The Sacred Door and Other Stories
The Sacred Door and Other Stories

Author: Juliana Makuchi Abbenyi-Nfah

Publisher: Ohio University Press

Published: 2007-12-01

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 0896804585

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The Sacred Door and Other Stories: Cameroon Folktales of the Beba offers readers a selection of folktales infused with riddles, proverbs, songs, myths, and legends, using various narrative techniques that capture the vibrancy of Beba oral traditions. Makuchi retells the stories that she heard at home when she was growing up in her native Cameroon. The collection of thirty-four folktales of the Beba showcases a wide variety of stories that capture the richness and complexities of an agrarian society’s oral literature and traditions. Revenge, greed, and deception are among the themes that frame the story lines in both new and familiar ways. In the title story, a poor man finds himself elevated to king. The condition for his continued success is that he not open the sacred door. This tale of temptation, similar to the story of Pandora’s box, concludes with the question, “What would you have done?” Makuchi relates the stories her mother told her so that readers can make connections between African and North American oral narrative traditions. These tales reinforce the commonalities of our human experiences without discounting our differences.

Disturbing the Peace
Disturbing the Peace

Author: Emmanuel Achu

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2008-05-15

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 9956715042

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If Minna has a successful career, a loving husband, wonderful children - all well-deserved - is it compulsory that she must also toil for a reckless sister who has diametrically opposed priorities? Her biased mother thinks so. What if the sister dumps her child on Minna's veranda and vamooses and in trying to find the sister to give back her child, there appear some strange persons and a cult intended on grabbing the child? A decision has to be made and made fast. How could Minna ever envisage that in trying to help her careless sister and baby while taking care of her own family she would end up antagonising everyone in spite of her desperate battle to spread love to all? Just where are her priorities? How prepared is she for the unexpected conclusion to her simmering travails? Hell definitely breaks lose in this emotionally charged family saga in which Emmanuel Achu carves a world where such opposites as love and hate, sympathy and apathy, despair and hope, fear and courage, friendship and enmity reside as bedfellows. Disturbing the Peace is definitely a lyrical treat where you would be shocked to discover that being responsible can equate to being cursed.

Kuttiedathi and Other Stories
Kuttiedathi and Other Stories

Author: M. T. Vasudevan Nair

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13:

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Kuttiedathi and Other Stories is a careful collection of ten short stories. This collection brings together some of the most well known stories of M T Vasudevan Nair, fairly representative of his literary works. Written over a broad span of time from 1962 to 2000, the stories collected here reflect the built-in variety of his fictional concerns and the changing tones of his narration.

Cup Man and Other Stories
Cup Man and Other Stories

Author: Tikum Mbah Azonga

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 9956558419

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This is a collection of eight fictional short stories on themes such as the intrigues of the civil service, drunkenness, theft, matrimonial relations and living as an African immigrant in the West.

Chopchair
Chopchair

Author: Linus Asong

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2010-02-01

Total Pages: 102

ISBN-13: 9956715263

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The extremely irritable and quick-tempered chieftain, Akendong II has 14 children, all girls, and is saddened by the fact that he has no chopchair, a male heir to his throne. Then news comes to him that his favourite wife has given birth to a pair of twins, boys. He is even more angered by the fact that he has two heirs, a source of trouble for his kingdom. To avoid his wrath, his councillors change the story, sending away one of the boys to grow in hiding. Learning of the truth about his birth 15 years afterwards, the prince in hiding returns, kidnaps the palace prince and demands his full share of the kingdom. His will is done, but at a very great cost to the chief's peace of mind and relationship with his people. This is by far the shortest of Asong's novels and the least complicated by comparison. But the conflicts, the hallmarks of his art are still there, so also is his breathtaking suspense.

The Wooden Bicycle and Other Stories
The Wooden Bicycle and Other Stories

Author: Mbah Azonga

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2009-10-15

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 9956717266

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The Wooden Bicycle and Other Stories is a compilation of eight compelling short stories which immediately engage the reader, regardless of which story is selected for reading. Just like the author's other collection of short stories, Cup Man and Other Stories, the book is a depiction of the joys and pains of everyday life in the typical African country or even in the West Indies. This dimension includes an in-depth look at life within the African community in the West - an experience which is, of course daunting as the immigrant struggles to adjust to the new dispensation. Azonga once again shows outstanding skill in narrative techniques by adopting a style that is at once simple and intricate, entertaining and instructive.

The Call of Blood
The Call of Blood

Author: Nkemngong Nkengasong

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 69

ISBN-13: 9956716812

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Efenze, the President of the Board of Directors of government companies and a member of the Central Committee of the Ruling Party, eliminates his erstwhile business contractor, Sancheu, with the complicity of the latter's wife. His aim is to inherit Sancheu's widow and wealth and to forge his way into the Political Bureau of the Party. The Call of Blood is a dramatization of evil in its multifaceted dimensions including treachery, infidelity, greed, hypocrisy, double-crossing and vaulting ambition in a postcolonial society where those who wield political and financial power thrive or perish by their involvement in obscure schemes. The play is enriched by a great sense of dramatic economy and poetic style evident in the preponderant use of local imagery.

Voicing the Voiceless
Voicing the Voiceless

Author: Walter Gam

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2010-04-01

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 9956717878

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The history of the subalterns, also known as the history of the voiceless, took currency in the early 1980s in South East Asia and has been dominated by scholars from that region. Despite its popularity, the history of the voiceless has not gained the attention it deserves in Cameroon historiography. In other parts of Africa and beyond this type of history has already taken root and animated scholarly production and debate. Cameroon history has been replete with studies that focus mostly on political history and the actions and intentions of top politicians of the day, with scant regard for the historical importance of the everyday life of ordinary Cameroonians as makers and breakers. This book takes a bold step in the direction of subaltern studies in Cameroon, and makes a clarion call for the institutionalization of voicing the voiceless. Nkwi - innovative and stimulating in his blend of history and ethnography of the everyday - offers fresh insights into the contextual understandings of subaltern Cameroon between 1958 and 2009. This is a welcome contribution to closing gaps in social history, from a leader amongst a budding new generation of historians of Cameroon and Africa.