A truly multilingual volume of poetry that captures the times, legends and spaces of the city in the mellifluous tone of a court raconteur; Ilorin is the rational hybrid of cultures, its praise-song steeped in the invocation and evocation of indigenous,oriental and western traditions. Written in English, Yoruba and Hausa, the poems are carefully stringed in short spurts of epical quality.
The long-awaited autobiography of Howard Webb, the man who refereed the World Cup final.
Webb’s first game as a match official came when he was just 18 and his father’s verdict was blunt: ‘Useless – he doesn’t know his arse from his elbow.’ It wasn’t the last time his performance would come under fire. But Webb progressed through the ranks, and his natural calm authority made a good impression on players and administrators alike, and soon he was being offered the top matches and the toughest fixtures.
The policeman went on to take charge of some of the most important games, including the 2009 FA Cup final, the 2010 Champions League final and – the biggest of the lot – the 2010 World Cup final. Now, in this superb and frank memoir, Howard Webb reveals what it is like to be at the heart of the action in modern-day football where every decision can be unpicked by television cameras. He explains how he learned to handle some of the game’s superstars. Refereeing is a hard business, but Webb shows just why he enjoyed it so much and provides fascinating insights into how he dealt with the most challenging situations.
With his unique perspective, and the characteristic honesty and humour he has displayed as a pundit on BT Sport, Webb has written a book, updated for this edition, that reveals the game – and the man himself – in a new light.
Not every mistake deserves a consequence. Sometimes the only thing it deserves is forgiveness.
The Voss family is anything but normal. They live in a repurposed church, newly baptized Dollar Voss. The once cancer-stricken mother lives in the basement, the father is married to the mother’s former nurse, the little half-brother isn’t allowed to do or eat anything fun, and the eldest siblings are irritatingly perfect. Then, there’s Merit.
Merit Voss collects trophies she hasn’t earned and secrets her family forces her to keep. While browsing the local antiques shop for her next trophy, she finds Sagan. His wit and unapologetic idealism disarm and spark renewed life into her—until she discovers that he’s completely unavailable. Merit retreats deeper into herself, watching her family from the sidelines, when she learns a secret that no trophy in the world can fix.
Fed up with the lies, Merit decides to shatter the happy family illusion that she’s never been a part of before leaving them behind for good. When her escape plan fails, Merit is forced to deal with the staggering consequences of telling the truth and losing the one boy she loves.
Poignant and powerful, Without Merit explores the layers of lies that tie a family together and the power of love and truth.
Set in the wake of the Mau Mau rebellion and on the cusp of Kenya’s independence from Britain, A Grain of Wheat follows a group of villagers whose lives have been transformed by the 1952–1960 Emergency. At the center of it all is the reticent Mugo, the village’s chosen hero and a man haunted by a terrible secret. As we learn of the villagers’ tangled histories in a narrative interwoven with myth and peppered with allusions to real-life leaders, including Jomo Kenyatta, a masterly story unfolds in which compromises are forced, friendships are betrayed, and loves are tested.
A collection of the wildest conspiracies to ever exist, from mind control experiments to lizard people, this book explores, debunks—and sometimes proves—the secret stories that don’t quite make it into the history books.
What’s fact and what’s fiction? With conspiracy theories, sometimes it’s hard to get to the truth!
In Conspiracies Declassified, author and expert skeptic Brian Dunning explains fifty true stories of famous conspiracies throughout history. From the moon landing hoax, to chemtrails, to the mind control dangers of fluoride, Dunning is here to sort the truth from the lies to tell you what really happened.
BOXED CASE SERIES OF THE CLASSIC TITLES – AKE, IBADAN, ISARA AND THE MAN DIED BY THE NOBEL LAURETE WOLE SOYINKA. A COLLECTOR’S ITEM.
In the late 1960’s, Adah, a spirited and resourceful woman manages to move her family to London. Seeking an independent life for herself and her children she encounters racism and hard truths about being a new citizen.
From a suspiciously cheap Hell’s Kitchen walk-up, Nigerian editor and winner of a Toni Morrison Publishing Fellowship Ekong Udousoro is about to begin the opportunity of a lifetime: to learn the ins and outs of the publishing industry from its incandescent epicenter. While his sophisticated colleagues meet him with kindness and hospitality, he is soon exposed to a colder, ruthlessly commercial underbelly―callous agents, greedy landlords, boorish and hostile neighbors, and, beneath a superficial cosmopolitanism, a bedrock of white cultural superiority and racist assumptions about Africa, its peoples, and worst of all, its food.
Reckoning, at the same time, with the recent history of the devastating and brutal Biafran War, in which Ekong’s people were a minority of a minority caught up in the mutual slaughter of majority tribes, Ekong’s life in New York becomes a saga of unanticipated strife. The great apartment deal wrangled by his editor turns out to be an illegal sublet crawling with bedbugs. The lights of Times Square slide off the hardened veneer of New Yorkers plowing past the tourists. A collective antagonism toward the “other” consumes Ekong’s daily life. Yet in overcoming misunderstandings with his neighbors, Chinese and Latino and African American, and in bonding with his true allies at work and advocating for healing back home, Ekong proves that there is still hope in sharing our stories.
Akpan’s prose melds humor, tenderness, and pain to explore the myriad ways that tribalisms define life everywhere, from the villages of Nigeria to the villages within New York City. New York, My Village is a triumph of storytelling and a testament to the life-sustaining power of community across borders and across boroughs.
As first son and graduate, Kingsley Ibe has a load of responsibilities resting on his skinny shoulders. But times are bad in Nigeria, and life is hard. Unable to find work, Kingsley cannot take on the duty of training his younger siblings, nor can he provide his parents with financial peace in their retirement. And then there is Ola his girlfriend, the sugar in Kingsley’s tea. It does not seem to matter that he loves her deeply; he cannot afford her bride price.
But when Kingsley’s father falls sick, he becomes desperate to live up to his responsibilities. So he travels to Aba, to his wealthy uncle, ‘Cash Daddy’.
Under the avuncular wing of ‘Cash Daddy’, Kingsley is catapulted into the fast-money world of email scamming where he discovers a profitable talent for persuasive storytelling. But, as the stakes grow higher and Cash Daddy grows more ambitious, Kingsley begins to realise he is in way over his head and that, even in Nigeria, nothing comes for free . . .
I Do Not Come to You by Chance, a book which the author deems an idea that came before the novel, is one that through the Protagonist, Kingsley, attempts to explore the journey from good to bad and the blurred lines in between.
The volume seeks to make a substantive contribution to contemporary global transformation debates in an era of “Rhodes Must Fall” and “Black Lives Matter.” It also aims to contribute to transforming fossilised Eurocentric curricula which have insisted for centuries that “dead white men” continue to occupy the central position in global epistemologies on almost every subject under the sun.
Pastor Nicholas Adejuwon and his beautiful wife Nkechi run Rivers of Joy Church, the rave of the moment Lagos megachurch. When Nkechi decides to investigate her husband’s indiscretion, it was merely to satisfy her curiosity. What she unravels is a web of bruising secrets that run deeper than she could have ever imagined, threatening her reality as she knew it.
This is a novel about power and the people who inordinately thirst for it. It explores those blurred lines between truth and falsehood, spirituality and hypocrisy and the ironies that fate deals us at the end of our desperate quests in life.
Afonja The Fall is the second book in the Afonja Trilogy. Historical fiction, set in the final days of the collapse of the Oyo Empire.
It continues the story of the titular Afonja, the generalissimo of the Oyo Empire and his clashes with the Alaafin who is nominally his lord. Ultimately, Afonja comes crashing from the heights of power he attained in The Rise and Ilorin is forever lost to the Yoruba.
She’s the creator and producer of some of the most groundbreaking and audacious shows on television today. Her iconic characters live boldly and speak their minds. So who would suspect that Shonda Rhimes is an introvert? That she hired a publicist so she could avoid public appearances? That she suffered panic attacks before media interviews?
With three children at home and three hit television shows, it was easy for Shonda to say she was simply too busy. But in truth, she was also afraid. And then, over Thanksgiving dinner, her sister muttered something that was both a wake up and a call to arms: You never say yes to anything. Shonda knew she had to embrace the challenge: for one year, she would say YES to everything that scared her.
This poignant, intimate, and hilarious memoir explores Shonda’s life before her Year of Yes—from her nerdy, book-loving childhood to her devotion to creating television characters who reflected the world she saw around her. The book chronicles her life after her Year of Yes had begun—when Shonda forced herself out of the house and onto the stage; when she learned to explore, empower, applaud, and love her truest self. Yes.
A picture book showing works of fine art that are being privately held by art collectors in Lagos, Nigeria. Information on the history of the works, the artists, and collectors are also provided.
The whole family gathers at Tobi’s house to celebrate some good news and Tobi chooses a special way to say well done to her big brother Dare. What did Dare do? How does Tobi surprise him? Find out in TOBI BAKES A CAKE.
TOBI BAKES A CAKE is a picture book for children aged 2 – 6.
Lagos is a city for all . . . you share this place with flesh and not-flesh, and it’s just as much their city as it is yours.
Èkó, the spirit of Lagos, and his loyal minion Tatafo weave trouble through the streets of Lagos and through the lives of the ‘vagabonds’ powering modern Nigeria: the queer, the displaced and the footloose.
With Tatafo as our guide we meet these people in the shadows. Among them are a driver for a debauched politician; a lesbian couple whose tender relationship sheds unexpected light on their experience with underground sex work; a mother who attends a secret spiritual gathering that shifts her reality. As their lives begin to intertwine—in markets and underground clubs, in churches and hotel rooms—the vagabonds are seized and challenged by the spirits who command the city. A force is drawing them all together, but for what purpose?
In her debut novel VAGABONDS! Eloghosa Osunde tackles the insidious nature of Nigerian capitalism, corruption and oppression, and offers a defiant, joyous and inventive tribute to all those for whom life itself is a form of resistance.
