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“I was a palm-wine drinkard since I was a boy of ten years of age. I had no other work than to drink palm-wine in my life.” So begins Amos Tutuola’s famed The Palm-Wine Drinkard, which came out in 1952 and is widely feted as the first West African novel in English published internationally.
more...Tomi Obaro’s debut novel Dele Weds Destiny appealed to me with its beautiful, flashy cover and the prospect of a story about girlfriends. The book with its simple prose and predictable characters was welcome company on a very hot beach day.
more...The first thing I liked about this book was its title, and the novel certainly delivers on the sensuous and sensory promises made by these four words placed alongside each other: Butter, honey, pig, bread.
more...Although “Welcome to Lagos” partly tells of tragic circumstances and corruption, the first adjective that comes to my mind to describe it is: funny.
more...Abi Daré has written a stirring debut novel that celebrates the courage of a young girl and seems to encourage readers to speak up in the face of injustice.
more...A listicle of five books set in Nigeria it’s worth checking out – from classics to less well-known newcomers, there’s some great reading here.
more...One of the most renowned novels by Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood (1979) is set during the first half of the twentieth century in Nigeria and tells the life story of Nnu Ego.
more...As one has come to expect of Emezi’s work, The Death of Vivek Oji successfully shakes up conservative constructions of gender. The writer illustrates the loneliness that can come with not conforming to social norms regarding gender and sexuality; the profound pain of not being able to be the person you are.
more...The Afrofuturist movement strives for a space for independence and self-determination for Black people and rejects European universalism. Yet writers on the African continent have also expressed how this label doesn’t speak to and for what they are doing…
more...Migrazioni/Migrations is a poetry and photography book created by Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka – the first African author to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. This anthology focuses on the reality of migration by exploring the routes that connect Italy and Africa, Nigeria specifically.
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