Africa is a continent of stories—tales of love and longing, resilience and revolution, joy and sorrow. In the hands of its most gifted writers, these stories capture the essence of life in all its complexity.
Purple Hibiscus
Fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a privileged life in Enugu, Nigeria. They live in a beautiful house, with a caring family, and attend an exclusive missionary school. They’re completely shielded from the troubles of the world. Yet, as Kambili reveals in her tender-voiced account, things are less perfect than they appear. Although her Papa is generous and well respected, he is fanatically religious and tyrannical at home—a home that is silent and suffocating.
As the country begins to fall apart under a military coup, Kambili and Jaja are sent to their aunt, a university professor outside the city, where they discover a life beyond the confines of their father’s authority. Books cram the shelves, curry and nutmeg permeate the air, and their cousins’ laughter rings throughout the house. When they return home, tensions within the family escalate, and Kambili must find the strength to keep her loved ones together.
Purple Hibiscus is an exquisite novel about the emotional turmoil of adolescence, the powerful bonds of family, and the bright promise of freedom.
Yinka , Where is your Huzband?
Yinka wants to find love. Her mum wants to find it for her. But how can she find a ‘huzband’ when she is surrounded by her many aunties who frequently (and loudly) pray for her delivery from singledom, has a preference for chicken and chips over traditional Nigerian food and a bum she sure is far too small as a result? Oh, and the fact that she’s a thirty-one-year-old South -Londoner who doesn’t believe in sex before marriage is a bit of an obstacle too…
Yinka commences ‘Operation Find A Date for Racheal’s Wedding’ when her cousin gets engaged. Armed with a flawless (and incredible) plan, will Yinka find herself a Huzband?
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives
For Baba Segi, his collection of wives and children is a sign of his virility. All runs smoothly in the polygamous homes until the arrival of the wife number four. Bolanlae is a soft-spoken university graduate, quickly ostracised by her illiterate co-wives. However, she is determined to give Baba Segi the children he expects. Her failure to conceive exposes a dark family secret. This revelation has devastating consequences for the entire household.
A Broken People’s playlist
A Broken People’s Playlist is a collection of short stories with underlying themes so beautifully woven that each story flows into the other seamlessly. From its poignant beginning in “Lost Stars” a love story and its fleeting, transient nature to the gritty, raw musical prose encapsulated in “In The City”, a tale of survival set in the alleyways of the waterside. A Broken People’s Playlist is a mosaic of stories about living, loving and hurting through very familiar sounds, in very familiar ways and finding healing in the most unlikely places.
The stories are also part homage and part love letter to Port Harcourt (the city where most of them are set). The prose is distinctive as it is concise and unapologetically Nigerian. And because the collection is infused with the magic of evocative storytelling, everyone is promised a story, a character, to move or haunt them.
Nearly all men in Lagos are mad.
A collection of short stories, structured as case studies, and a form of love letter in solidarity with the women who have survived romantic relationships with men in Lagos….it deftly analyses the various archetypes women are likely to encounter in the dating scene in the city – from serial cheaters to mummy’s boys, from the ‘fake it till you make it’s adherents to the ones who can’t commit.
This book underscores with wit, humour, wisdom, and sensitivity the perils of trying to find lasting love and companionship in Africa’s craziest city that will prove universal and illuminating.
Only big bum bum matters tomorrow.
Three days after her father’s funeral, twenty-year-old Temi and her family gather for the reading of his will. It is at this sober occasion that Temi lets slip her plan which sends the grieving family into panic and prayer. The women of the family are loud in their criticisms but in their quiet moments, they reflect on their imperfect journeys, especially how their bodies and their looks have shaped their lives. Forgotten scandals and family secrets suddenly laid bare. Is Temi really the crazy one? In the era of fillers and filters, Damilare Kuku’s Only Big Bum Bum Matters Tomorrow explores the aspirations of young Nigerian women and the complexities of body image in an evolving society.
The Widow who died with Flowers in her mouth
This book is a collection of short stories that open a window into Nigerian life and give readers an unvarnished look at the country and its people in their thrilling, titillating and terrible glory. A beautiful woman is discovered half-naked and dead but is the killer one of her wealthy suitors? A plumber is treated to an intense sexual experience by a woman with cash, curves and killer moves is she who he thinks she is? A young doctor arrives at the brink of insanity after a forbidden entanglement with a married woman. A sexually promiscuous tailor’s return to her father’s house immediately sparks lust, jealousy, chaos and violence.
A spell of Good Things
Eniola is tall for his age, a boy who looks like a man. His father has lost his job, so Eniola spends his days running errands for the local tailor, collecting newspapers and begging, dreaming of a big future. Wuraola is a golden girl, the perfect child of a wealthy family. Now an exhausted young doctor in her first year of practice, she is beloved by Kunle, the volatile son of an ascendant politician.
When a local politician takes an interest in Eniola and sudden violence shatters a family party, Wuraola and Eniola’s lives become intertwined. In her breathtaking second novel, Ayobami Adebayo shines her light on Nigeria, on the gaping divide between the haves and the have-nots, and the shared humanity that lives in between.
The List
Ola Olajide, a celebrated journalist at Womxxxn magazine, is set to marry the love of her life in one month. She and her fiancé Michael are considered the “couple goals” of their social network and seem to have it all—that is, until one morning when they both wake up to the same message: “Oh my god, have you seen The List?”
It began as a crowdsourced collection of names and somehow morphed into an anonymous account posting allegations on social media. Ola would usually be the first to support such a list—she’d retweet it, call for the men to be fired, write article after article. Except this time Michael’s name is on it!
Faceless
Street life in the slums of Accra is realistically portrayed in this socially-committed, subtle novel about four educated women who are inspired by the plight of a 14-year-old girl, Fofo. As the main characters convert their library centre into a practical street initiative, the novel invokes the squalor, health risks, and vicious cycles of poverty and violence that drive children to the streets and women to prostitution; from which, ultimately, no one in the society is free.