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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?

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.

A new pair of shoes, a university degree, a husband—these are the things that a girl dreams of in a Nigerian village. And with a government scholarship right around the corner, everyone can see that these dreams aren’t too far out of reach.

But the girl’s dreams turn to nightmares when her village is attacked by Boko Haram, a terrorist group, in the middle of the night. Kidnapped, she is taken with other girls and women into the forest where she is forced to follow her captors’ radical beliefs and watch as her best friend slowly accepts everything she’s been told.

Still, the girl defends her existence. As impossible as escape may seem, her life—her future—is hers to fight for.