African Series
The Illustrated Things Fall Apart
This special, large-format, lavishly-illustrated edition of Things Fall Apart, 'Africa's best loved novel', is a timely tribute to 'the father of modern African Literature'. It is published to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of a book now considered a classic of African and World Literature. This edition uniquely blends the enduring simplicity of Achebe's tale with the creative visual talents of some of Nigeria's best and bright contemporary artists. The result is a book that will appeal to lovers of African Literature and Art the world over. A treasured testament to the art of story-tellling, Things Fall Apart Illustrated is bound to become a collector's item.
Chinua Achebe: Tributes and Reflections By Nana Ayebia Clarke
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.
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.
Challenge of the Barons By Lekan Are
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.
Man-Eaters of Kumaon By Jim Corbett (eBook)
Jim Corbett was every inch a hero, something like a "sahib" Davy Crockett: expert in the ways of the jungle, fearless in the pursuit of man-eating big cats, and above all a crack shot. Brought up on a hill-station in north-west India, he killed his first leopard before he was nine and went on to achieve a legendary reputation as a hunter. Corbett was also an author of great renown. His books on the man-eating tigers he once tracked are not only established classics, but have by themselves created almost a separate literary genre. Man Eaters of Kumaon is the best known of Corbett's books, one which offers ten fascinating and spine-tingling tales of pursuing and shooting tigers in the Indian Himalayas during the early years of this century. The stories also offer first-hand information about the exotic flora, fauna, and village life in this obscure and treacherous region of India, making it as interesting a travelogue as it is a compelling look at a bygone era of big-game hunting.
Dark Times Are Over? By Olu Obafemi
This play satirises the decay in the university system in Nigeria as symptomatic of larger social ills: prostitution, religious zeal and cultism, corruption and social injustice.
In the drama, a young woman, Beatrice, is raped by a group of cultists. The perpetrators are brought to court. But as the judge turns out to be an aunt of one of the cultists, the court is corrupted as she bribes the police to release her nephew.
About the Author:
Olu Obafemi is a playwright, poet and scholar. He is Professor of English at the University of Ilorin, Nigeria, and President of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA). He is a notable critic of contemporary theatre in Nigeria.
The Black Hermit: A Play By Ngugi
Should Remi, the first of his tribe to go to university, return to his people? Or should he continue to be a black hermit in the town?
A Cowrie of Hope By Binwell Sinyangwe
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.
A Grain of Wheat By Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
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.
A Question of Power By Bessie Head
"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 Squatter's Tale By Ike Oguine
A series of stories within a story, all narrated by Obi, a young, hopeful Nigerian immigrant in America.
A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings By Bessie Head
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.
Arrows of Rain By Okey Ndibe
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.
Beyond the Horizon By Amma Darko
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.
Can We Talk And Other Stories By Shimmer Chinodya
A collection of Zimbabwean stories following the transition from childhood to adult life. Youthful desires for prosperity, love and a purpose in life are undermined as the characters grow up, reflecting the decline in post-independence Zimbabwe.
Changes: A Love Story By Ama Ata Aidoo
Esi decides to divorce after enduring yet another morning's marital rape. Though her friends and family remain baffled by her decision (after all, he doesn't beat her!), Esi holds fast. When she falls in love with a married man—wealthy, and able to arrange a polygamous marriage—the modern woman finds herself trapped in a new set of problems. Witty and compelling, Aidoo's novel, "inaugurates a new realist style in African literature."
Devil on the Cross By Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
This remarkable and symbolic novel centers on Wariinga's tragedy and uses it to tell a story of contemporary Kenya.
God's Bits of Wood By Ousmane Sembène
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.
Mine Boy By Peter Abrahams
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.
Money Galore By S.A. Amu Djoleto
An irreverent satire set in Ghana, told with serious intent.
Neighbours: The Story of a Murder By Lília Momplé
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.
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.
Opening Spaces: Contemporary African Women's Writing By Yvonne Vera
A selection of women's poetry and prose from all over Africa. Included are some of the newest writers in modern Africa.
Search Sweet Country By B. Kojo Laing
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.
Serowe, Village of the Rain Wind By Bessie Head
An examination of Serowe's recent past - seen through the words and memories of the village inhabitants.
Smouldering Charcoal By Tiyambe Zeleza
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.
Sterile Sky By E.E. Sule
Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Africa (2013), Nigeria Prize Nominee for Literature (2012)
The Clothes of Nakedness By Benjamin Kwakye
A portrayal of contemporary Ghanaian urban society and working class lives.
The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales By Bessie Head
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.
The Girl Who Can By Ama Ata Aidoo
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.
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.
The Housemaid By Amma Darko
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.
The New Tribe By Buchi Emecheta
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.
"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.
The Purple Violet of Oshaantu By Neshani Andreas
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.
The River Between By Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
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.
When Rain Clouds Gather By Bessie Head
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.
A Man Of The People By Chinua Achebe
By the renowned author of "Things Fall Apart," this novel foreshadows the Nigerian coups of 1966 and shows the color and vivacity as well as the violence and corruption of a society making its own way between the two worlds.
Women of Owu By Femi Osofisan
This is an African retelling of Euripides: an unnervingly topical story of a people and a beloved city destroyed by the brutality of war. The play was first performed in Lagos in 2003 under the distinguished director Chuck Mike, and subsequently toured the UK.
The author introduces his work:
‘In 1821, the combined forces of the armies of two Yoruba kingdoms ransacked the city of Owu. Owu was a model city-state, one of the most prosperous and best organised of those times. The Allied Forces attacked it with the pretext of liberating the flourishing market…they slaughtered all the males and carried the females into slavery. Owu was never rebuilt…So it was quite logical that as I pondered over this adaptation of Euripides’ play in the season of the Iraqi war that the memories awakened in me should be those of the tragic Owu war…’
About the Author
Femi Osofisan
Femi Osofisan is a prolific Nigerian critic, poet, novelist, and playwright whose work attacks political corruption and injustice, was born in Erunwon village in the old Western Region of Nigeria and educated at the universities of Ibadan, Dakar, and Paris; he is a professor of drama at the University of Ibadan. Among the literary awards and commendations he has won are prizes from the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) for both drama (1980) and poetry (1989) and in 2004 he was awarded the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM), the highest academic prize in that country.
Woman Of The Aeroplanes By B. Kojo Laing
Woman Of The Aeroplanes documents fiction's most fantastic calamity--the bewilderment and resolution of people faced for the first time with their own mortality. An astonishing and exhilarating story of modern myth and meaning.
Two Plays By Niyi Osundare
In the first play, The Man who Walked Away, a principled and sensitive young man who has served a multi-national company for decades, is ‘retrenched’, with severe consequences for his self-respect and his family. In the second play, The Wedding Car, a corrupt businessman and politician exercises his ambition for his daughter to marry ostentatiously, though things do not go according to plan.
About the Author
Niyi Osundare
Poet, dramatist, critic, essayist, and media columnist, Niyi Osundare has authored over ten volumes of poetry, two books of selected poems, four plays, a book of essays, and numerous articles on literature, language, culture, and society. He regards his calling as a writer and his profession as a teacher as essentially complementary.
He was educated on three continents: B.A. (Honours) from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, M.A. from the University of Leeds in England, and Ph.D. from York University, Toronto, Canada. The wide and varied exposure accruing from this has proved very useful for his writing and teaching careers. Born in Nigeria, one of the most linguistically and culturally heterogeneous countries in the world, he learnt early in life the complexities and challenges of diversity.
He began his teaching career at the University of Ibadan in 1974 and rose to the position of full professor there in 1989. From 1993 to 1997, he was the chair of its Department of English. He was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1990 to 1991, and in 1991/92, an associate professor of English at the University of New Orleans, where he returned as full professor in 1997, and was selected university research professor in 2001. His areas of specialization are African literature, literature of the African diaspora, literary stylistics, sociolinguistics, and creative writing
About the Author
Niyi Osundare
Poet, dramatist, critic, essayist, and media columnist, Niyi Osundare has authored over ten volumes of poetry, two books of selected poems, four plays, a book of essays, and numerous articles on literature, language, culture, and society. He regards his calling as a writer and his profession as a teacher as essentially complementary.
He was educated on three continents: B.A. (Honours) from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, M.A. from the University of Leeds in England, and Ph.D. from York University, Toronto, Canada. The wide and varied exposure accruing from this has proved very useful for his writing and teaching careers. Born in Nigeria, one of the most linguistically and culturally heterogeneous countries in the world, he learnt early in life the complexities and challenges of diversity.
He began his teaching career at the University of Ibadan in 1974 and rose to the position of full professor there in 1989. From 1993 to 1997, he was the chair of its Department of English. He was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1990 to 1991, and in 1991/92, an associate professor of English at the University of New Orleans, where he returned as full professor in 1997, and was selected university research professor in 2001. His areas of specialization are African literature, literature of the African diaspora, literary stylistics, sociolinguistics, and creative writing
Things Fall Apart By Chinua Achebe
THINGS FALL APART tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society.
The second story, which is as modern as the first is ancient, and which elevates the book to a tragic plane, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world through the arrival of aggressive, proselytizing European missionaries. These twin dramas are perfectly harmonized, and they are modulated by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul. THINGS FALL APART is the most illuminating and permanent monument we have to the modern African experience as seen from within
The second story, which is as modern as the first is ancient, and which elevates the book to a tragic plane, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world through the arrival of aggressive, proselytizing European missionaries. These twin dramas are perfectly harmonized, and they are modulated by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul. THINGS FALL APART is the most illuminating and permanent monument we have to the modern African experience as seen from within
The Strange Man By Amu Djoleto
Mensa endures his Ghanaian childhood under the shadow of successive tyrannical headmasters. In his maturity he struggles with the trials that village jealousies and his own family lie upon him.