Proudly Nigerian

Gasp

4,000.00

A trio of teenage girls, Imabong Nyang, Tonye Femeiya and Ivie L’di, are casualties of the Warri Crisis of 1997. All three were close friends and classmates who lived in the same neighbour-hood at Lower Erejuwa in Warri South Local Governmeni Area of Delta State. Calamity struck when the crisis heightened in 1997, which took a toll on their families, with each of them losing a blood relative in the most disheartening
way. They reconnect twenty-two years later, in the most awkward circumstances, each nursing the scar from the wounds the crisis inflicted on them.

The story begins with the scene of Mr Femeiya’s butcher in the presence of his only child; Tonye Femeiya at the school of the trio where he went to rescue them, the subsequent separation that occurred as a result of the killings of members of each of their families and then cascades down to Imahong Nyang, now 37, who woke up to a nightmare that recaptured her past during the crisis. That same day she reconnects with Tonye Femeiya at trespitai where she works as a neurosurgeon, and days later, she reconnects in the lie Udi in another situation.

The writing captures the trio’s life journey from their teenage days to their present day. It shows their love lives, career and family life and details how each casualty was able to navigate the difficult hurdles of life while nursing the wound they each sustained from the 1997 crisis.

Ghana Must Go

4,500.00

Electric, exhilarating, and beautifully crafted, Ghana Must Go introduces the world to Taiye Selasi, a novelist of extraordinary talent. In a sweeping narrative that takes readers from Accra to Lagos to London to New York, it is at once a portrait of a modern family and an exploration of the importance of where we come from to who we are.

A renowned surgeon and failed husband, Kweku Sai dies suddenly at dawn outside his home in suburban Accra. The news of his death sends a ripple around the world, bringing together the family he abandoned years before. Moving with great elegance through time and place, Ghana Must Go charts their circuitous journey to one another and, along the way, teaches us that the truths we speak can heal the wounds we hide.

Ghostroots

9,000.00

A debut collection of stories set in a hauntingly reimagined Lagos where characters vie for freedom from ancestral ties.

In this beguiling collection of twelve imaginative stories set in Lagos, Nigeria, ’Pemi Aguda dramatizes the tension between our yearning to be individuals and the ways we are haunted by what came before.

In “Manifest,” a woman sees the ghost of her abusive mother in her daughter’s face. Shortly after, the daughter is overtaken by wicked and destructive impulses. In “Breastmilk,” a wife forgives her husband for his infidelity. Months later, when she is unable to produce milk for her newborn, she blames herself for failing to uphold her mother’s feminist values and doubts her fitness for motherhood. In “Things Boys Do,” a trio of fathers finds something unnatural and unnerving about their infant sons. As their lives rapidly fall to pieces, they begin to fear that their sons are the cause of their troubles. And in “24, Alhaji Williams Street,” a teenage boy lives in the shadow of a mysterious disease that’s killing the boys on his street.

These and other stories in Ghostroots map emotional and physical worlds that lay bare the forces of family, myth, tradition, gender, and modernity in Nigerian society. Powered by a deep empathy and glinting with humor, they announce a major new literary talent.

Ginger Bread

8,500.00

Perdita Lee may appear your average British schoolgirl; Harriet Lee may seem just a working mother trying to penetrate the school social hierarchy; but there are signs that they might not be as normal as they think they are. For one thing, they share a gold-painted, seventh-floor walk-up apartment with some surprisingly verbal vegetation. And then there’s the gingerbread they make. Londoners may find themselves able to take or leave it, but it’s very popular in Druhástrana, the far away (or, according to many sources, non-existent) land of Harriet Lee’s early youth. The world’s truest lover of the Lee family gingerbread, however, is Harriet’s charismatic childhood friend Gretela–a figure who seems to have had a hand in everything (good or bad) that has happened to Harriet since they met.

Decades later, when teenage Perdita’s search for her mother’s long-lost friend prompts a new telling of Harriet’s story. As the book follows the Lees through encounters with jealousy, ambition, family grudges, work, wealth, and real estate, gingerbread seems to be the one thing that reliably holds a constant value. Endlessly surprising and satisfying, written with Helen Oyeyemi’s inimitable style and imagination, Gingerbread is a true feast for the reader.

Give Us Each Day

2,500.00

Seun Ajimobi is a twelve-year old boy lost in Libya. Thrown into a high-stakes situation, Seun must find a way out or risk never returning home or worse, losing his life. Told through the eyes of a boy abruptly cut off from the only life he has ever known, this agonizing tale of loss, isolation, family and friendship vividly captures the plight endured by those who leave home in the hope of finding greener pastures in a foreign land.

God’s Children Are Little Broken Things

5,000.00

In nine exhilarating stories of queer love in contemporary Nigeria, God’s Children Are Little Broken Things announces the arrival of a daring new voice in fiction.

A man revisits the university campus where he lost his first love, aware now of what he couldn’t understand then. A young musician rises to fame at the price of pieces of himself, and the man who loves him. Arinze Ifeakandu explores with tenderness and grace the fundamental question of the heart: can deep love and hope be sustained in spite of the dominant expectations of society, and great adversity.

Half Hour Hara

1,000.00

Hara can’t help getting into trouble, no matter how hard she tries. Sometimes, all she wants to do is look at something, but somehow, it breaks! Like Daddy’s special TV and Mummy’s fancy plates. Now, the eggs for making Mummy’s birthday cake are smashed and splattered on the floor! Hara didn’t break them, but she knows no one will believe her. She has to find the real culprit before Daddy gets back home in 30 minutes – or she will be in trouble again!

Half Of A Yellow Sun

7,000.00

Ugwu, a boy from a poor village, works as a houseboy for a university professor. Olanna, a young woman, has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic new lover, the professor. And Richard, a shy English writer, is enthralled to Olanna’s enigmatic twin sister. As the horrific Biafran war engulfs them, they are thrown together and pulled apart in ways they had never imagined. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s masterpiece, winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, is a novel about Africa in a wider sense: about the end of colonialism, ethnic allegiances, class and race – and about the ways in which love can complicate all of those things.

Harmattan!

2,500.00

In Harmattan! and other poems, the poet pours out his thoughts as a traveller, a patriotic Nigerian, a devout Christian, and more, in this collection of laidback yet thought-provoking poems, covering his trips and observations through travel monologues, politics (both local and foreign), the ugly reality of terrorism, and the deep importance of faith to him.

He reveals his general reflections on life, the Nigerian weather/climate, aging, and Ebola/COVID; his support for the Super Eagles and for Liverpool FC; his love for his wife, his mother, and musings on Harry and Meghan’s marriage; and a reflection on rainbows, Psalm 23, and the coming of Judgement Day; all with unique observation and rhythmic mastery.

Highlife Giants

8,000.00

As West Africa’s oldest form of popular music, highlife was the soundtrack of the independence era. Its influence still resonates today.

Highlife Giants is an intimate portrait of the pioneering artistes of West Africa’s music scene from the 1920s onwards. It contains interviews with stars such as E.T Mensah, Kofo Ghanaba, King Bruce, Bobby Benson, Victor Uwaifo, and Ignace De Souza revealing priceless behind-the-scenes moments such as Louis Armstrong giving Eddie Okonta a trumpet with a golden mouthpiece after seeing him perform. Highlife Giants charts the development of this rich and varied popular form which is hugely influential on contemporary West African music from Afrobeat to hiplife.

Blending European and African-American styles with traditional African patterns, highlife music contributed to the development of post-independence national identity in both Ghana and Nigeria. As such, highlife remains crucial in generating social commentary, protest and contributing to the formation of a pan-African musical identity.

For those who lived through the era, Highlife Giants will be a compendium that invokes treasured memories. For their children and grandchildren, this book will inspire an interest in the rich musical history of West Africa

Honey & Spice

8,000.00

Kiki Banjo is an expert in relationship-evasion.

In fact, she has made it her mission to protect the women of Whitewell University from the dangers of players and heartbreak, supplying advice, tips and essentials to paying men no mind on her student radio show, Brown Sugar.

And then Kiki meets distressingly handsome newcomer Malakai Korede, who threatens to tear apart the community of women she’s fought so hard to protect.

Kiki publicly declares Malakai the ‘Wasteman of Whitewell’ on Brown Sugar and brings a stop to her girls chasing his attentions. But when she and Malakai suddenly find themselves shackled into a fake relationship to salvage their respective reputations and save their academic futures, she is in danger of falling for the very wasteman she warned her sisters about.

With her heart compromised and defences weakened, Kiki has to learn to open herself up to the perils of love… and face up to a past that forced her to close down in the first place.

A funny and sparkling debut, Honey & Spice is full of delicious tension and romantic intrigue that will make you weak at the knees.

Honour For Sale

5,000.00

The murder of Dele Giwa remains on the infamous list of Nigeria’s unsolved murders. More than twenty-five years after Nigeria’s first ever parcel bomb ended the life of one of the country’s most colourful investigative journalists, the case has refused to be laid to rest. In Honour for Sale, Debo Basorun, with the insight of his proximity to some of the dramatis personae, examines the lurid circumstances of this controversial murder. He unearths a web of ‘intrigue and treachery, clannishness and base humanity’ of some of the men in uniform who, only recently, ran the affairs of the country.

Hopes And Impediments

7,000.00

One of the most provocative and original voices in contemporary literature, Chinua Achebe here considers the place of literature and art in our society in a collection of essays spanning his best writing and lectures from the last twenty-three years. For Achebe, overcoming goes hand in hand with eradicating the destructive effects of racism and injustice in Western society. He reveals the impediments that still stand in the way of open, equal dialogue between Africans and Europeans, between blacks and whites, but also instills us with hope that they will soon be overcome.

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