Discover Your Next Read
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The Fishermen
₦3,000In a Nigerian town in the mid 1990’s, four brothers encounter a madman whose mystic prophecy of violence threatens the core of their close-knit family.
Told from the point of view of nine year old Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, The Fishermen is the story of an unforgettable childhood in 1990s Nigeria, in the small town of Akure. When their strict father has to travel to a distant city for work, the brothers take advantage of his extended absence to skip school and go fishing. At the ominous, forbidden nearby river, they meet a dangerous local madman who persuades the oldest of the boys that he is destined to be killed by one of his siblings. What happens next is an almost mythic event whose impact-both tragic and redemptive-will transcend the lives and imaginations of its characters and its readers.
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What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky
₦2,500by Lesley Nneka Arimah
In Who Will Greet You at Home a woman desperate for a child weaves one out of hair, with unsettling results. In Wild, a disastrous night out shifts a teenager and her Nigerian cousin onto uneasy common ground. In The Future Looks Good, three generations of women are haunted by the ghosts of war, while in Light, a father struggles to protect and empower the daughter he loves. And in the title story, in a world ravaged by flood and riven by class, experts have discovered how to “fix the equation of a person” – with rippling, unforeseen repercussions.
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Who Fears Death
₦4,000An award-winning literary author presents her first foray into supernatural fantasy with a novel of post-apocalyptic Africa.
In a far future, post-nuclear-holocaust Africa, genocide plagues one region. The aggressors, the Nuru, have decided to follow the Great Book and exterminate the Okeke. But when the only surviving member of a slain Okeke village is brutally raped, she manages to escape, wandering farther into the desert. She gives birth to a baby girl with hair and skin the color of sand and instinctively knows that her daughter is different. She names her daughter Onyesonwu, which means “Who Fears Death?” in an ancient African tongue.
Reared under the tutelage of a mysterious and traditional shaman, Onyesonwu discovers her magical destiny – to end the genocide of her people. The journey to fulfill her destiny will force her to grapple with nature, tradition, history, true love, the spiritual mysteries of her culture – and eventually death itself.
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A Woman’s Body is a Country
₦2,000by Dami Ajayi
Dami Ajayi’s second volume of poems, A Woman’s Body is a Country, interrogates the ramifications of affection. A work of impressive artistry, these are poems of life turned inside out, where time cheats on writers, and the people and things at the brunt end of our oppressive pleasures come back to haunt us. Here is the poetry of the quotidian, a philosophic and profound interrogation of relationships, of words, of bodies and their burdens, of times and time.
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Nairobi Heat
₦2,000by Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ
A young and beautiful white woman is murdered in the US, and the prime suspect is former Rwandan school headmaster Joshua – a hero who had risked his life to save the innocent during Rwanda’s genocide. Ishmael, an African American detective, must investigate the case by plunging himself into Joshua’s past. He travels to Kenya, where Joshua once lived as a refugee, and finds himself unearthing his own African identity as he uncovers this violent crime.
Kenyan author Mukoma wa Ngugi’s debut novel is a gripping and hard-hitting detective thriller that questions race, identity and class.
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Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
₦1,000A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a dear friend from childhood, asking her how to raise her baby girl as a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is Adichie’s letter of response.
Here are fifteen invaluable suggestions–compelling, direct, wryly funny, and perceptive–for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. From encouraging her to choose a helicopter, and not only a doll, as a toy if she so desires; having open conversations with her about clothes, makeup, and sexuality; debunking the myth that women are somehow biologically arranged to be in the kitchen making dinner, and that men can “allow” women to have full careers, Dear Ijeawele goes right to the heart of sexual politics in the twenty-first century. It will start a new and urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be a woman today.
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Are You Not A Nigerian?
₦3,500ARE YOU NOT A NIGERIAN? by Bayo Olupohunda
Are you not a Nigerian? chronicles a country’s fourth attempt at democratic governance after many years of military dictatorship. Through his personal experiences and observations, Báyọ̀ Olúpohùndà captures the reality of Nigeria’s socio-political environment at the turn of the millennium, the collapse of dignity in service, and the ubiquitous “Nigerian factor” that creates entitlement. Are You Not A Nigerian? examines the lost opportunities, the disappointment of successive administrations, and the dilemma of a nation at a crossroads.
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Fela: This Bitch of A Life
₦4,500by Carlos Moore
African superstar, composer, singer, and musician, as well as mystic and political activist, Nigerian Fela Kuti, born in 1938, was controversy personified. He was swept to international celebrity on a wave of scandal and flamboyance, and when he died of AIDS in 1997, more than a million people attended his funeral. But what was he really like, this man who could as easily arouse violent hostility as he could unswerving loyalty?
Carlos Moore’s unique biography, based on hours of conversation and told in Fela’s first-person vernacular, reveals the icon’s complex personality and tumultuous existence. Moore includes interviews with fifteen of his queens (wives); photos; and an updated discography.
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Every Day Is For The Thief
₦1,500 – ₦2,000by Teju Cole
Visiting Lagos after many years away, Teju Cole’s unnamed narrator rediscovers his hometown as both a foreigner and a local. Over long, wandering days, the narrator compares present-day Lagos to the Lagos of his memory, and in doing so reveals changes that have taken place in himself.
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Easy Motion Tourist
₦3,500by Leye Adenle
A woman’s mutilated body is discarded by the side of a club near one of the main hotels in Victoria Island. Collins, a bystander, is picked up by the police as a potential suspect. After experiencing the unpleasant realities of a Nigerian police cell, he is rescued by Amaka, a Pam Grier-esque Blaxploitation heroine with a saintly streak. As Collins discovers more of the darker aspects of what makes Lagos tick – including the clandestine trade in organs – he also falls slowly for Amaka. Little do they realise how the body parts business is wrapped up in the power and politics of the city.
The novel features a motley cast of supporting characters, including a memorable duo of low-level Lagos gangsters, Knockout and Go-Slow. Easy Motion Tourist pulsates with the rhythms of Lagos, reeks of its open drains, and entertains from beginning to end. A modern thriller featuring a strong female protagonist, prepared to take on the Nigerian criminal world on her own.
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Freshwater
₦2,500By Awkaeke Emezi
Ada has always been unusual. As an infant in southern Nigeria, she is a source of deep concern to her family. Her parents successfully prayed her into existence, but something must have gone awry, as the young Ada becomes a troubled child, prone to violent fits of anger and grief. But Ada turns out to be more than just volatile. Born “with one foot on the other side,” she begins to develop separate selves. When Ada travels to America for college, a traumatic event crystallizes the selves into something more powerful. As Ada fades into the background of her own mind and these alters—now protective, now hedonistic—move into control, Ada’s life spirals in a dangerous direction.
Written with stylistic brilliance and based in the author’s realities, this raw and extraordinary debut explores the metaphysics of identity and being, plunging the reader intothe mysteries of self. Unsettling, heart-wrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater dazzles with ferocious energy and serpentine grace, heralding the arrival of a fierce new literary voice. (Read Excerpt)
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My Sister The Serial Killer
₦3,500by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Satire meets slasher in this short, darkly funny hand grenade of a novel about a Nigerian woman whose younger sister has a very inconvenient habit of killing her boyfriends.“Femi makes three, you know. Three and they label you a serial killer.”
Korede is bitter. How could she not be? Her sister, Ayoola, is many things: the favourite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola’s third boyfriend in a row is dead. Korede’s practicality is the sisters’ saving grace. She knows the best solutions for cleaning blood, the trunk of her car is big enough for a body, and she keeps Ayoola from posting pictures of her dinner to Instagram when she should be mourning her “missing” boyfriend. Not that she gets any credit.
A kind, handsome doctor at the hospital where Korede works, the bright spot in her life, begins to fall for Ayoola. When he asks Korede for Ayoola’s phone number, she must reckon with what her sister has become and what she will do about it.
Oyinkan Braithwaite’s first novel is a smorgasbord of wit, genre-bending thrills and quiet melancholy.
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Didi Kanu and the Singing Dwarfs of the North
₦2,500by Jude Idada
Didi Kanu is a charmingly curious eight-year-old girl who lives in a small village in Eastern Nigeria with her hopelessly poor family. She dreams of journeying to the parallel world of the Singing Magical Dwarfs of the North to uncover the mysteries of their existence. When her Uncle comes to take her away to the big city to live with him, her life takes an unexpected turn; a turn which is further complicated when her Uncle suffers a ghastly car accident and falls into a never-ending sleep. With the help of Ede, the mysterious village storyteller, Didi ventures into the realm of the hidden creation in a quest to learn the magical song that can awaken her Uncle. On this journey, Didi learns how to invoke the incredible forces behind her powerful imaginations and discovers the true meaning of unconditional love. Didi Kanu and the Singing Dwarfs of the North is a story of love, adventure, faith and belief. It is a family tale that would leave every reader enthralled.
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Tomorrow Died Yesterday
₦2,000Its 2004 Port Harcourt, Nigeria at the height of the kidnap of oil workers in the Niger delta, a kidnapping goes awry and four lives are reconnected. Douye aka Doughboy the career militant responsible for the crime. Amaibi the gentle university professor / eco-warrior accused. Kaniye the lawyer turned restaurateur who tries to get him off and Tubo an amoral oil company executive. Against a backdrop of corrupt practises, failed systems and injustice, these four friends tell the story of oil in a region and its effects on local communities and the Nigerian larger society.
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New Cheese
₦2,000New Cheese is a true life story of a young girl’s brave journey into the unknown. Here, she shares her personal story of the mountain she climbed to encourage everyone who needs to start afresh, overcome restraints and go in search of a much needed change.
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Bury Me Come Sunday Afternoon
₦2,000by Nike Campbell-Fatoki
In this short story collection Nike Campbell-Fatoki filters the life of contemporary Nigerians through a colorful and vivid prism, where past sins come to upset settled lives(Bury Me Come Sunday Afternoon), where lost lives fuel a campaign for a better future (The Hunchback) and nothing is as it seems (The Appointment). She explores welll known themes but delves a little deeper so as to question our ideas about people, our impressions and prejudices. Bury Me Come Sunday Afternoon depicts the struggles of a young ambitious and hardworking Nigerian abroad with the same insightful candour as it does the tale of a brilliant but broken woman struggling with mental illness. Her language is precise and direct, her characters are sharply observant and self-aware even as they battle odds that stack against them. Morals are explored but there is no judgement even when characters take vengeful and extreme actions. Heroes are created in unlikely scenarios and life as we know it, with more than one surprising twist, unfolds in the pages.
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The Hundred Wells of Salaga
₦3,000by Ayesha Harruna Attah
Aminah lives an idyllic life in the village of Botu, until she is brutally seperated from her home and forced on a journey that will turn her from a daydreamer into a resilient woman. Wurche, the wilful daughter of a chief, is desperate to play an important role in her father’s court of Salaga-Kpembe.
The lives of these two remarkable woman converage in a tumultuous meeting that takes them from mistress and salve to unlikely allies, as Aminah and Wurche find themselves tangled in a web of desire, jealously, political intrigue and illcit affairs. Meanwhile, infighting among Wurche’s people threatens to leave the region exposed to powers much larger than themselves.
The Hundred Wells of Salaga explores the depths of female friendships in this stirringly intimate reimagining of life in pre-colonial Ghana. This captivating novel establishes Ayesha Harruna Attah as one of the most distinctive voices of the contemporary literary scene.
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She Called Me Woman
₦3,500Edited by Azeenarh Mohammed, Chitra Nagarajan and Rafeeat Aliyu
This stirring and intimate collection brings together 25 first hand accounts to paint a vivid portrait of what it means to be a queer Nigerian woman. These brave and beautifully-told stories of resistance and resilience reveal the realities of a community that will no longer be invisible. From the joy and excitement of first love, the agony of lost love and betrayal, memories of childhood games to addiction and suicide, She Called Me Woman shows us how Nigeria’s queer woman, in all their multitudes, attempt to build a life together.
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The Pressure Cooker
₦3,500“Don’t you know you are a girl?”Nkiru Olumide-Ojo sets out, in this book, to respond to that question, and in the process, subvert its hidden “restraining” intent.In nine short and eminently readable chapters, The Pressure Cooker offers advice to women in the workplace. Advice that comes from Ms Olumide-Ojo’s lived experience—of motherhood, workplace politics, and climbing up that corporate ladder. -
Folktales Are Forever
₦2,000By Efe Farinre
This volume is the first in a collection of well-researched stories retold and of African folktales put together by Efe Farinre. We follow the usual characters (and in many cases unusual suspects) up to tricks in the animal kingdom as they traverse the landscape of our and our children’s imagination. Tortoise is still his mischievous old self. Monkey still is always restless and cannot keep still. Owl is still as wise as can be. Adults and children will be entertained by this book. These tales share the universal values of courage, friendship, kindness, and lots more that every parent was taught and desires to pass on to their children.that remembers stories they were told, and who wants to do the same for their children will enjoy this book. The songs in the stories are set to music and will provide additional fun and entertainment for the musically inclined reader.
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The Thing Around Your Neck
₦1,500In her most intimate and seamlessly crafted work to date, Adichie turns her penetrating eye on not only Nigeria but America, in twelve dazzling stories that explore the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Africa and the United States.
In “A Private Experience,” a medical student hides from a violent riot with a poor Muslim woman whose dignity and faith force her to confront the realities and fears she’s been pushing away. In “Tomorrow is Too Far,” a woman unlocks the devastating secret that surrounds her brother’s death. The young mother at the center of “Imitation” finds her comfortable life in Philadelphia threatened when she learns that her husband has moved his mistress into their Lagos home. And the title story depicts the choking loneliness of a Nigerian girl who moves to an America that turns out to be nothing like the country she expected; though falling in love brings her desires nearly within reach, a death in her homeland forces her to reexamine them.
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Stay With Me
₦3,500Yejide and Akin have been married since they met and fell in love at university. Though many expected Akin to take several wives, he and Yejide have always agreed: polygamy is not for them. But four years into their marriage–after consulting fertility doctors and healers, trying strange teas and unlikely cures–Yejide is still not pregnant. She assumes she still has time–until her family arrives on her doorstep with a young woman they introduce as Akin’s second wife. Furious, shocked, and livid with jealousy, Yejide knows the only way to save her marriage is to get pregnant. Which, finally, she does–but at a cost far greater than she could have dared to imagine.
An electrifying novel of enormous emotional power, Stay With Me asks how much we can sacrifice for the sake of family.
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Zahrah the Windseeker
₦1,500In the northern Ooni Kingdom, fear of the unknown runs deep, and children born dada are rumored to have special powers. Thirteen-year-old Zahrah Tsami feels like a normal girl — she grows her own flora computer, has mirrors sewn onto her clothes, and stays clear of the Forbidden Greeny Jungle. But unlike other kids in the village of Kirki, Zahrah was born with the telling dadalocks. Only her best friend, Dari, isn’t afraid of her, even when something unusual begins happening — something that definitely makes Zahrah different. The two friends investigate, edging closer and closer to danger. When Dari’s life is threatened. Zahrah must face her worst fears alone, including the very thing that makes her different.
In this exciting debut novel by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, things aren’t always what they seem — monkeys tell fortunes, plants offer wisdom, and a teenage girl is the only one who stands a chance at saving her best friend’s life. -
Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
₦1,000A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a dear friend from childhood, asking her how to raise her baby girl as a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is Adichie’s letter of response.
Here are fifteen invaluable suggestions–compelling, direct, wryly funny, and perceptive–for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. From encouraging her to choose a helicopter, and not only a doll, as a toy if she so desires; having open conversations with her about clothes, makeup, and sexuality; debunking the myth that women are somehow biologically arranged to be in the kitchen making dinner, and that men can “allow” women to have full careers, Dear Ijeawele goes right to the heart of sexual politics in the twenty-first century. It will start a new and urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be a woman today.
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Efuru
₦2,000by Flora Nwapa
Efuru, beautiful and respected, is loved and deserted by two ordinary undistinguished husbands.
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Everything Good Will Come
₦3,500by Sefi Atta
It is 1971, a year after the Biafran War, and Nigeria is under military rule—though the politics of the state matter less than those of her home to Enitan Taiwo, an eleven-year-old girl tired of waiting for school to start. Will her mother, who has become deeply religious since the death of Taiwo’s brother, allow her friendship with the new girl next door, the brash and beautiful Sheri Bakare?
Everything Good Will Come charts the fate of these two African girls, one born of privilege and the other, a lower class “half-caste”; one who is prepared to manipulate the traditional system while the other attempts to defy it.
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What Sunny Saw in the Flames
₦2,000What Sunny Saw in the Flames transports the reader to a magical place where nothing is quite as it seems. Born in New York, but living in Aba, Nigeria, thirteen-year-old Sunny is understandably a little lost. She is albino. Her eyes are so sensitive to the sun that she has to wait until evening to play football. Apart from being good at the beautiful game, she has a special gift: she can see into the future. At school, she soon becomes part of a special quartet with unique powers. Together, Sunny, Orlu, Chichi and Sasha explore this exciting realm of strange creatures and dark secrets. The good news is that in this world, your worst defect is actually your greatest asset. But there’s a catch. Someone is kidnapping children and maiming or killing them. The group is asked to help track down the criminal. Will Sunny be able to overcome the killer with powers stronger than her own, or will the future she saw in the flames come to reality?
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Easy Motion Tourist
₦3,500by Leye Adenle
A woman’s mutilated body is discarded by the side of a club near one of the main hotels in Victoria Island. Collins, a bystander, is picked up by the police as a potential suspect. After experiencing the unpleasant realities of a Nigerian police cell, he is rescued by Amaka, a Pam Grier-esque Blaxploitation heroine with a saintly streak. As Collins discovers more of the darker aspects of what makes Lagos tick – including the clandestine trade in organs – he also falls slowly for Amaka. Little do they realise how the body parts business is wrapped up in the power and politics of the city.
The novel features a motley cast of supporting characters, including a memorable duo of low-level Lagos gangsters, Knockout and Go-Slow. Easy Motion Tourist pulsates with the rhythms of Lagos, reeks of its open drains, and entertains from beginning to end. A modern thriller featuring a strong female protagonist, prepared to take on the Nigerian criminal world on her own.
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Born on a Tuesday
₦3,500In far northwestern Nigeria, Dantala lives among a gang of street boys who sleep under a kuka tree. During the election, the boys are paid by the Small Party to cause trouble. When their attempt to burn down the opposition’s local headquarters ends in disaster, Dantala must run for his life, leaving his best friend behind. He makes his way to a mosque that provides him with food, shelter, and guidance. With his quick aptitude and modest nature, Dantala becomes a favored apprentice to the mosque’s sheikh. Before long, he is faced with a terrible conflict of loyalties, as one of the sheikh’s closest advisors begins to raise his own radical movement. When bloodshed erupts in the city around him, Dantala must decide what kind of Muslim—and what kind of man—he wants to be.
Born on a Tuesday is a stirring, starkly rendered novel about a young boy struggling to find his place in a society that is fracturing along religious and political lines.
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You Must Set Forth at Dawn
₦6,500by Wole Soyinka
In the tough, humane, and lyrical language that has typified his plays and novels, Soyinka captures the indomitable spirit of Nigeria itself by bringing to life the friends and family who bolstered and inspired him, and by describing the pioneering theater works that defied censure and tradition. Soyinka not only recounts his exile and the terrible reign of General Sani Abacha, but shares vivid memories and playful anecdotes–including his improbable friendship with a prominent Nigerian businessman and the time he smuggled a frozen wildcat into America so that his students could experience a proper Nigerian barbecue.
More than a major figure in the world of literature, Wole Soyinka is a courageous voice for human rights, democracy, and freedom. You Must Set Forth at Dawn is an intimate chronicle of his thrilling public life, a meditation on justice and tyranny, and a mesmerizing testament to a ravaged yet hopeful land.
