Trevor Noah’s memoir Born a Crime is a funny and insightful account of growing up in pre and post-Apartheid South Africa as a biracial boy and doubles as a paean to his mother, Patricia, whose significant presence in the book marks her undeniable influence over the comedian’s life.
Read MoreAbubakar A. Ibrahim explores love, friendship, loss, sexism and violence in his debut novel Season of Crimson Blossoms, a story about a widowed, middle-aged teacher and her young gangster lover. Set in Northern Nigeria, the novel turns on its head preconceived views of what it means to be a Muslim woman living in a conservative society.
Read MoreBeginning in the seventies, and set in the backdrop of Nigeria’s turbulent military era, this coming-of-age story trails Enitan’s middle class existence from preteen to adulthood as she questions, resists, conforms and mocks gender norms.
Read MoreWritten in 1979, Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood, patriarchy takes a sobering look at societal resistance to women’s shifting roles in pre-independent Nigeria, colonialism’s impact on African culture, and the notion of pregnancy as the ultimate prize and pride of womanhood.
Read MoreThirty-five years after Chinua Achebe published The Trouble with Nigeria, Nigeria continues to grapple with the same problems enumerated in his essay, thanks to poor leadership.
Read MoreElnathan John’s debut novel is a coming-of-age story set in northern Nigeria. Its simple, unembellished prose is narrated by Dantala, the smart, inquisitive street kid and Islamic scholar, and presents a convincing picture of how poverty, corruption and brutality perpetrated by security forces have bred disaffection and insurgency groups in the country.
Read MoreOkey Ndibe’s memoir derives its comical title from a string of advice an uncle had given Ndibe on the eve of his maiden voyage to America. “And the first thing to remember is this: Never look an American in the eye… They take it as an insult,” the uncle intones. “If they catch you, a stranger, looking them in the face, they will shoot.”
Read MoreAyòbámi Adébáyò’s Bailey’s-shortlisted, debut novel Stay With Me is an engaging story about the pressures a childless couple encounters in contemporary Nigeria, where children—more than love—are often deemed the centripetal force of a marriage.
Read More“The window was one of many, the town was one. It was the only one, the one I left behind,” reads the epigraph in Teju Cole’s debut novel Every Day is for the Thief. Written like a travel diary, the story pieces together the unnamed narrator’s perception of Lagos after a long absence.
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