Catalogue 2015 - Parresia Publishers

Catalogue 2015
34, Allen Avenue, Ikeja, Lagos
0815 458 2178
[email protected]
www.parresia.com.ng
“Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I’ll have a long beard by the time
I read them.”
— Arnold Lobel
THE DOMESTICATION
OF MUNACHI
Ifesinachi O. Okpagu
O
n a hot Sunday afternoon years ago…
…Two sisters walk in on their father’s sexual liaison with the family’s
hired help which leaves them both scarred in different ways.
Years later…
Unable to bear the thought of marriage to a man she barely knows, the
younger and more adventurous one, Munachi, runs away from home on the
eve of her traditional marriage, unwittingly resurrecting a long buried feud
between her religious mother and eccentric aunty. This conflict leaves a door
open for the family’s destruction.
The Domestication of Munachi is a novel about the unnecessary
pressure on women to take on life partners, regardless of who these partners
are and the psychological impacts seen through the stories of two sets of
sisters—Munachi and Nkechi versus Chimuanya and Elizabeth.
“I love books. I love that moment when you open one and sink
into it you can escape from the world, into a story that’s way more
interesting than yours will ever be.”
— Elizabeth Scott
SEASON OF CRIMSON BLOSSOMS
Abubakar Adam Ibrahim
I
n conservative Northern Nigeria, the salacious affair between 55-year-old
widow Binta Zubairu and a 26 year-old weed dealer and political thug
with the very unusual name Hassan ‘Reza’ is bound to cause more than a
ripple.
Brought together by some unusual circumstances, both see a need only
each other could satisfy. Binta, who before the encounter, is reconciling herself
with God, has the need to unshackle herself from the sexual repression that
characterised her marriage, and a deprivation that typified her widowhood.
But beyond that, there is her desire to redeem herself for the loss of her first
son, whose tragic death haunts her still.
And so when the thug, Reza, whose real name not many people
remember, arrives with a heart emptied by the absence of a mother who
abandoned him when he was months old, and rekindles Binta’s passions,
they strike it off.
As word of his unwholesome liaison with the widow Binta spreads and
draws condemnation and social ostracisation for Binta, things get to a head
when Binta’s rich son confronts the thug with disastrous consequence.
Set in the predominantly Muslim north of Nigeria, this story of
relationships, and the lack of it, unfurls gently, revealing layers of human
emotions and desires.
“II don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books.
But I do believe something very magical can happen
when you read a good book.”
— J.K. Rowling
THE WHISPERING TREES
Abubakar Adam Ibrahim
T
he Whispering Trees is an exceptional collection of short stories that
uses nuances and subtle drama as well as a balance of humour and
a good handling of weightier issues to capture snippets of life in a largely
neglected part of Nigeria.
Peopled by vibrant characters like Kyakkyawa, who has a little of
angels and witches in her, and sparks forbidden thoughts in her father; the
mysterious butterfly girl who could as well be the incarnation of Ohikwo’s
long dead mother; and the flummoxed white woman caught between two
Nigerian brothers and an unfolding scandal, as well as the two medicine men
of Mazade and their battle against their egos, an epidemic and an enigmatic
witch.
All these characters and more drive this unforgettable and colourful
collection, and make the reader smile, laugh and shed a tear. The Whispering
Trees will make you ponder the meaning of love, in life, of loyalty and what
it really means to be human.
“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!
How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a
book! – When I have a house of my own, I shall be
miserable if I have not an excellent library.”
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
FARAD
Emmanuel Iduma
F
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who
has not pleasure in a good novel, must be
intolerably stupid.”
— Jane Austen
arad is a novel that questions individual difference and change in a
multilayered system of narration. The eight chapters intersect with each
other only because all the major characters are participants in a mild conflict
that takes place in a University Chapel where the Choirmaster has served for
25 years but is unwilling to yield power.
Aside this, each chapter takes its own stance, peculiarly addressing change
and individuality in middle-class Nigeria. For instance, the first chapter (the
only chapter narrated in 3rd person and the longest) is the story of an attempt
to heal the mind of a lady who had a sexual affair with a Nigerian dictator,
and is with him when he dies mysteriously.
Other chapters are as ambitious as the first. The second chapter is
the story of an Anglican priest who is almost killed by a group of Islamic
fundamentalists in the Nigerian town of Jos – the story is narrated up till
the point when he is about to be killed. The third and fourth chapters are
kin in that they tell the stories of ladies who live iconoclastic lives, stamping
their difference on the faces of their loved ones, dying in the process; the
first produces an album of 24 short songs of only a stanza while the second
frames her dead husband’s photos and hangs them in her house where she
invites people to view as though in a museum. The fifth chapter is the story
of a young lady who dreams of people dying and when she cannot stop the
death of a student in real life (during a protest against living conditions), she
tries to kill herself. Her experience estranges her sister and brother-in-law,
who become the victims of her strange perceptions.
By the sixth chapter, happenings in the novel have become more intricate
and tense - the story is told of a man who is soon going to die of cancer and
a lady who, unaware, falls in love with him. The story tells the attempt of the
dying man to withhold love and the struggle of the lady to keep him alive.
EXCUSE ME!
Victor Ehikhamenor
E
XCUSE ME is a compilation of Victor Ehikhamenor thoughts,
experiences, and keen observations while he was the pioneer creative
director of Next newspaper. Most of this beautifully strung together
collection of creative non fiction were first birthed on the pages of the Lagosbased newspaper, Next Daily, Next on Sunday and 234NEXT.com between
2009-2011. Majority of the content were informed by actual socio-political
events that took place during that period, plus more.
Also interesting are Ehikhamenor’s illustrations and drawings presented
throughout the book, especially those in the middle of the book that were
done during morning editorial meetings. Look beyond these doodling, and
you have crucial insight into the élan thinking of the minds behind the shortlived dynamic newspaper. During some of the crucial early editorial meetings
at NEXT, Ehikhamenor would draw on the printed minutes while listening
or contributing to how they would shape the future of the newspaper. It is
also important to note that the drawings kept him awake during the 10 AM
mandatory meetings, after long hours of work the previous day. While some
people may regard NEXT as a media house, Ehikhamenor strongly believed
it was an institution of higher learning.
As a regularly widely read columnist and a member of a dynamic group
of forward thinking and high achieving individuals, NEXT newspapers
provided a new platform for the writer and artist to examine Nigerians and
Nigeria at a close range.
“I find television very educating. Every time
somebody turns on the set, I go into the other
room and read a book.”
— Groucho Marx
OIL ON WATER
Helon Habila
H
elon Habila’s third novel explores militancy and petrol-politics in
Nigeria’s Niger Delta—International cause célèbre following the
1995 extra-judicial killing of environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. Told
in Habila’s award-winning prose, Oil on Water follows two journalists, the
younger Rufus and the more experienced Zaq, in a descent through the
creeks of the delta to unravel the story of the kidnapped expatriate wife of an
oil company executive. . .
“As they struggle up the river in a canoe, guided by an old man and a
young boy, the reporters encounter nightmarish scenes of devastation:
‘dead birds draped over tree branches, their outstretched wings black
and slick with oil; dead fishes bobbed white-bellied between tree roots’.
By the flickering light of oil flare, they find some villages abandoned,
their fields and water contaminate; others scrape a miserable existence
on the frontline of a civil war between the army and anti-government
guerrillas.” – Guardian UK.
This is a novel about the limits of journalism; it is an incisive exploration
of the death of truth in a country of varied corruptions addicted to oil. Oil
on Water confirms Habila’s dazzling talent, evident in his earlier novels and
reinforces his place as one of Nigeria’s most important writers.
“It is what you read when you don’t have
to that determines what you will be when
you can’t help it.”
— Oscar Wilde
NIGHT DANCER
Chika Unigwe
N
ight Dancer is set in Nigeria and tells the story of Mma and her stubborn
mother, Ezi. Ezi’s unexpected death leads Mma to learn about her
mother’s past and rethink the resentment and contempt she has held for
her mother her whole life. Mma resents her mother who likes to say things
twice like ‘dance-dance’ and ‘happy-happy’ and who won’t let Mma know
anything about her father - Ezi left her husband, Mike, and life in Kaduna,
when Mma was a baby to raise her as a single mother.
Written in three parts, Chika Unigwe tells a beautiful story, which
reveals what happened, why everything is the way it is and why every
character in the book did what they did. It starts in 2001, after Ezi’s death,
and concentrates on Mma’s very negative feelings and hatred towards her
mother. From Mma’s point of view we see what being raised by a proud
single mother did to her childhood and how it affected Mma’s life. When
Mma starts reading Ezi’s letters or her ‘memoirs’, Mma finds out the truth
about her mother, her past life and why she did what she did. Her mother’s
letters also leadsMma to be reunited with the family she never knew she had
- grandfather, uncles, aunts, father. It then goes back to 1960 where we find
out what exactly happened to make Ezi leave her husband Mike, and raise
their daughter Mma on her own. And it comes back to 2002 when Mma
eventually meets her father, Mike, and begins to change her mind about her
mother. In these three parts, we hear both Ezi and Mma voices
“I have always imagined that Paradise
will be a kind of library.”
— Jorge Luis Borges
INDIGO
Molara Wood
D
“
“To read a writer is for me not merely to get
an idea of what he says, but to go off with
him and travel in his company.”
— Andre Gide
on’t give me that! What kind of woman chooses not to have a child?”
This was the question posed to Idera by a supposed super authority
on babies. Idera is a young, married, elitist woman who was of the notion
that having children was not a priority for newly-weds. She wanted to enjoy
her husband first without the intrusion of children. The fact that she stayed
in London also made her comfortable with her stand. The demise of her
father-in-law, however, brought about some changes that included relocating
back to Nigeria. The move back to Nigeria was a rude awakening to her that
her stand while it was taken for granted in Western societies, African societies
saw it as a huge anomaly. Idera’s battle between maintaining her stand, to her
gradual realization that things had gone out of her control and her eventual
compromise to listen to what people were saying is what Ms. Wood detailed
in ‘Indigo’, one of the stories in the collection.
A collection of short stories told from the perspectives of different
characters, ‘indigo’ features some stories that are very reminiscent of those
folktales told to us by our parents, grandparents or elderly relatives. Spanning
across various themes like love, superstition versus reality, tradition,
and poverty, Indigo aims to tell the story of the common man and the
sophisticated; the battle between tradition and modernism.
‘Ms. Wood doesn’t just tell folklores she also relates with the current
economic realities facing Nigeria and Nigerians. ‘In Name Only; Leaving
Oxford Street; The Last Bus Stop and Beautiful Game’ all enunciates that
feeling of alienation, that battle of acceptance or rejection, camouflaging and
the perpetual anxiety of getting the ‘green card’ that accompanies living in
a foreign country. ‘Kelemo’s Woman gives a little insight into the lives of
activists and the people that love them. ‘The Scarcity of Common Goods’ is a
little admonition on being empathetic with others in their varying conditions
or situations because we do not determine how the tide of life turns.
CITY OF MEMORIES
Richard Ali
A
thwarted love affair forces Faruk to flee to the Northeastern Nigerian
village of Bolewa, from where his parents emigrated three decades
earlier. There, he unearths his mother’s tragic story and discovers the key
that just might keep his country one if he can make it back to Central Nigeria
alive.
City of Memories follows four characters negotiating the effect of various
traumas. Towering above them is the story of Ummi al-Qassim, a princess of
Bolewa, and the feud that attended her love—first for a nobleman, then for
a poet. All four characters are bracketed by the modern city of Jos in Central
Nigeria, where political supremacy and perverse parental love become
motives for an ethno-religious eruption calculated to destroy the Nigeria
State . . .
“The things I want to know are in
books; my best friend is the man
who’ll get me a book I ain’t read.”
— Abraham Lincoln
Naija No Dey Carry Last
Pius Adesanmi
“P
ius Adesanmi’s Naija No Dey Carry Last is a treasure of pleasures,
a gem of a book. Adesanmi is a prodigious writer and deep thinker
whose essays exude vigorous intelligence, rare insight and a devastating
wit. The essays in this peerless collection are irreverent, evocative, mindexpanding, and highly entertaining. This kaleidoscopic, take-no-prisoner’s
romp through the vital social, cultural and political issues of Nigeria will
thrill, inform and transform you. I urge you to read and reread this terrific,
capacious book—and then tell all your friends about it.”
Okey Ndibe (author of the novels Arrows of Rain and Foreign Gods, Inc.)
“One must always be careful of books,” said
Tessa, “and what is inside them, for words have
the power to change us.”
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
DEAR KELECHI
Gloria Ernest Samuel
D
ear Kelechi is a novella told in epistolary style — a long letter written
by a woman to her estranged childhood friend now mentally unwell.
It explores the themes of girlhood and womanhood, the ruinous effects of
men and patriarchy, and, importantly, the stigma of lack of children on a
young woman in Nigeria. It is a story of nostalgia and the will to triumph
over seemingly insurmountable adversities.
“There is no mistaking a real book when one
meets it. It is like falling in love.”
— Christopher Morley, Pipefuls
DON’T DIE ON WEDNESDAY
Michael Afenfia
R
ising football star and Tottenham FC top striker Bubaraye Dabowei’s
career is torpedoed by a freak accident at a game against a crack
Manchester United squad. Unable to play professional football, he is torn
between his supermodel South African wife Nikiwe Dlomo and a longing to
go to Nigeria. Their fraught return plays out against a backdrop of infidelity
and his nurturing of the talented but troubled Keme ‘Ricochet D’aziba.
Don’t Die on Wednesday, Is a story of the game of life, when life
suddenly becomes laced with danger and fear, and no one knows how the
game will end.
“A house without books is like a room without windows.”
— Horace Mann
Specks in our eyes
Jerry Alagaoso
S
pecks in Our Eyes is a satire on community leadership and administration,
particularly on the law-making and oversight functions in Ama Ihite
community. In this community, these roles are played by the executives of
the Ama Ihite Development Union (ADU). Important as these roles are,
there must be a moral high ground where caution and punishment are to be
meted out and it is in this respect that the ADU is lacking. A loss of respect
for the corrective institution of the ADU ensues when they take on the
Principal of the Community School. The central concern of the dramatist
is that corrective institutions must be credible, else they become ineffective.
“One must always be careful of books,” said Tessa, “and what
is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
THE TRAVAILS OF A FIRST WIFE
Razinat T. Mohammed
T
he Travails of A First Wife centres on Zarah; the wife of Ibrahim Abdu
Shehu whom she had married for more than 30 years. She made him a
man. The plights she endures in her marriage; since her childhood Ibrahim
had made her to terminate one pregnancy after another and after 8 years into
marriage with her she could not bring forth a child to succeed him and he
condemned her to a fate of barrenness by marrying not one but 2 wives at a
go.
During their illicit affair before they got married; Zarah gives birth to a
son named Babagana but he could not openly claim the boy as their own son
and reason for the long union as his biological child because their religion
(ISLAM) is against marrying her and still keep the boy as his legitimate son
but he opts for her and makes the child to stay with her mother.
Zarah is divorced by her husband because she refused to sell her house
in Damaturu which she had built even before marrying Ibrahim.
Ibrahim Abdu Shehu is a heartless and ungrateful man, he treats Zarah
with disdain, and he does not respect her feelings for him when he married
the 2 women at a go.
In conclusion, the novel depicts that the man who is the head of the
family in the Muslim society cannot be questioned for any action he takes
about his family.
“A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is
not a good children’s story in the slightest.”
— C.S. Lewis
OLA AND BISI’S
ADVENTURES OF HEALTH
Edirin Metseagharun
B
eautifully illustrated, Fit Kid or Fat Kid continues the Adventures of
Ola and Bisi, two children from a privileged home. It presents kids
with lessons on healthy weight maintenance, healthy snacking, healthy
drinks, benefits of water and benefits of exercises.
With the dramatic way it highlights the stigma children have to pass
through just for being fat, Fit Kid or Fat Kid will appeal to children and their
parents. The book, which foreword is written by award, winning children’s
novelist Uche Peter Umez, also features informative exercises that introduce
children healthy living.
“Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only
a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.”
— Francis Bacon
BOFAK ILLUSION
Tanimu Sule Lagi
F
C Newsday reporter, Zack Liman, is murdered by government agents
in Tinland when he finds something sinister lurking beneath law and
order. . .
Stubborn journalist Billy Dada is hot on the trail of a murder case, which
becomes one of high political crime and ultimately, a matter of hard drugs. . .
Gloria Dan, femme fatale and drug baroness, dies in police custody and
is resurrected . . .
Ayuba Giok, amateur sleuth with a mind for conspiracy and a nose for
trouble. . .
Kim Shykes, biracial Santomean ex-cop, with a beef against organized
crime. . .
Jion Belleck . . . Libyan trained assassin with a mission to extract Gloria
Dan from Nigeria. . .
In The BOFAK Illusion, Nigeria’s new king of crime weaves a story
reaching from the beaches of Sin City to Tinland to the gates of Aso Rock
itself in a game where the desire for good to win over evil is not enough.
“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself,
or like the ambitious, for the purpose of
instruction. No, read in order to live.”
— Gustave Flaubert
FRESH AIR AND OTHER STORIES
Reward Nsirim
A
struggling, UK-based Nigerian is overwhelmed by the demands of
his family back home, and a recent returnee is dazed by his country’s
veneration of non-black foreigners. An innocent man jailed and tortured
by the Abacha regime is forced to sit and watch a football match with his
tormentors, while another man breaks free from his high-flying family’s
emasculating expectations. A female bank marketer succumbs to the
pressures of the job, and an orphaned teenage girl is sexually abused by an
uncle. A government minister visits his home state in a motorcade of dozens
of exotic vehicles, wrecking lives in the process; while a second-hand car,
dumped by a frustrated European student, travels across the seas to meet a
grateful Nigerian professor…
In Fresh Air, we encounter an assortment of contemporary Nigerians
characters, whose experiences and eccentricities are woven together with
strings of wit.
“Books are the plane, and the train, and
the road. They are the destination, and the
journey. They are home.”
— Anna Quindlen,
How Reading Changed My Life
THE SPIDER’S WEB
Dumebi Ezar Ehigiator
T
If kids are entertained by two letters, imagine
the fun they’ll have with twenty-six. Open your
child’s imagination. Open a book.
— Author Unknown
he Spider’s Web follows the lives of a handful of Nigerian women,
focusing in particular on Nnenna Nwakuche, and Ejiro. They are the
two main recipients of the violence in the novel.
Nnenna is, in the beginning, portrayed as weak and submissive. She
endures abuse inflicted on her by her husband, a clergyman, in order to
provide for her parents and to protect her children from his cruelty. Emeka,
her husband, values Nnenna only as a sexual object and a caretaker for his
home. To her friends, Nnenna is the perfect woman. She is kind, considerate
and can balance her life with her role as the loving wife of a clergyman.
But slowly, the problems in Nnenna’s life start to show themselves. Tension
creeps in, and it becomes clear that Nnenna is stuck with a loveless pastor
against her better judgment. Her devotion and love for her family cause her
to stay in one place a little too long – a mistake which may well prove fatal.
There’s Ejiro. In the 1980’s, skinny, ugly, dirt-poor Ejiro, 14, runs
away from her family’s apartment to escape her lecherous father’s drunken
advances. Down and out, she hooks up and falls in love with Jayjay, a cute
boy who’s a few years older--and who turns out to be a monster: a pimp who
forces her into a whorehouse, and then takes her for a disastrous abortion
(she nearly dies and is forever sterile) after she becomes pregnant with his
child in a pitiful attempt to force him to marry her. Naturally, all Ejiro can
think of is revenge.
Nnenna and Ejiro, form a deep bond; their suffering brings them
together in a strong solidarity. Through fate, they become fast friends,
quilting together, offering advice to each other, and offering mutual aid over
the years. When Nnenna mourns her child and her husband’s betrayal, her
friend nurses her wounds and gives her comfort.
She unravels the complex threads of family, identity, and desire that
shape a woman’s life, even as she begins to create a new one.
THE FOREST DAMES
Adaokere Agbasimalo
I
t is a pulsating story about the devastating effects of war, in which
Adaokere Agbasimalo dwells on the sordid consequences of civil war on
humanity and the torturous effort to achieve normality. It features Dze, a
young girl with a keen mind who lived with her parents in a typical African
setting and felt the pain of war. As an adult, the memories remain intact,
haunting her. The Forest Dames is a strident voice detailing and condemning
potentially malignant actions that continue to impede the development of
African nations and indeed parts of the developing world. These include
wars, culture-based biases, illogical and deadly tribal hatred, etc. African and
world leaders, politicians, historians, students and the general public should
be awakened by the book.
“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy
conscience: this is the ideal life.”
— Mark Twain
THE ANGEL THAT WAS
ALWAYS THERE
Julius Bokoru
J
ulius Bokoru’s “The Angel That Was Always There” is a memoir that
tells the story about a child grappling at life, trying to make sense of who
he really is. Struggling and failing. Confused and lonely. Saved intermittently
by the love of his mother, but losing that mother when he most needed her.
It is heart breaking. It is heartrending. The story leaves you shivering long
after you’ve left it. Because here comes young Julius, ambling down the
pages, whispering haunting memories in a swaggering bravado—sputtering
pretty prose-poetry.
The 141 paged Memoir written in 17 Chapters portrays the plight
of single motherhood with its setting in Ijaw land. The Memoir exudes
picturesque and poignant tales that give account of Julius Bokoru’s
childhood experiences while skilfully weaving a gripping tale portraying
single parenthood, its pain and struggles.
This debut Memoir seeks to answer some of the most disturbing
questions:
“Where is my father?” “Why don’t I know him?” “Why is society
disrespecting my mother because she is a single mother?”
In the process, the Ijaw and Niger Delta social life is being presented to
the world in a lush narrative.
“There are worse crimes than burning
books. One of them is not reading them.”
— Joseph Brodsky
PATRIOTS AND SINNERS
Nnenna Ihebom
L
eo and his men are desperate for change. Their quest is blind till they
abduct Siella, the president’s daughter. It is not just abduction. Their
encounter redefines radical change; it redefines leo and his men. They find
new zeal. Their criminality comes with reduced acrimony as they become
philanthropists and the ‘true patriots’ – cautiously loved by the people and
wanted by the government and power-drunks
“If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not
what he reads, but what he rereads.”
— François Mauriac
CAT EYES
PEVER X
C
at Eyes is the story of Pededoo, a country boy, who struggles to maintain
a civil relationship with his father who had just returned home after
many years abroad with a family of Cat Eyes. Despite his resentment for
his father and the new family, Pededoo is hardly able to resist and truly
dislike Melissa-Jane, the amiable and dashing cat-eyed blonde. Cat Eyes is
a bildungsroman, a book of family, adventure, self-discovery and love that
would take readers on a voyage they would hold dear.
“Only a generation of readers will spawn
a generation of writers.”
— Steven Spielberg
Viral Load
Kayode Oguntebi
A
new status shattered Tunde’s dream.
Sir Richard Grunt had his past questioned by a crash. A thin line
could not deter Michelier from following her heart, just as the heart of
NguessoNomvete strayed from the ethics of prostitution. The fruit of the
union of contrasting colours grew up hating that union. And Dr. Fadeyi was
undaunted in his belief that a cure would come from his gods!
“I love books. I love that moment when you open one and sink
into it you can escape from the world, into a story that’s way
more interesting than yours will ever be.”
— Elizabeth Scott
Thread of Gold Beads
Nike Campbell-Fatoki
T
hread of Gold Beads chronicles the tumultuous life of Amelia, daughter
of the last independent King of Danhomè, King Gbèhanzin. She is
the apple of her father’s eye, loved beyond measure by her mother, and
overprotected by her siblings. She searches for her own place within the
palace amidst conspirators and traitors to the Kingdom. Just when Amelia
begins to feel at home in her role as a Princess, a well-kept secret shatters
the perfect life she knows. Someone else within the palace also knows and
does everything to bring the secret to light. A struggle between good and evil
ensues causing Amelia to leave all that she knows and loves. She must flee
Danhomè with her brother, to south-western Nigeria. In a faraway land, she
finds the love of a new family and God. The well-kept secret thought to have
been dead and buried, resurrects with the flash of a thread of gold beads.
Amelia must fight for her life and what is left of her soul.
Set during the French-Danhomè war of the late 1890s in Benin Republic
and early 1900s in Abeokuta and Lagos, South-Western Nigeria, Thread of
Gold Beads is a delicate love story and coming of age tale of a young girl. It
clearly depicts the strength of the human spirit in the face of adversities.
“I don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books. But
I do believe something very magical can happen when
you read a good book.”
— J.K. Rowling
OIL CEMETERY
May Ifeoma Nwoye
O
il Cemetery is the story of Rita, a fragile young girl living in the Niger
Delta, whose father becomes a victim of an oil company’s activities.
On the one hand is the obscene wealth enjoyed by a few while the majority
of the delta’s citizens live in poverty and suffer from the degradation of their
environment. Oil Cemetery shows the quest of these people to seek a solution
to their suffering, while delving into the intrigues of the elites. By a twist of
fate, Rita leads a subtle revolution that will shock the entire community.
“One must always be careful of books,” said
Tessa, “and what is inside them, for words have
the power to change us.”
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
Bongel
Maryam Bobi
A
s a child, Bongel knows the freedom of a nomadic life. In its pure form,
she also knows love in Modibbo’s friendship. However, childhood is
lost in an early marriage. She is traumatized as a child-bride, but a fresh start
as a student leads her to a cherished friendship with Kauthar who introduces
her to her brother, Abdul to Bongel. A romance blossoms between them.
However, everything Bongel holds dear is threatened when Kauthar
discovers the disturbing secret about her. Consequently, her future is hinged
upon whether she lets her past consume her happiness or fight to reclaim the
love she deserves.
“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends;
they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors,
and the most patient of teachers.”
— Charles William Eliot
Poetry
DANCE HERE
Laura .M. Kaminski
Such touching tribute from one who remembers Jos in all her naivety and
mourns her lost innocence even from many miles away from her.
- Amu-Nnadi
Laura bursts into song with an efficacious voice that is unapologetic-- woven
with lines that give skin rush. This is a playlist of songs we must all dance to.
- Saddiq Dzukogi
Forgive me, Laura, for neglecting to say that you have been one admirable
Poet Laureate of the victims of Boko Haram onslaughts and other suffering
people in another part of your very large human constituency as a poet of the
finest sensibility, called Nigeria.
- Chiedu Ezeanah.
“Books are the quietest and most constant of
friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of
counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”
— Charles William Eliot
THROUGH THE WINDOW
OF SANDCASTLE
Amu Nnadi
T
hrough the window of a sandcastle is the third poetry collection by amu
nnadi, Nigeria’s foremost poet. It won both the Glenna Luschei Prize
and the Association of Nigerian Authors Prize for Poetry in 2014. Described
as “a stunning collection of poems, (it) not only confirms the continuing
vibrancy of the art of poetry in Nigeria but it also extends that tradition of
excellence by taking it with consummate assurance into novel domains.”
The Judges of the Association of Nigerian Authors Prize for Poetry
submitted: “The work’s major concerns—the anguish of bereavement, the
poignancy of travel and departure, and the consuming passions of romantic
love—are memorably reified in autobiographical moments that strike
universal human chords and whose existential implications continue to
haunt long after one has dropped the book. amu nnadi brings these moments
viscerally alive by confronting them with a gaze of unflinching intensity,
and the seeming ease with which the poet imbues personal experience with
archetypal significance is one of the virtues that make through the window
of a sandcastle consistently alluring.”
“What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore.
It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore it
knows it’s not fooling a soul.”
— Neil Gaiman, American Gods
SUNBEAMS AND SHADOWS
Saddiq Dzukogi
“T
hese poems evoke a variety of tapestries that reach into mystic
depths. The flair of combining darkness and light is crisp, thus
enhancing the contrasts that are carved out of the tropes explored. Often the
poems poke at the gory and the haunting, stringed in knots of impressions
and mood. There is a deliberate attempt to shock and startle as a way to
deliver the urgency in themes surveyed. This is a collection with an attitude:
it is fresh, brisk and bold.”
– Unoma Azuah.
“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird
evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered
world will never be put back together unless and until all
living humans read the book.”
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
Afrique
“What I say is, a town isn’t a town
without a bookstore. It may call itself a
town, but unless it’s got a bookstore it
knows it’s not fooling a soul.”
— Neil Gaiman, American Gods
the madams
Zukiswa Wanner
T
he Madams speaks of the friendship of three (Lauren, Siz and Thandi)
women in contemporary South Africa and the tests to that friendship
and their lives get from the pressures of modern life. The protagonist,
Thandi, realizes that it has become impossible to balance being a mother,
wife and woman without the assistance of a domestic worker. She hires a
white domestic help, Marita, who soon forms a fast friendship with two
other domestic workers. It is through this friendship that the three madams
discover that one of their husbands is having a relationship with one of
the domestic workers. Other secrets emerge in the course of the story and
nothing is ever quite what it appears but it is the outing of some of these
secrets that help cement this sisterhood of three women who come from
different backgrounds.
“For the love of African Literature.”
“Reader’s Bill of Rights
Parrésia Books Outlets
1. The right to not read
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3. The right to not finish
4. The right to reread
5. The right to read anything
6. The right to escapism
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10. The right to not defend your tastes”
— Daniel Pennac
Lagos
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