful women with impressive careers. Both have recently been widowed. And both are sworn enemies, sharing hedge and hostility which they prune with a zeal that belies the fact that they are both over eighty.But one day an unforeseen event forces the women together. And gradually the bickering and sniping softens into lively debate, and from there into memories shared. But could these sparks of connection ever transform into friendship? Or is it too late to expect these two to change?
Have you ever wished for someone who will listen to your worries? Adùn does. When an elephant arrives at her home, Adùn is happy to have a new friend with big ears. Adùn’s happy feelings go away when Erù the elephant begins to eat her clothes. Friends should be kind to one another. How will Adùn make the elephant leave her wardrobe when it is stronger than her?
For more than forty years, Chinua Achebe maintained a considered silence on the events of the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967–1970, addressing them only obliquely through his poetry. Decades in the making, There Was a Country is a towering account of one of modern Africa’s most disastrous events, from a writer whose words and courage left an enduring stamp on world literature. A marriage of history and memoir, vivid firsthand observation and decades of research and reflection, There Was a Country is a work whose wisdom and compassion remind us of Chinua Achebe’s place as one of the great literary and moral voices of our age.
Fearless and authentically refreshing in its narratives, “There’s A Heaven for Bad Girls” journeys into the hearts and minds of young Nigerian women and girls who have often been silenced, overlooked, and made to conform to societal norms. The five captivating short stories are powerful gems that read, at intervals, like secret diaries of their compelling protagonists. Through her fluid storytelling, Adenrele Niyi, a Nigeria Media Merit Award, (NMMA), Entertainment Writer of the Year finalist, skillfully takes us on a ‘short ride in a fast car’.
From the nuanced interplay between individuals and systems, religion and culture, love and desire, to the hopelessness of aborted dreams, the stories offer a youthful perspective on contemporary social issues. There’s A Heaven for Bad Girls delves into identity struggles in a trado-modern society that demands conformity, unveils the raw resilience of teenagers facing daunting odds, and explores the transformative power of love, all while championing the spirit of entrepreneurship and the urgent need for social change.
Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe’s critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa’s cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man’s futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order.
With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.
When a Nigerian woman falls for a man she knows will break her mother’s heart, she must choose between love and her family.
At twelve years old, Azere promised her dying father she would marry a Nigerian man and preserve her culture, even after immigrating to Canada. Her mother has been vigilant about helping—well forcing—her to stay within the Nigerian dating pool ever since. But when another match-made-by-mom goes wrong, Azere ends up at a bar, enjoying the company and later sharing the bed of Rafael Castellano, a man who is tall, handsome, and…white.
When their one-night stand unexpectedly evolves into something serious, Azere is caught between her feelings for Rafael and the compulsive need to please her mother. Soon, Azere can’t help wondering if loving Rafael makes her any less of a Nigerian. Can she be with him without compromising her identity? The answer will either cause Azere to be audacious and fight for her happiness or continue as the compliant daughter.
Welcome to a new term at the River School!
Jummy and Caro are thrilled to be working with their Nile House friends on the school corn-planting competition. But as they try to grow the biggest crops, they realize the beautiful Shine-Shine River is running low – why, and what does it have to do with the sinister bakery nearby?
The friends will have to step up if they want to save the river and its wildlife – and win the school prize in the process…
