The Cry of the Hangkaka is the story of young Karin and her mother Irene. Shamed by a divorce, Irene seeks to flee with her daughter from post WWII South Africa. Jack, a Scotsman who works at the tin mines in Nigeria, seems to be the answer to Irenes prayers. In the torrid heat of the Nigerian plateau, Karin is exposed to the lives of the colonisers, the colonised, and most of all to the dictatorship of Jack.
Spanning multiple continents and countries, including Rwanda, the United States, and Ghana, The Three Books of Shama is an epic chronicle of the fictional life story of Rwandan-born Shama Rugwe, from her survival of the Rwandan genocide to her migration to the United States and her eventual nomination to the United States Supreme Court. All hell breaks loose following her nomination, with the ensuing Senate confirmation hearings and the opposition to her nomination exposing stubborn xenophobic beliefs, as well as gender, racial, and religious biases.
This mesmerizing novel draws the reader into the creative, erotic, and exiled minds of authors Paul and Jane Bowles. Set in Morocco in the 1940s, the story weaves around two well-known writers: Paul, a composer and the author of The Sheltering Sky, and Jane, the author of Two Serious Ladies. Through an impressive amount of research Adair recreates the lives of these literary giants, addressing themes of narcissism, betrayal, moral confusion, and love. Their struggles to write and to love, both each other and others, creates an unusually rich reading experience that proposes lingering questions about art, power, relationships, politics, and ethics.
Jamike Nnorom, an only male child of his family, was educated in the United States of America. He returned to his village in Africa on what he hoped would be a brief visit to see his widowed mother after years of absence, with the hope of coming back to America. Under circumstances he least expected, he could not return, but instead started a family. A male child with an unusual body mark is born to the couple and the oracle offered divination on behalf of the offspring. A Matter of Identity is a sequel to Ben Igwe's Award winning debut novel, Against the Odds. With interest in human and national relationships, cultural growth, and assimilation, he adroitly weaves history and cultural ethos, particularly the philosophical tenets of reincarnation in Igbo traditional society, into this novel. The author's synergistic plot arrangement, and the capsular density of its thematic construct, with myriad settings strewn together by their subject affinity, and rendered with spellbound imagery and folksy narrative, compel the reader to unconsciously surrender to an enchanting rhythmic prose. A Matter of Identity is anthropological in scope and reach; foreshadowing with nostalgic relish, yet projecting a new horizon of mutual reintegration symbolized in Ahamefule to underscore and affirm the inextricable nexus in the afro-diasporic continuum.
The wind of change had been blowing across the earth’s surface for centuries before someone made headlines with the phrase. This wind had been affecting nations, peoples, their attitudes and their ways of thinking; sometimes for the worse, and sometimes, for the better. Perhaps, one might justifiably say that this explains why the human race tends to be caught with its pants down in the matter of development; sometimes very positive, but all too often, far too negative. In every city, there is one area which remains defiantly and stubbornly averse to change or development. One such area in the municipality of Accra is James Town, with Bukom as its centre – the epitome of the black neighbourhood of the old order. Meet Ataa Kojo, who is satisfied to have won a gold tiepin for “twenty-five years of loyal service” to a European trading firm, and his family. At his age, he has not done badly at all. He would be completely satisfied with a modern toilet in his home, but the City Council says he needs a permit to “undertake construction works”… BUKOM was the first novel by Bill Marshall. This novel won the Ghana National Book Award for the young writer in 1979. Over the decades, his writings have been wide and diverse spanning film and television, radio, the press and books. Among his published books are Novels: Brother Man, The Oyster Man, Uncle Blanko’s Chair; Plays: Shadows of an Eagle, Stranger to Innocence, Son of Umbele, The Crows and Other Plays, Asana.
A man is travelling to Africa from Europe. And yet it is also about waiting - waiting for Africa. Volker, a German, leaves his home in Frankfurt for Windhoek. He leaves a lover, he is leaving for a long time, and he does not have a return ticket. He does not know anything about Africa, to him it is one country, not a continent, neither does he really know where he is going to; he just knows that he wants to leave Europe. Lufthansa, the airline that carries him stops at Charles de Gaulle airport and here he waits and waits and waits. And in the airport he observes and describes and thinks. The text is a stream of consciousness, Volker's thoughts. Interspersed with this are stories of people he encounters in the airport; a murderer, a terrorist, a person with dwarfism, a trans woman, a porn star, a terrorist, a child trafficker, a paedophile. All are connected, with each other, with Volker and with us, the readers. Adair's novel is innovative in form, self-conscious and self-critical; it challenges conventional Western assumptions that all good novels have a clear story line, a good plot and fully rounded characters.
That morning, Michelle presented her Psychology honours thesis on rape. It began: "A woman born in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped than learning how to read..." That evening, celebrating her degree, she and a friend go to the beach, where they are both robbed, assaulted and raped. Within minutes of getting help, Michelle realizes she'll never be herself again. She is now "the girl who was raped." This book is Michelle's fight to be herself again. Of the taint she feels, despite the support and resources at her disposal as the chilld of a succcessful middle-class family. Of the fall-out to friendships, job, identity. It's Michelle's brave way of standing up for the many women in South Africa, and around the world, who are raped every day.
He boarded the inter-city bus and set off on the six-hour journey to Lusaka - Christopher Columbus en route to discover a new world. Hamoonga Moyas journey would take him a long way from the township of his youth on the Zambian Copperbelt. Life in the capital brought him new friends, and new ideas, and his journalism studies introduced him to ethical dilemmas. Should we take sides when looking at the social impact of the Chinese-owned mines? Who should we blame for the impoverishment of our citizens - the new owners, or the government that made the sale? Is a stadium worth more than a hospital? Outside the classroom, Hamoongas life, and his hope for the future, were soon entangled in a web of greed, international crime, and betrayal. Only in the end will he know who his true friends are.
Winner of the 1999 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book, Africa Region. The Clothes of Nakedness cleverly examines the complexities of human relationships, offering a gritty expose of the divide between rich and poor in modern Ghana. Evil lurks in the streets of Accra and it goes by the name of Mystique Mysterious. A wealthy man with maleficent intentions, Mystique delights in manipulating the vulnerable with his exploitative deals. His bargains may seem fishy but when poverty is knocking on your door and options are limited, what choice do you have? The Clothes of Nakedness is a gripping exploration into how, when pushed, ordinary people can fall into a vicious cycle of vice and corruption that only serves to benefit the ruling class.
The 1990 Commonwealth Writers Regional Prize voted Harvest of Thorns the winner in the Best Book category. Harvest of Thorns tells the story of Benjamin Tichafa who grows up in Rhodesia in the 1960s. From a conservative, religious family, but exposed to the heady ideas of the black nationalist movements, the young student is pulled in different directions. Isolated and troubled at boarding school, he is provoked into leaving, making his way to Mozambique, and joining the freedom fighters. There, in the crucible of a bitter civil war of liberation, the young man develops into manhood. Returning, hardened, at independence, he feels that little has changed, not least within his own family circumstances, and asks himself what it means to be free in the new Zimbabwe.
