And Then He Sang A Lullaby
£7.97AND THEN HE SANG A LULLABY is a breathtaking and captivating story of two gay men who find each other in Nigeria and are determined to love despite all that stands in their way. August is a straight-passing track star who has left Enugu, his overbearing sisters, and an apathetic father to find himself at the University of Nigeria Nsukka. Segun is an openly gay student who is reluctant to fall in love with August, wanting only to be with a man who is comfortable with his sexuality and has the capacity to love without shame. But when the Same Sex (Marriage) Prohibition Act is passed, August and Segun must find a way to tend to their blossoming romance in a country determined to eradicate them. And even while they run into harshness and cruelty at the hands of people whose lives and loves are legal, the two young lovers find kindness, understanding, solace and comfort in the arms of each other and in unexpected places.
Henrietta Lacks: The Mother of Modern Medicine
£9.99Henrietta Lacks: The Mother of Modern Medicine introduces young readers to the remarkable story of story of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman whose cancer cells revolutionised medical science. This book charts Henrietta’s life, from her upbringing in Virginia through to the births of her five children, before she passed away aged31 from cervical cancer. Henrietta’s cells lived on, taking from her tumour while she was undergoing surgery without her knowledge, leading to the discovery of the first ‘immortal cell line’, and giving Henrietta the name ‘the mother of modern medicine’.
Birds of Our Land
£9.99Birds of Our Land is a child’s guide to West African birds with the aim of introducing children to some of the many fascinating birds that they may not be familiar with. It explains the basic features of birds and key things to note in observing them and is accompanied by beautiful paintings by illustrator Robin Gowen of 25 birds representing the major species in the region.
Love Offers No Safety
£12.99Love Offers No Safety: Nigeria’s Queer Men Speak tells the stories of a marginalized community in their own words. These collected narratives includestories of love, heartbreak, tenderness, and struggle, and show that there is no one universal queer experience. Love Offers No Safety also serves as an exploration of what it is to be a man–how societal pressures foster toxic masculinity, and the barriers this creates for learning to understand one another, also challenges society at large to re-think its idea of what being a man entails and what this means for society itself and how such concepts limits men and women’s freedom to be, to live and to understand each other
Crossing the Stream
£9.99Ato hasn’t visited his grandmother’s house since he was seven. He’s heard the rumors that she’s a witch, and his mother has told him he must never sit on the old couch on her porch. Now here he is, on that exact couch, with a strange looking drink his grandmother has given him, wondering if the rumors are true. What’s more, there’s a freshly dug hole in her yard that Ato
suspects may be a grave meant for him. Meanwhile at school, Ato and his friends have entered a competition to win entry to Nnoma, the island bird sanctuary that Ato’s father helped created.
But something is poisoning the community garden where their project is housed, and Ato sets out to track down the culprit. In doing so, he brings his estranged mother and grandmother back together, and begins healing the wounds left on the family by his father’s death years before.
Avenues by Train
£12.99When seven-year-old Jedza witnesses a tragic incident involving a train and the death of his close boyhood friend in his hometown Miner’s Drift, he is convinced that his life is haunted. Now in his mid-20s, Jedza is a down-and-out electrician, moving to Harare in the hopes that he will escape the darkness and superstitions of the small town. But living in the shadowy restless atmosphere of the Avenues with its mysterious pools of water rising under musasa trees, he is tormented by the disappearance of his sister and their early encounters with ancestral spirits, the shapeshifting power of the njuzu and a vengeful ngozi. To move forward, he must stop running away and confront the trauma of his past.
An eclectic, experimental novel, AVENUES BY TRAIN is a brash and confident debut by an exciting new voice
Why Do You Dance When You Walk
£12.99One morning in Paris on the way to kindergarten, a little girl asks her father “Papa, why do you dance when you walk?” The question is innocent and serious. Why does her father limp, why can’t he ride a bicycle or a scooter? Her father feels compelled to answer, to bring back the memories of his childhood in Djibouti and tell her what happened to his leg. It was a place of sunlight and dust and sickness, a sickness that made him different, unique. They called him a skinflint and a runt, but he was the smartest kid in his school.
Waberi remembers the shifting desert of Djibouti, the Red Sea, the shanty roofs of the houses in his neighborhood, an immense loneliness and some unforgettable characters: Papa-la-Tige who sold baubles to tourists, his tough, silent mother Zahra who trembled, and his grandmother nicknamed Cochise. He tells of the moment when his life changed forever and the ensuing struggle that made him a man, a man who knows the value of poetry, silence and freedom, a man who is still dancing.
Grandma and the Moon’s Hidden Secret
£3,000.00Àdùké lives with her grandparents in Ibadan and Grandma is her favourite person in the world. She loves when Grandma sings to her, and gives her treats from her stall. But one day, Àdùké comes home from school and can’t find Grandma anywhere! Àdùké doesn’t understand why Grandma can’t come back, but then her aunt Yímiká tells her a secret. Can she really see Grandma if she squints up at the moon?
Àdùkẹ́ ń gbé pẹ̀ lú àwọn òbí òbí rẹ̀ ní ìlú Ìbàdàn, Ìyá Àgbà ló sì fẹ́ràn jùlọ lágbàáyé.
Ó fẹ ́ràn kí Ìyá Àgbà máa kọrin fún àti bí wọ́n ṣe máa ń fun ní kókóró láti inú ìsọ̀ wọn.
Ní ọjọ́ kan, Àdùkẹ́ dé láti ilé-ìwé, ṣùgbọ́ n kò rí Ìyá Àgbà níbì kankan! Àdùkẹ́ ò mọ ìdí tí
Ìyá Àgbà ò le padà wá mọ́. Nígbà náà ni àntí Yímíká sọ àṣírí kan fún.
Ṣé lóòótọ́ ni ó lè rí Ìyá Àgbà nínú òṣùpá tí ó bá ṣe ojú rẹ̀ tínńtín?
Smile With African Style
£3,500.00It’s a special day in Macy’s classroom as all the children come in dressed up in their most stylish African clothing! Zahra’s Ethiopian dress is covered in beads, while Malika’s Namibian outfit is bursting with colours. And who is hiding behind that elephant mask from Cameroon? No two outfits are the same, in this beautiful and varied parade of clothing from across Africa!
Men Don’t Cry Paperback
£11.99Men Don’t Cry invites us into the home of Mourad Chennoun in Nice, where his father spends his days fixing things in the backyard, his mother bemoans the loss of her natal village in Algeria, and the name Dounia is taboo.
When Mourad’s father has a stroke, he is forced to rise above his fear of becoming an overweight bachelor, tied down to home by his mother’s cooking, and take steps to bridge the gulf between his family and estranged sister.
This quest takes him to the Paris suburbs where he starts his teaching career, and falls into the world of undocumented Algerian toyboys and discovers that Douania has become a staunch feminist, aspiring politician and fierce assimilationist.
Can Mourad adapt to his new, fast-paced Parisian life and uphold his family’s values?
A poignant coming-of-age story from the widely-acclaimed author of Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow.-
Men Don’t Cry
From £3,000.00Men Don’t Cry invites us into the home of Mourad Chennoun in Nice, where his father spends his days fixing things in the backyard, his mother bemoans the loss of her natal village in Algeria, and the name Dounia is taboo.
When Mourad’s father has a stroke, he is forced to rise above his fear of becoming an overweight bachelor, tied down to home by his mother’s cooking, and take steps to bridge the gulf between his family and estranged sister.
This quest takes him to the Paris suburbs where he starts his teaching career, and falls into the world of undocumented Algerian toyboys and discovers that Douania has become a staunch feminist, aspiring politician and fierce assimilationist.Can Mourad adapt to his new, fast-paced Parisian life and uphold his family’s values? A poignant coming-of-age story from the widely-acclaimed author of Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow.
Unbury Our Dead With Song Paperback
£11.99Unbury our Dead With Song is a novel about four talented Ethiopian musicians – The Diva, The Corporal, the Taliban Man and Miriam, who are competing to see who can sing the best Tizita (popularly referred to as Ethiopian blues). Taking place in an illegal boxing hall in Nairobi, Kenya, the competition is covered by a US educated Kenyan journalist, John Thandi Manfredi, who writes for a popular tabloid, The National Inquisitor. He follows the musicians back to Ethiopia in order to learn more about the Tizita and their lives. As he learns more about the Tizita and the multiple meanings of beauty, he uncovers that behind each of the musicians, there are layered lives and secrets. Ultimately, the novel is a love letter to African music, beauty and imagination.
In The Palace of Flowers
From £3,000.00Sex and friendship, ambition and political intrigue, secrets and betrayal will set the fate of two slaves— Jamīla and Abimelech—in this ground-breaking debut novel.
Inspired by the only existing first-person narrative of an Abyssinian slave in Iran, Jamīla Habashī, In the Palace of Flowers recreates the opulent Persian royal court of the Qajars at the end of the nineteenth century. This is a precarious time of growing public dissent, foreign interference from the Russians and British, and the problem of an aging ruler and his unsuitable heir.
Torn away from their families, Jamila, a concubine, and Abimelech, a eunuch, now serve at the whims of the royal family, only too aware of their own insignificance in the eyes of their masters. Abimelech and Jamila’s quest to take control over their lives and find meaning leads to them navigating the dangerous politics of the royal court, and to the radicals that lie beyond its walls.
Richly textured and elegantly written, at its heart In The Palace of Flowers is a novel about the fear of being forgotten.
A Man Who Is Not A Man
From £2,400.00A Man Who Is Not A Man recounts the personal trauma of a young Xhosa initiate after a rite-of-passage circumcision goes wrong. With frankness and courage, this powerful novel details the pain and lifelong shame this protagonist experiences as a result not only of the physical trauma, but the social ostracism from being labeled ‘a failed man.’ He decodes the mysteries of this long-standing cultural tradition and calls to account the elders for the disintegrating support systems that allow such tragic outcomes. But it is also through this life-changing experience that the protagonist is forced to find his strength and humanity and reassess what it really means to be a man.
The Whispering Trees
From £2,400.00The magical tales in The Whispering Trees capture the essence of life, death and coincidence in Northern Nigeria. Myth and reality intertwine in stories featuring cat-eyed English witches, political agitators, newly-wedded widows, and the tormented whirlwind, Kyakkyawa. The two medicine men of Mazade battle against their egos, an epidemic and an enigmatic witch. And who is Okhiwo, whose arrival is heralded by a pair of little white butterflies?
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Unbury Our Dead With Song
£4,500.00Unbury our Dead With Song is a novel about four talented Ethiopian musicians – The Diva, The Corporal, the Taliban Man and Miriam, who are competing to see who can sing the best Tizita (popularly referred to as Ethiopian blues). Taking place in an illegal boxing hall in Nairobi, Kenya, the competition is covered by a US educated Kenyan journalist, John Thandi Manfredi, who writes for a popular tabloid, The National Inquisitor. He follows the musicians back to Ethiopia in order to learn more about the Tizita and their lives. As he learns more about the Tizita and the multiple meanings of beauty, he uncovers that behind each of the musicians, there are layered lives and secrets. Ultimately, the novel is a love letter to African music, beauty and imagination.