Proudly Nigerian

In this heartwrenching new novel from Award-winning author and poet, Fatima Bala, a connection sends two lovers with different ideologies on a search for redemption in places far from home.

A story of imperfect love. Broken from the start; yet constant.
Fa’iza Mohammed grew up very sheltered in a conservative Muslim home. Her otherwise sane life is thrust into turmoil when she finds herself falling for someone with a completely different set of values from hers when she comes to Toronto for University. She tries to fight it, but there’s an undeniable attraction simmering between them. She soon realizes that they are probably better apart – but can they stay away from each other?

Ahmad Babangida believes everything is a construct. Society and religion condition people to be sheep, and he goes out of his way to live his life on his terms. His attraction to Fa’iza doesn’t help as the lines between halal and haram start to become blurred.

When a revelation breaks them apart, they hold a secret, one that could tear the seams of the Islamic upbringing their family holds in high regard. Five years later, is it too late for them, or is the road to redemption shut against them for crossing the lines into forbidden paths?

Can a career woman truly have it all?

Powerful marketing executive Kemi Adeyemi has finally found the man she needs, but Tobias Wikström thinks she’s the most selfish woman he has ever met for asking him to give up his life in Sweden and move to the US for her own comfort. Will Kemi be forced to stay if she wants to keep him while chipping away at her hard-earned career? As things begin to sour and challenge her relationship with Tobias, someone else moves back into the picture.

Can having it all be a gilded cage?

Looking into divorce in Sweden isn’t what former model-turned-flight attendant Brittany-Rae von Lundin anticipated. Only jointly owned assets are split evenly between couples. Brittany gave up her career and came with nothing into Jonny’s kingdom. Having had a child with him, her greatest fear for Maya includes being cut off from the resources she’s become accustomed to. With a man obsessed with a ghost, trying to get away isn’t going to be easy. And the deeper she digs into his past, the darker the secrets she unravels.

Can you run from your past to have it all?

After fleeing her home through a client to seek a new life in Sweden, Yasmiin finds love in the arms of Yagiz Çelik while carving out her own small corner. But as someone from her past forces Yasmiin to become a caretaker before she’s ready, she now must confront and move beyond her teenage history, while following her dreams of becoming a makeup artist.

Everything Is Not Enough follows the loosely intertwined and messy lives of Kemi, Brittany, and Yasmiin as they interrogate themes of place, prejudice, and patriarchy in Europe, proving—yet again—that Lola Akinmade Åkerströmis the next great voice of nuanced contemporary women’s fiction.

As in Nigeria, vagabonds are those whose existence is literally outlawed: the queer, the poor, the displaced, the footloose and rogue spirits. They are those who inhabit transient spaces, who make their paths and move invisibly, who embrace apparitions, old vengeances and alternative realities. Eloghosa Osunde’s brave, fiercely inventive novel traces a wild array of characters for whom life itself is a form of resistance: a driver for a debauched politician with the power to command life and death; a legendary fashion designer who gives birth to a grown daughter; a lesbian couple whose tender relationship sheds unexpected light on their experience with underground sex work; a wife and mother who attends a secret spiritual gathering that shifts her world. As their lives intertwine—in bustling markets and underground clubs, churches and hotel rooms—vagabonds are seized and challenged by spirits who command the city’s dark energy. Whether running from danger, meeting with secret lovers, finding their identities, or vanquishing their shadowselves, Osunde’s characters confront and support one another, before converging for the once-in-a-lifetime gathering that gives the book its unexpectedly joyous conclusion.

Blending unvarnished realism with myth and fantasy, Vagabonds! is a vital work of imagination that takes us deep inside the hearts, minds, and bodies of a people in duress—and in triumph.