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Blue Shoes and Happiness
Brief Summary
There is considerable excitement at The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. A cobra has been found in Precious Ramotswe's office. Then a nurse from a local medical clinic reveals that faulty blood–pressure readings are being recorded there.
And Botswana has a new advice columnist, Aunty Emang, whose advice is rather curt for Mma Ramotswe’s taste.
In this latest installment in the internationally best-selling, universally beloved series, there is considerable excitement at The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. A cobra has been found in Precious Ramotswe’s office.
Then a nurse from a local medical clinic reveals that faulty blood–pressure readings are being recorded there. And Botswana has a new advice columnist, Aunty Emang, whose advice is rather curt for Mma Ramotswe’s taste.
All this means a lot of work for our heroine and her inestimable assistant, Grace Makutsi, and they are, of course, up to the challenge. But there’s trouble brewing in Mma Makutsi’s own life. When Phuti Radiphuti misses their customary dinner date, she begins to wonder if he is having second thoughts about their engagement.
And while Mma Makutsi may be able to buy that fashionably narrow (and uncomfortable) pair of blue shoes, it may not buy her the happiness that Mma Ramotswe promises her she’ll find in the simpler things—in contentment with the world and enough tea to smooth over the occasional bumps in the road.
ISBN:9781400075713
Author:Alexander McCall Smith
Incidents at the shrine
Brief summary
Incidents at the Shrine is the first collection of stories by the author of 1991 Booker Prize-winning novel, The Famished Road.
Whether the subject is a child's eye view of the Nigerian Civil War, Lagos and the spirit world or dispossession in a decaying British inner city, Okri's lyrical, poetic and humorous prose recreates the known and the unknown world with startling power.
ISBN:9780099983002
Author:Ben Okri
The Magic Lamp Dreams of Our Age
Brief summary
Twenty-five stories, twenty-five paintings, five years to write, ten years to paint. This is an extraordinary collaboration between artist and artist: the Booker Prize-winning writer Ben Okri and the painter Rosemary Clunie. Together they have created a world, and peopled it with dreams.
Twenty-five fairy tales for adults, these narratives are a response to our times, informed by our world but not limited by it, imaginative, enchanting, haunting – both prescient and prophetic. Twenty-five original paintings, beautiful, playful, intimate, dreamlike, these works pull you in to a land of colour and vision.
Who can say which came first, the word or image, when both grew together out of a long friendship and a creative symbiosis. What if Calvino and Magritte had combined inspiration? What if we could see our world again with a child's eyes? What if there really is a magic lamp
ISBN:9781786694508
Author:Ben Okri and Rosemary Clunie
Wild
Brief summary
Ben Okri is a prolific Booker-Prize winning novelist and essayist, but has published only two collections of poetry. The first was An African Elegy and the second was Mental Fight. Both were highly regarded. Thus a third collection is a literary event, especially since 13 years have elapsed since his last.
As acclaimed for his poetic vision as for the beauty of his language, in these poems Okri captures both the tenderness and the fragility, as well as the depths and the often hidden directions of our lives. To him, the 'wild' is an alternative to the familiar; an essential place in the journey where energy meets freedom, where art meets the elemental, where chaos can be honed.
The wild is our link to the stars... Ranging across a wide variety of subjects, from the autobiographical to the philosophical, from war to love, from nature to the difficulty of truly seeing, these poems reconfigure the human condition in unusual light through their mastery of tone and condensed brilliance.
ISBN:9781846043307
Author:Ben Okri
Tadunos Song
Brief summary
The day a stained brown envelope arrives from Taduno's homeland, he knows that the time has come to return from exile. Arriving full of trepidation, the musician discovers that his community no longer recognizes him, believing that Taduno is dead.
His girlfriend Lela has disappeared, taken away by government agents. As he wanders through his house in search of clues, he realises that any traces of his old life have been erased. All that was left of his life and himself are memories.
But Taduno finds a new purpose: to unravel the mystery of his lost life and to find his lost love. Through this search, he comes to face a difficult decision: to sing for love or to sing for his people. Taduno's Song is a moving tale of sacrifice, love and courage.
ISBN:9781782118053
Author:Odafe Atogun
Beneath the Darkening Sky
Brief Summary
On the day that Obinna’s village is savagely attacked by the rebel army and his father murdered, he witnesses violence beyond his imagination. Along with his older brother he finds himself thrown into a truck when the soldiers leave, to be shaped into an agent of horror – a child soldier.
Marched through minefields and forced into battle, enduring a brutal daily existence, Obinna slowly works out which parts of himself to save and which to sacrifice in this world turned upside down.
Beneath the Darkening Sky is a terrifyingly powerful, brilliantly insightful portrait of how a human being copes when forced to become inhuman. Like all great fiction, it imagines the unimaginable, and announces the arrival of a searing new voice from the heart of Africa.
ISBN:9781926428420
Author:Majok Tulba
Infinite Riches
Brief Summary
Azaro is a spirit child. He made a pact with his spirit companions that when he was born he would die at the first opportunity, but after his birth, he broke the pact and continued to live.
His spirit companions threatened to send seven spirits to reclaim him. So far, five have tried and failed, but the remaining two are the most dangerous of all.
This continuation of the story of Azaro is rich with allegorical vision, and interwoven with the politics of Nigeria.
ISBN:9781861591203
Author:Ben Okri
Damned Nations Greed Guns Armies and Aid
Brief Summary
In 1995, twenty-five-year-old Samantha Nutt, a recent medical-school graduate and a field volunteer for UNICEF, touched down in Baidoa, Somalia, the "City of Death." What she saw there would spur her on to a lifetime of passionate advocacy for children and families in war-torn areas around the world.
Damned Nations is the brilliant distillation of Dr. Nutt's observations over the course of fifteen years providing hands-on care in some of the world's most violent flashpoints, all the while building the world class non-profit War Child North America.
Combining original research with her personal story, it is a deeply thoughtful meditation on war as it is being waged around the world against millions of civilians -- primarily women and children. Nutt's boundless energy, dedication, and compassion shine through on every page as she lays out real, lasting solutions to these problems and shows how to move beyond outdated notions of charity towards a more progressive, inclusive, and respectful world view.
ISBN:9780771051463
Author:Samantha Nutt
True Citizen by Oduor Jagero
Brief Summary
Maina is a violent robber whose disgust for blood and craving to be loved forces him to quit for a better career. But when Maina lands the job of a taxi driver, he realizes that he has slipped into the underworld bedeviled by corrupt traffic police, city council officers, and cartels.
Maina’s only child, Maria, is dying of a bone disease and his wife has had her womb surgically removed. A traffic police officer slaps him with trumped-up charges prompting his sack. Kama, his conductor, plans a revenge against the entire traffic police force. Maina buys into the idea and heads the revenge mission.
Another woman comes into Maina’s life. Roger, a famous hacker in Nairobi’s underworld, and his friends join in. All the security arms react with brute force. Maina has to dodge the scheming security organs. Will Maina survive the emotional breakdown from a dying daughter and fend off the seduction of another woman and still get his revenge?
ISBN:9789966074041
Author:Oduor Jagero
An Abundance of Scorpions
Book Summary
Following a horrific tragedy, Tambaya leaves Kano for Accra to live with her brother, Aminu. Sadly, her dream of a new beginning is dashed when she can no longer endure the indignity she suffers at the hands of her brother’s new wife.
Tambaya returns to northern Nigeria and soon finds work as a matron in an orphanage, under the watchful eye of the ruthless Miss Scholastica. Just when she begins to settle into her new life, an unexpected visit threatens to destroy everything she has worked so hard to build. Tambaya faces moral dilemmas on all sides, but she must stop her life from unravelling once again.
Vulnerable, and surrounded by malice, corruption and greed, Tambaya struggles to shape her destiny. An Abundance of Scorpions charts one woman’s journey through grief and uncertainty to a road that leads to self-discovery, redemption and love.
ISBN:9789789593231
Author:Hadiza Isma El-Rufai
Africa 39 New Writing from Africa sou...
Book Summary
In 2014, UNESCO's World Book Capital is Port Harcourt, Nigeria-the first city in Africa to receive the designation by public bid.
This makes it a special year for the Port Harcourt Book Festival, which will be in its seventh year, and bigger than ever. They are joining forces with the internationally renowned Hay Festival, which will bring to Port Harcourt its 39 Project-a competition to identify the thirty-nine most promising young talents under the age of forty in sub-Saharan Africa and the diaspora. It follows the success of Bogotá 39 in 2007 and Beirut 39 in 2010.
Both recognized a number of authors who now have international profiles: in Bogotá, Adriana Lisboa, Alejandro Zambra, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Daniel Alarcón, and Junot DÃaz; in Beirut, Randa Jarrar, Joumana Haddad, Abdellah Taia, Samar Yazbek, and Faiza Guene. In Nigeria this year, the esteemed judges include leading-edge publisher Margaret Busby; novelist and playwright Elechi Amadi,writer and scholar Osonye Tess Onwueme, and Caine Prize winner Binyavanga Wainaina.
For the second time, Bloomsbury is honored to be a part of the festivities, publishing worldwide Africa39-a collection of brand new work from these talented thirty-nine.
With an introduction by Wole Soyinka, Africa39 is a must-read for anyone curious about Africa today and Africa tomorrow, as envisioned through the eyes of its brightest literary stars.
ISBN:9781620407790
Author:Ellah Wakatama Allfrey and Wole Soyinka
Learning to Listen Notes from an Expa...
Brief Summary
‘A listening ear leads to life but a deaf ear leads to death.’ - KENYAN PROVERB
Brian Polkinghorne spent twenty six years in East Africa, primarily engaged in agricultural development work. In this book he relates stories from his experience, and offers valuable advice for Western visitors to Africa.
Topics covered include dealing with cultural issues by learning to communicate effectively in a dramatically different cultural context, handling encounters with African traditional religion and witchcraft and everyday issues arising from food, dress and differences in worldviews.
Polkinghorne is always compassionate, advocating for patience and understanding. He works his way through a plethora of cultural conflicts and thinks outside the box about his own biased cultural assumptions.
Learning to Listen contains tales of trials, heartache and misunderstandings, but is also filled with blessings, hilarity, little gems of wisdom and astonishing successes. It will be helpful for the first-time visitor to East Africa, as well as the long-term resident and the development worker.
ISBN:9781546502548
Author:Brian Polkinghorne
Easy Motion Tourist
Brief Summary
Easy Motion Tourist is a compelling crime novel set in contemporary Lagos. It features Guy Collins, a British hack who stumbles by chance into the murky underworld of the city. A woman's mutilated body is discarded by the side of a club near one of the main hotels in Victoria Island. Collins, a bystander, is picked up by the police as a potential suspect.
After experiencing the unpleasant realities of a Nigerian police cell, he is rescued by Amaka, a Pam Grier-esque Blaxploitation heroine with a saintly streak. As Collins discovers more of the darker aspects of what makes Lagos tick - including the clandestine trade in organs - he also falls slowly for Amaka.
Little do they realize how the body parts business is wrapped up in the power and politics of the city. The novel features a motley cast of supporting characters, including a memorable duo of low-level Lagos gangsters, Knockout and Go-Slow. Easy Motion Tourist pulsates with the rhythms of Lagos, reeks of its open drains, and entertains from beginning to end. A modern thriller featuring a strong female protagonist, prepared to take on the Nigerian criminal world on her own.
ISBN:9781911115069
Author:Leye Adenle
Harare North by Brian Chikwava
Brief Summary
In an astonishing, revelatory original debut, Caine Prize for African Writing winner Brian Chikwava tackles head-on the realities of life as a refugee.
When he lands in Harare North, our unnamed protagonist carries nothing but a cardboard suitcase full of memories and an email address for his childhood friend, Shingi. Finessing his way through immigration, he spends a few restless weeks as the very unwelcome guest in his cousin's home before tracking down Shingi in a squat.
This shocking, powerful first novel is the story of a stranger in a strange land—one of the thousands of illegal Zimbabwean immigrants seeking a better life—with a past he is determined to hide. From the first line the language fizzes with energy, humor, and not a little menace. As he struggles to make his life in London (the "Harare North" of the title) and battles with the weight of what he has left behind in a strife-torn Zimbabwe, every expectation and preconception is turned on its head.
The inhabitants of the squat function at various levels of desperation: Shingi struggles to find meaningful work and to meet the demands of his family back home; Tsitsi makes a living renting out her baby to women defrauding Social Services; Alex claims to have an important job in Croydon. Fearlessly political, laugh-out-loud funny, and with an anti-hero whose voice is impossible to forget, this novel is an arresting account of London as it is experienced by Africa's dispossessed.
ISBN:9780099526759
Author:Brian Chikwava
Empire State Building War And Welfare...
Brief Summary
This history of administrative thought and practice in colonial Kenya looks at the ways in which white people tried to engineer social change.
It asks four questions:
• Why Kenya’s welfare operation was so idiosyncratic and spartan compared with that of other British colonies?
• Why did a transformation from social welfare to community development produce further neglect of the very poor?
• Why was there no equivalent to the French tradition of community medicine?
• If there was a transformatory element of colonial rule that sought to address poverty, where and why did it fall down? The answers offer revealing insight into the dynamics of rule in the late colonial period in Kenya.
ISBN:9780821413999
Author:Joanna Lewis
Religion and Politics in East Africa
Brief Summary
Religion & Politics in East Africa: The Period since Independence
This volume describes attempts by governments to manage religious affairs in both Muslim and Christian areas of East Africa. It also shows how religious denominations act in opposition to one-party state regimes; Islamic fundamentalism.
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ISBN:9780852553848
Author:Holger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle
Africa’s Urban Revolution
Brief Summary
The facts of Africa's rapid urbanization are startling. By 2030 African cities will have grown by more than 350 million people and the continent will have surpassed the 50% urban mark. Yet, in the minds of policy makers, scholars and much of the general public, Africa remains a quintessential rural place.
This lack of awareness and robust analysis means it is difficult to make a policy case for a more overtly 'urban agenda'. As a result, there is, across the continent, insufficient urgency directed to responding to the challenges and opportunities associated with the world's last major wave of urbanization.
Drawing on the expertise of scholars and practitioners associated with the African Centre for Cities, and utilizing a diverse array of case studies, the book provides comprehensive insight into the key issues - demographic, cultural, political, technical, environmental and economic - surrounding African urbanization.
ISBN:9781780325200
Author:Edgar Pieterse and Susan Parnell
Security and Post Conflict Reconstruc...
Brief Summary
This book provides a critical analysis of the changing discourse and practice of post-conflict security-promoting interventions since the Cold War, such as disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR), and security-sector reform (SSR)
Although the international aid and security sectors exhibit an expanding appetite for peace-support operations in the 21st Century, the effectiveness of such interventions are largely untested. This book aims to fill this evidentiary gap and issues a challenge to 'conventional' approaches to security promotion as currently conceived by military and peace-keeping forces, drawing on cutting-edge statistical and qualitative findings from war-torn areas including Afghanistan, Timor Leste, Sudan, Uganda, Colombia and Haiti. By focusing on specific cases where the United Nations and others have sought to contain the (presumed) sources of post-conflict violence and insecurity, it lays out a new research agenda for measuring success or failure.
This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, peacekeeping, conflict resolution, conflict and development and security studies in general.
ISBN:9780415544405
Author:Robert Muggah
My First Coup Detat
Brief Summary
My First Coup d'Etat: And Other True Stories from the Lost Decades of Africa
My First Coup d'Etat chronicles the coming-of-age of John Dramani Mahama in Ghana during the dismal post-independence "lost decades" of Africa. He was seven years old when rumors of a coup reached his boarding school in Accra. His father, a minister of state, was suddenly missing, then imprisoned for more than a year.
My First Coup d'Etat offers a look at the country that has long been considered Africa's success story. This is a one-of-a-kind book: Mahama's is a rare literary voice from a political leader, and his personal stories work on many levels - as fables, as history, as cultural and political analyses, and, of course, as the memoir of a young man who, unbeknownst to him or anyone else, would grow up to be vice president of his nation.
Though nonfiction, these are stories that rise above their specific settings and transport the reader - much like the fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Nadine Gordimer - into a world all their own, one which straddles a time lost and explores the universal human emotions of love, fear, faith, despair, loss, longing, and hope despite all else.
ISBN:9781608198597
Author:John Dramani Mahama
So You Want to Talk About Race
Brief Summary
A current, constructive, and actionable exploration of today's racial landscape, offering straightforward clarity that readers of all races need to contribute to the dismantling of the racial divide
In So You Want to Talk About Race, Editor at Large of The Establishment Ijeoma Oluo offers a contemporary, accessible take on the racial landscape in America, addressing head-on such issues as privilege, police brutality, inter sectionalist, micro-aggressions, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the "N" word. Perfectly positioned to bridge the gap between people of color and white Americans struggling with race complexities, Oluo answers the questions readers don't dare ask, and explains the concepts that continue to elude everyday Americans.
Oluo is an exceptional writer with a rare ability to be straightforward, funny, and effective in her coverage of sensitive, hyper-charged issues in America. Her messages are passionate but finely tuned, and crystalize ideas that would otherwise be vague by empowering them with aha-moment clarity. Her writing brings to mind voices like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Roxane Gay, and Jessica Valenti in Full Frontal Feminism, and a young Gloria Naylor, particularly in Naylor's seminal essay "The Meaning of a Word."
ISBN:9781580056779
Author:Ijeoma Oluo