African Series

Spirited and intelligent, Morayo grows up surrounded by school friends and family in Ibadan. There is Eniayo, her adoring little sister—for whose sake their middle-class parents fight stigmatising superstition—and a large extended family of cousins and aunts who sometimes make Morayo’s home their own. A shameful secret forced upon her by Bros T, her cousin, thrusts Morayo into a web of oppressive silence woven by the adults around her. Morayo must learn to fiercely protect herself and her sister as young women growing up in a complex and politically charged country.

Chinua Achebe (1930-2013) is widely recognized as the founding father of modern African literature in English. His first novel, Things Fall Apart, published in 1958, not only contested European narratives about Africa, but also challenged assumptions about the form and function of the novel.

Throughout his long career, Achebe was a voice for the peoples of Africa and also a formative influence on a new generation of African writers. This volume of tributes and reflections is a fitting testament to his legacy.

As one of Nigeria's top writers, the author is concerned with the condition of his country. In this novel he tells, with humour, a human story set in the tragedy of the Biafran war. Fatima is fleeing the enemy planes with her young son, and through her unfolding drama, the reader sees what the war was really like through Biafran eyes.

In the fictional country of Kato, a successful and much-loved academic, Jungu, comes face to face with academic colonialism in the guise of American economic aid to the poor African country. Highly qualified Africans are passed over in favour of "experts" from the donor country, and students do not receive the education which is their due. Jungu comes into tense confrontation with the American dean, in his efforts to correct the policy and restore academic dignity.

The award-winning noted playwright here takes a comic swipe at ideological misfits and opportunists who strut the ever-accommodating political landscape of contemporary Africa. A former military Major, takes to politics. His motives have far more to do with vanity than patriotism, and his attempts to adapt to a situation he hardly comprehends produce highly comic results. His predicament is complicated by the unexpected arrival of his American wife who discovers two more marriages contracted without her knowledge and her husband beset by political problems.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The late Ola Rotimi is one of Nigeria's most well known playwright and Professor of Dramatic Arts at Obafemi Awolowo University

The Bikoroa Plays is a major of cycle of three plays, The Boat, The Return Home and Full Circle that were first staged in 1981 at the University of Lagos and the National Theatre of Nigeria. The Boat is a prose drama that documents Ngbilebiri history. The Return Home is a historical play set in the 1920s. Full Circle is set in the 1950s and concerns a brothers' quarrel in a traditional setting. The three plays are characterised by their dramatic qualities and unique poetic voice.

From the begining of her life eighteen year-old Belinda has struggled hard against the immorality, oppressions and crime prevalent in the Nigerian society in which she lives. Her mother dead and her father a drunk, she chooses to work as a riceseller rather than become a prostitute. Her search for truth and spiritual development leads her through traumatic experiences. Through poverty she learns self- reliance, through physical and psychic battles with a friend in a polygamous marriage she learns to trust in her own strength. And when Chief Ojo offers her family freedom and marriage into riches Belinda must decide between the boy she loves and marrying a man for money, and her family's survival.

Satirist and chronicler of the many-faceted world of education in Nigeria, the author is one of Nigeria's foremost writers. In this novel, he tells of Obuechina, the only brother of six older sisters, prize pupil in the village school, apple of his doting mother's eye, eight years old and hopelessly spoilt. In a vain attempt to salvage his character, his father decides he must be sent away as a servant to a schoolmaster with a dragon of a wife. Obu goes - and comes back very different.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
IKE, (Vincent) Chukwuemeka (1931-), Nigerian novelist, was born in eastern Nigeria and educated at the University of Ibadan and at Stanford in the USA. As an educator, Ike has contributed to the intellectual and cultural development of Africa in important administrative positions at Nigerian universities and at UNESCO and as professor at the University of Jos. In 2008 he was awarded the Fonlon-Nichols Award at the African Literature Association meeting in Illinois. His novels include Toads for Supper (1965), which is set in a university and deals with love and the inherent problems that married couples from different ethnic backgrounds encounter; The Naked Gods (1970), also set in a university, which highlights the corrupt practices in the appointment of a new vice-chancellor at Songhai University; and Expo '77 (1980), in which secondary school students trying to gain admission to the university cheat in examinations. More recently, Our Children Are Coming (1990) deals with the problem of youth unrest and student revolt in colleges and universities in Nigeria: reacting to commissions of inquiry that exclude them, the students set up a counter investigation of their own. The Search (1991) is the story of the feverish patriotism of a detribalized intellectual, Ola, and his search for Nigerian unity. Ike's prose style encompasses dialogue, wit, and satire, which he employs to castigate corruption and the quest for inordinate power. The novels transcend historical, sociological, and political documentation and achieve comedy, tragedy, irony, and metaphor. He has also written How to Become a Published Writer (1991).

In A Cowrie of Hope Binwell Sinyangwe captures the rhythms of a people whose poverty has not diminished their dignity, where hope can only be accompanied by small acts of courage, and where friendship has not lost its value.

Ngugi takes the reader back to the days preceding Kenya's independence. Mugo, a farmer and hero in the eyes of the villagers, is asked to deliver a speech during the Uhuru celebrations, to be held in memory of his friend Kihika. He refuses to make a speech and turns out to be a traitor.

"Your mother was insane. If you're not careful you'll get insane just like your mother. Your mother was a white woman. They had to lock her up, as she was having a child by the stable boy who was a native." It is never clear to Elizabeth whether the mission school principal's cruel revelation of her origins is at the bottom of her mental breakdown. She has left South Africa with her son and is living in the village of Motabeng, the place of sand, in Botswana where there are no street lights at night. In the darkness of this country where people turn and look at her with vague curiosity as an outsider she establishes an entirely abnormal relationship with two men. A mind-bending book which takes the reader in and out of sanity.

A series of stories within a story, all narrated by Obi, a young, hopeful Nigerian immigrant in America.

Journalistic sketches, essays and personal notes form a biographical study of South African born Bessie Head's complex existence. Born in 1937, the result of an illicit union between a black man and a white woman, Bessie spent her early years in South Africa, a period of exile in Botswana (1964-79) and was a Botswana citizen before her death at the age of 49.

An exposition of the raw side of human emotions as explored through one man's tormented life's experiences. It seeks to expose the fallacies of the human condition while remaining real in its depiction of universal problems inflicted on postcolonial Africa.

A first novel by a Ghanaian woman who spent some time in Germany. It provides an account of the exploitation of women in Africa and Europe, and tells of an immigrant who, having travelled to Germany to find a paradise, finds she has been betrayed by her husband and is forced into prostitution.

In 1947-48 the workers on the Dakar-Niger railway staged a strike. In this vivid, timeless novel, Ousmane Sembène envinces the color, passion, and tragedy of those formative years in the history of West Africa.

Toundi Ondoua, the rural African protagonist of Houseboy, encounters a world of prisms that cast beautiful but unobtainable glimmers, especially for a black youth in colonial Cameroon. Houseboy, written in the form of Toundi's captivating diary and translated from the original French, discloses his awe of the white world and a web of unpredictable experiences. Early on, he escapes his father's angry blows by seeking asylum with his benefactor, the local European priest who meets an untimely death. Toundi then becomes "the Chief European's 'boy'--the dog of the King." Toundi's attempt to fulfill a dream of advancement and improvement opens his eyes to troubling realities. Gradually, preconceptions of the Europeans come crashing down on him as he struggles with his identity, his place in society, and the changing culture.

First published in 1946, this novel exposed the condition of black South Africans under a white regime. It presents a portrait of labour discrimination, appalling housing conditions and one man's humanitarian act of defiance.

An irreverent satire set in Ghana, told with serious intent.

On the eve of the Muslim festival of Eid, Narguiss, who 'never wanted anything to do with politics', is more preoccupied with family problems than with the radio news of kidnappings and murders.

Nearby, Leia, Januário and their young daughter are caught up in the pleasure and security of finally finding a flat of their own, while Mena, who was once the beauty of her village, overhears her husband plotting murder.

Before dawn, these innocent people seeking to lead peaceful lives are thrown together in a vicious conspiracy to infiltrate and destabilise Mozambique.

A selection of women's poetry and prose from all over Africa. Included are some of the newest writers in modern Africa.

A brilliant first novel from Ghana portraying a crucial period in the nation's history--a poet's story of Africa that has already provoked critical attention in Britain.

An examination of Serowe's recent past - seen through the words and memories of the village inhabitants.

Chronicles the lives of two families in post-colonial Africa, the first - poor, working-class and ill-educated - is compared to the young politically aware college student and her journalist fiance. The middle-class pair become victims of the same brutal violence that the poor and powerless suffer.

A portrayal of contemporary Ghanaian urban society and working class lives.

A collection of short stories based on life in a Botswanan village, including the story of a woman who murders the husband who deserted her years before.

In "The Girl Who Can," the irrepressible Ama Ata Aidoo looks at the roles and rules, and the games people find themselves playing, often unwillingly. She analyses African women's struggle to find their rightful place in society. Her stories raise issues of choice and conflict, teasing about the issues with disarming frankness. How do people behave in cross-cultural relationships? In the modern world, where a plastic label identifies us, what is our identity? Will African women be in the driving seat in the twenty-first century? With the zest and humour, Aidoo raises these questions and provides some challenging answers.

In this collection of short stories, Aidoo elevates the mundane in women's lives to an intellectual level in an attempt at challenging patriarchal structures and dominance in African society. Written from a child's perspective, Aidoo subverts the traditional beliefs and assumptions about the child's voice. Her inimitable sense of style and eloquence, explores love, marriage and relationships with all the issues they throw up for the contemporary African woman. In doing so, she manages to capture the very essence of womanhood.

A dead baby and bloodstained clothes are discovered near a small village. Everyone is ready to comment on the likely story behind the abandoned infant. The men have one opinion, the women another. As the story rapidly unfolds it becomes clear that seven different women played their part in the drama. All of them are caught in a web of superstition, ignorance, greed and corruption.

When a baby girl is abandoned at birth, Reverend Arlington and his wife Ginny are only too happy to adopt her. The media cover this moving story, and a Nigerian woman living in England takes more than a passing interest in the Arlingtons. She decides that they world provide the right Christian home for her own baby, Chester. Shortly afterwards, Chester is delivered to social services with a letter explaining that the Arlingtons should be his new parents. So young Chester enters the vicarage of the sleepy seaside village of St Simon. He is the only black child for miles around.

"The New Tribe" tells the story of Chester's long search for his true identity, and the challenges he faces as a black child in a white family.

This is the story of a woman who refuses to mourn her husband's death. The village knew she was an unhappy wife, but she is still expected to weep and speak the praises of her husband. Her story reveals the value of friendship between women, based on liking rather than traditional beliefs.

Christian missionaries attempt to outlaw the female circumcision ritual and in the process create a terrible rift between the two Kikuyu communities on either side of the river.

A poverty-stricken village in the heart of rural Botswana is a haven to the exiles gathered there. When a political refugee from South Africa joins forces with an English agricultural expert, the time-honoured subsistence-farming method and old ways of life are challenged.