Description

It is 1971, a year after the Biafran War, and Nigeria is under military rule. The politics of the state matter less to eleven-year-old Enitan than whether her mother, now deeply religious since the death of Enitan's brother, will allow her friendship with the new girl next door, the brash and beautiful Sheri Bakare. Everything Good Will Come charts the unusual friendship and fate of these two girls; one who is prepared to manipulate the traditional system and one who attempts to defy it. Enitan's is the story of a fiercely intelligent, strong young woman coming of age in a culture that still insists on feminine submission. She sees the poverty and knows about the brutal military dictatorship but it is not until politics invades her own family that she defies her husband and moves from bystander to activist. She bucks the familial and political systems until she is confronted with the one desire that is too precious to forfeit in the name of personal freedom-her desire for a child.

Bibliography

Sefi Atta is the author of Everything Good Will Come, Swallow, News from Home, A Bit of Difference and Sefi Atta: Selected Plays. Sefi has received several literary awards, including the 2006 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa and the 2009 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. Her radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC and her stage plays have been performed internationally. She divides her time between the USA, UK and Nigeria

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Bibliography

The sequel to Roland Watson-Grant's acclaimed novel Sketcher Having left the Louisiana swamp behind, the Beaumonts are finding it hard to settle into the big city. As he unpacks the boxes after their move to Eastern New Orleans, the now sixteen-year old Skid finds a diary which had belonged to his older brother Frico. Among various other family secrets that emerge from this discovery is the startling revelation that Skid is a hoodoo word of ominous significance. This throws Skid's mind into turmoil and prompts him to launch into a quest for the real meaning of his name and the very foundations of his own being, an adventure which will pit him against his own brother and lead him to encounter Claire, a mysterious girl who seems to hold the answers to some of his questions. Heart-warming, funny and poignant, Skid - the second volume in Roland Watson-Grant's Trilogy of the Swamp after the critically acclaimed Sketcher - continues the exploration of a young man's coming of age in today's broken world.

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What elevates 'teaching my mother how to give birth', what gives the poems their disturbing brilliance, is Warsan Shire's ability to give simple, beautiful eloquence to the veiled world where sensuality lives in the dominant narrative of Islam; reclaiming the more nuanced truths of earlier times - as in Tayeb Salih's work - and translating to the realm of lyric the work of the likes of Nawal El Saadawi. As Rumi said, ""Love will find its way through all languages on its own""; in 'teaching my mother how to give birth', Warsan's début pamphlet, we witness the unearthing of a poet who finds her way through all preconceptions to strike the heart directly. Warsan Shire is a Kenyan-born Somali poet and writer who is based in London. Born in 1988, she is an artist and activist who uses her work to document narratives of journey and trauma. Warsan has read her work internationally, including recent readings in South Africa, Italy and Germany, and her poetry has been translated into Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

Bibliography

Heralded for writing deeply memorable . . . women (Jennifer Senior, New York Times), Nicole Dennis-Benn introduces readers to an unforgettable heroine for our times: the eponymous Patsy, who leaves her young daughter behind in Jamaica to follow Cicely, her oldest friend, to New York. Beating with the pulse of a long-withheld confession and peppered with lilting patois, Patsy gives voice to a woman who looks to America for the opportunity to love whomever she chooses, bravely putting herself first. But to survive as an undocumented immigrant, Patsy is forced to work as a nanny, while back in Jamaica her daughter, Tru, ironically struggles to understand why she was left behind. Greeted with international critical acclaim from readers who, at last, saw themselves represented in Patsy, this astonishing novel fills a literary void with compassion, complexity and tenderness (Joshunda Sanders, Time), offering up a vital portrait of the chasms between selfhood and motherhood, the American dream and reality.

Bibliography

Friends since attending university in Jamaica, Lethe and Daniel have long realized they would never be good for each other. But Lethe is Daniel's muse, and theirs is a connection that proves unbreakable as they spend the next thirty years crisscrossing the Caribbean and travelling the world in search of work, love, and home. Now, Daniel has become an internationally renowned prize-winning poet, and Lethe aspires to be a writer in her own right. His invitation to her to join him at an isolated retreat, Peacock Island, gives them both a chance to reflect on the life they've shared.

The debut novel by Governor General's Literary Award-winning author Rachel Manley, The Black Peacock is the story of two unforgettable characters, adrift on the ever-changing tides of the Caribbean, who are united by something less than passion but more than love.