Literature

This Volume consists of African Proverbs I, II, and III

Americanah is a fearless novel set in Nigeria, England and America. It boldly takes on issues both big and small: love, race, home, hair, Obama, immigration, and self-invention. In the early 1990s, under Abacha’s government, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. People are leaving the country if they can and Ifemelu leaves for America, where alongside defeats and triumphs, she confronts the inevitable question of race. Obinze, unable to join her in America, goes on to live as an illegal immigrant in London. After several years they have both achieved success — Ifemelu as a popular blogger about race, and Obinze as a wealthy man in the now democratic Nigeria. When Ifemelu decides to return to Nigeria, she and Obinze must both make the biggest decision of their lives.

During the rainy season of 1995, in the bustling town of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, one family’s life is disrupted by the sudden disappearance of seventeen-year-old Paul Utu, beloved brother and son. As they grapple with the sudden loss of their darling boy, they embark on a painful and moving journey of immense power which changes their lives forever and shatters the fragile ecosystem of their once ordered family. Ajie, the youngest sibling, is burdened with the guilt of having seen Paul last and convinced that his vanished brother was betrayed long ago. But his search for the truth uncovers hidden family secrets and reawakens old, long forgotten ghosts as rumours of police brutality, oil shortages, and frenzied student protests serve as a backdrop to his pursuit.

In a tale that moves seamlessly back and forth through time, Ajie relives a trip to the family’s ancestral village where, together, he and his family listen to the myths of how their people settled there, while the villagers argue over the mysterious Company, who found oil on their land and will do anything to guarantee support. As the story builds towards its stunning conclusion, it becomes clear that only once past and present come to a crossroads will Ajie and his family finally find the answers they have been searching for.

And After Many Days introduces Ile’s spellbinding ability to tightly weave together personal and political loss until, inevitably, the two threads become nearly indistinguishable. It is a masterful story of childhood, of the delicate, complex balance between the powerful and the powerless, and a searing portrait of a community as the old order gives way to the new.

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.

From the best-selling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists comes a powerful new statement about feminism today–written as a letter to a friend.
A 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.

It is 1971, 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 Enitan’s brother, allow her friendship with the new girl next door Sheri Bakare? This novel charts the fate of these two Nigerian girls, one who is prepared to manipulate the traditional system and one who attempts to defy it.

An epic story of love and civil war set in Nigeria during the 1960s, Half of a Yellow Sun recounts the lives of three characters caught up in events larger than themselves. Ugwu, a young houseboy working for an idealistic university professor. Olanna, the professor’s mistress, and Richard, a British expatriate in love with Olanna’s twin sister, Kainene. Their relationships are thrown into jeopardy when Richard spends one drunken night with Olanna, and as the war escalates.

With Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie firmly establishes herself as a most powerful storyteller and humanist, ”the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe,” according to The Washington Post Book World.

The book has won numerous awards and accolades worldwide, including the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction in 2007.

“…He was not only the finest poet of his generation but I believe that as his work becomes better and more widely known in the world he will also be recognised as one of the most remarkable anywhere in our time…”
– Chinua Achebe

“I am an Okigbo evangelist… Christopher Okigbo is a great poet whose lines everybody should know by heart. They are tremendously beautiful.”
Celebrated writer and winner of the Booker Prize for Fiction.- Ben Okri

“Steeped alike in Western Modernist aesthetics andmyth -making traditions of his Igbo background, he fused worlds with an assurance that married lyric and epic, audacity and grace. This collection… will remind existing readers of Okigbo’s prowess and dazzle new ones.”
Literary editor of The Independent and former judge of the Booker Prize, and Commonwealth Prize.-Boyd Tonkin

In 1975, imprisoned for life on Robben Island, Nelson Mandela covertly wrote his autobiography. After painstaking months the text was smuggled out–and was promptly quashed by the African National Congress. In his later Long Walk to Freedom Mandela politely expresses “surprise” at this. Sampson reveals that Joe Slovo suppressed the book for not giving enough prominence to Communists. This revelation is remarkable–the ANC could have made much mileage from the book at a time of low fortune–yet Sampson does not follow up. There is too often a sense of eggshells lightly walked upon.

This is an intriguing and versatile effort to bring together authentic African ideas and approaches to change and transformation. It is a welcome contribution to a growing discourse, bringing together personal and communal narratives into a compelling reflection on leadership, change and transformation.

The interpreters, written by Wole Soyinka in 1965, divided into two parts, is a social realism which major theme centres on the post-independence moral decadence that plagues the Nigerian society, up-till date, attempted to be solved by the Nigerians who had just returned from studies abroad. Each of the main characters is engaged in the enterprise of interpreting himself in relation to the society in which he lives, in an attempt to discover the right way to live. The narrative is, as a result, multi-stranded and employs a shifting, subjective time-scale, and in some aspects, the narrative situation used is figural, sometimes resulting in flashbacks; rendered with an intense use of language somewhat complex and metaphorical. The novel has its settings in Lagos and University of Ibadan. There is a range of character types in The Interpreters in that each of the main personae has an individual way of interpreting the world, though of course, due to their association with each other, there is a degree of commonality in some respects, both in the sense of shared experience and of quality of experience as intellectuals, though with some exceptions. However, their interpretations tilted towards the same thought stemming from shared experiences as intellectuals, except Kola. They bear the burden of the author’s worries and emphasis on indecision. They collectively and helplessly search for self-identity as a way out of the identity crisis and lack of moral stance.

Author; Duro Oni

Category: Non Fiction / Essays

Year of Publication: 2019

289 pages