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True Citizen
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
African Myths and Folk Tales
Book Summary
How was the earth formed, and where did animals come from? Why does the hippopotamus live in water, and why do cats chase rats? Imaginative answers to these and other age-old questions can be found among the rich oral traditions of Africa. Generations of listeners have delighted in these fanciful explanations of the natural, moral, and spiritual worlds, which unfold amid a realm of talking animals, magic drums, tricksters, and fairies.
Known as the "Father of Black History," Carter Godwin Woodson was among the first scholars to promote the history and achievements of African-Americans. His compilation of fables about a jealous blind man, a disobedient daughter, a rivalry among brothers, and other timeless predicaments is punctuated with thought-provoking proverbs and gentle humor. Told in simple language, these tales will enchant readers and listeners of all ages. Over sixty evocative illustrations appear throughout the book.
ISBN:9780486477343
Author:Carter G. Woodson
African Love Stories An Anthology by ...
African love stories? Is that not some kind of anomaly? This radical collection of short stories, most published in this edition for the first time, aims to debunk the myth about African women as impoverished helpless victims. With origins that span the content, it combines budding writers with award-winning authors; the result is a melting pot of narratives from intriguing and informed perspectives.
These twenty odd tales deal with challenging themes and represent some of the most complex of love stories. Many are at once heart breaking yet heartwarming and even courageous. In Badoe's hilarious 'The Rival', we encounter a 14 -year-old girl who is determined to capture her uncle's heart. His wife, she decided would just have to go. Mr. Mensah the uncle is all of sixty years old.
Crafted by a stellar cast of authors that includes El Saadawi, Ogundipe, Magona, Tadjo, Krog, Aboulela, Adichie, Oyeyemi, wa Goro, Atta, Manyika and Baingana, there is hardly any aspect of women's love life untouched. From labour pains to burials, teenagers to octogenarians, and not to mention race-fraught and same-sex relationships, the human heart is all out there: beleaguered and bleeding, or bold, and occasionally triumphant.
It is highly recommended that you the reader take the stories one at a time, so that you meet the women protagonists individually. So that you can listen to them and hear their hearts properly" whether Sudanese, Kenyan, Ghanaian, Nigerian or Zimbabwean. As for the tales as a whole, you might find them eye-opening, perhaps even inspirational, but above all, you will be entertained by them.
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
A Womans Body is a Country Poems
Book review
"Dami Ajayi writes poignantly about family, loss, trauma, and the mystery of the human psyche with compassion and deep insight. With poems reaching always for the redemptive, Ajayi renders a seldom seen vulnerability in Nigerian poetics, leaving the reader with more hope and full of light.” – Chris Abani
"The poems in this book are aesthetically passionate and sensually fearless. This poet teaches us anew the possibilities for language and the erotic. A Woman’s Body is a Country is tenacious, vital, honed. Dami Ajayi is a compelling and brilliant poet."
– Uche Nduka
"Dami Ajayi journeys into emotional borders that reveal the burdens of transitions, offering us lyrical poetry that reinvents perspectives. Here is the poetry of the quotidian, a philosophic and profound interrogation of relationships, of words, of bodies and their burdens, of times and time. There is poetry here, and it breathes." – Jumoke Verissimo
"A Woman’s Body is a Country is a work of impressive artistry. The power of these poems lies in their ability to transform ordinary everyday phenomena into memorable, lyrical nuggets of experience. Dami Ajayi is a very exciting new voice, not just in Nigerian poetry but for the world." – Harry Garuba
ISBN:9789789628391
Author:Dami Ajayi
Dedan Kimathi The Real Story
Brief Summary
"To most people, Dedan Kimathi, the man who led the Mau Mau movement in Kenya’s forests in the 1950s to win freedom from the British Empire, has remained a shadowy and enigmatic figure.
Attempts to portray his heroic and fascinating life have produced varying results, ranging from historical distortion to artistic idealism.
ISBN:9789966498151
Author:Samuel Kahiga
Africa Leni Riefenstahl
Brief Summary
Life with the Nuba: Leni Riefenstahl's remarkable Africa oeuvre
"If Leni Riefenstahl had done nothing but visit Africa and bring back her photographs, her place in history would be secure." -Kevin Brownlow, from the introduction
The first female film director to attract international acclaim, Leni Riefenstahl began frequent trips to Africa in her early sixties, where she worked on various film and photography projects. Her favorite destination was Sudan, where she immersed herself in the Nuba tribe, learning their customs and their language.
As warm and welcoming people, the Nuba offered Riefenstahl some escape from her past as a protege of the Third Reich. She would later recall her experiences in Africa as the happiest moments in her life. This book gathers Riefenstahl's images of the Nuba, as well as of the Dinka, Shilluk, and Masai tribes into a deeply evocative publication, capturing not only the beauty, expression and age-old customs of the tribes, but also Riefentahl's profound respect and love for these people and their land.
The book includes an interview with Riefenstahl by Kevin Brownlow about her working practice in Africa, and an extensive bibliography and biography section.
ISBN:9783836523172
Author:Angelika Taschen
Shades of Benga The Story of Popular ...
Brief Summary
Shades of Benga: The Story of Popular Music in Kenya delves into the foundations of modern Kenyan music, examining external influences from the English waltz to Afro Cuban Rumba and how they helped mould new music styles across Africa. Rumba was brought to Eastern Africa via the itinerant Congolese musicians Edouard Masengo and Jean Bosco Mwenda who’s intricate guitar-picking styles largely shaped the present Kenyan sound, with the Benga playing a dominant role.
Although dozens of works have been published over the years on various characteristics of popular music in Kenya – from conventional folk to hip hop – none captures the history of music and its players as authoritatively as Shades of Benga: The Story of Popular Music in Kenya. An informed study of some literary publications and academic papers on music immediately reveals that the writers, who frequently tend to be foreign ‘experts’, do not seek the opinions of pioneer musicians who helped shape the various genres of music.
Their research is largely based on information obtained from sources that are readily available on the Internet but often not easily verifiable. As we wrote this book, we made every possible effort to engage with practitioners directly involved in creating and shaping benga in order to ensure that their collective voice remains the sole critical factor to placing the music in its proper perspective while simultaneously giving the other genres in Kenya their correct definition. We undertook the arduous task of meticulously putting together the content that would faithfully recount the remarkable story of the development of our music in a manner previously not attempted.
In an effort to make this 678-page book an easy read as well as eye catching, Shades of Benga: The Story of Popular Music in Kenya features over 400 pictures.
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ISBN:6164001943132
Author:Ketebul Music
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
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
Rumba on the River
Brief Summary
Rumba on the River: A History of the Popular Music of the Two Congos
There had always been music along the banks of the Congo River—lutes and drums, the myriad instruments handed down from ancestors. But when Joseph Kabasele and his African Jazz went chop for chop with O.K. Jazz and Bantous de la Capitale, music in Africa would never be the same. A sultry rumba washed in relentless waves across new nations springing up below the Sahara. The Western press would dub the sound soukous or rumba rock; most of Africa called in Congo music.
Born in Kinshasa and Brazzaville at the end of World War II, Congon music matured as Africans fought to consolidate their hard-won independence. In addition to great musicians—Franco, Essous, Abeti, Tabu Ley, and youth bands like Zaiko Langa Langa—the cast of characters includes the conniving King Leopold II, the martyred Patrice Lumumba, corrupt dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, military strongman Denis Sassou Nguesso, heavyweight boxing champs George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, along with a Belgian baron and a clutch of enterprising Greek expatriates who pioneered the Congolese recording industry.
Rumba on the River presents a snapshot of an era when the currents of tradition and modernization collided along the banks of the Congo. It is the story of twin capitals engulfed in political struggle and the vibrant new music that flowered amidst the ferment.
ISBN:9781859843680
Author:Gary Stewart
The Wizard of the Nile by Matthew Green
Brief Summary
The Wizard of the Nile: The Hunt for Africa's Most Wanted
The civil war in Uganda has bled on for over two decades, spilling over into Sudan and the Congo and drawing only occasional interest from the West. The rebel insurgency in the north is led by "the wizard of the Nile," Joseph Kony, whose Lord's Resistance Army is infamous both for its wish to rule Uganda according to the Ten Commandments and its unrelenting brutality.
Matthew Green journeys up the White Nile in order to answer what seemed at first a simple question: "How could one maniac leading an army of abducted children hold half a country hostage for twenty years?" His quest is complicated not only by his plunge into a war zone to find the notoriously elusive Kony, but because the conflict itself continues to resist his, and our, attempts to understand it.
He meets the victims maimed or raped by Kony's soldiers; the soldiers themselves, who were first children, victims of abduction; the refugees living in poverty and fear in overcrowded camps; the foreigners working to bring peace; and the political leaders who have their own reasons for preferring war to peace.
Green is an invaluable guide to this forgotten conflict, providing honest, intelligent insight into suffering too little understood and too long ignored.
"
ISBN:9781566567367
Author:Matthew Green
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
Crossbones by Nuruddin Farah
A gripping new novel from today's "most important African novelist". (The New York Times Review of Books) A dozen years after his last visit, Jeebleh returns to his beloved Mogadiscio to see old friends. He is accompanied by his son-in-law, Malik, a journalist intent on covering the region's ongoing turmoil. What greets them at first is not the chaos Jeebleh remembers, however, but an eerie calm enforced by ubiquitous white-robed figures bearing whips.
Meanwhile, Malik's brother, Ahl, has arrived in Puntland, the region notorious as a pirates' base. Ahl is searching for his stepson, Taxliil, who has vanished from Minneapolis, apparently recruited by an imam allied to Somalia's rising religious insurgency. The brothers' efforts draw them closer to Taxliil and deeper into the fabric of the country, even as Somalis brace themselves for an Ethiopian invasion. Jeebleh leaves Mogadiscio only a few hours before the borders are breached and raids descend from land and sea. As the uneasy quiet shatters and the city turns into a battle zone, the brothers experience firsthand the derailments of war.
Completing the trilogy that began with Links and Knots, Crossbones is a fascinating look at individuals caught in the maw of zealotry, profiteering, and political conflict, by one of our most highly acclaimed international writers.
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
