Book Review
A Review of Pede Hollist’s So the Path Does Not Die by Lake Adedamola
In her book, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, Egyptian American writer and feminist, Mona Eltahawy says “It is cruel to abandon women and girls to a culture they had no say in ratifying ….” And that is just stating the obvious. With the legitimacy of a gavel and state power, there’s something…
A Review of Leila Aboulela’s River Spirit | Victoria Aderinto
It is our inclination to need, want, desire deeply, desperately for something, someone to believe- in truth or bearing a similarity to truth, whatever truth might be. Leila Aboulela’s River Spirit (2023) transports us to a pivotal period in Sudanese history, 1881-1898, the turbulent years of the Mahdist Revolution, where truth was a fiercely contested…
Nearly all the men in Lagos might be mad, but what about the women? A Review of Damilare Kuku’s Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad by Victoria Aderinto
The city of Lagos is a lot of things: vibrant, beautiful, exhilarating, yet chaotic. The vibrant and charismatic ambiance of nighttime opposes the chaotic life in the daytime, which is often characterized by the scorching sun, blaring horns, persuasive hawkers seeking patronage with raised voices, and new stories featuring the good, the mad, and the…
Gender Tropes In Damilola Olaniyi’s We Have Come Home | Paul Liam | Book Review
Damilola Olaniyi’s collection of short stories We Have Come Home, x-rays the dilemmatic life of young Nigerians in that space where they are struggling with reconciling their freshly minted dualities acquired by living or schooling abroad with their African socio-cultural values that expect them to act in certain ways or aspire to certain moral ideals.…
Adunni’s Louding Voice as a Reflection of Female Aspirations │ Book Review
Book: The Girl With the Louding VoiceAuthor: Abi DarePages: 384Publisher: DuttonReviewer: Haneefah Bello Abi Dare’s debut novel is a crisp, brilliant account of a fourteen year old girl’s struggle against illiteracy, patriarchy, and abuse. The book opens with Adunni, the protagonist, being told by her father that she will be married off to an old taxi…
An Exploration of Lara Brown’s Once Upon Our Childhood
Book: Once Upon Our ChildhoodAuthor: Lara Brown Lara Brown’s debut novel Once Upon Our Childhood is a coming-of-age story of four teenage girls, the dynamics of their friendship and the events that shaped their experiences. The novel, a teen/young-adult realist fiction, explores a variety of themes— love, grief, mental illness, suicide, gender-based violence, and a…
Book Review │ Tope Folarin’s A Particular Kind of Black Man │ Joseph Akinnawonu
Tope Folarin’s A Particular Kind Of Black Man is a metaphor for identity, ambition, loss, a love lost, a conflict between the past and the future, a struggle for survival, and the trajectory of the black race in a white world. The 2013 Caine Prize winning author writes a part of himself into his characters,…
The Sorrows of Satan — Marie Corelli
London is almost replete with cavaliers and learned men but twenty-two-year-old Londoner Geoffrey Tempest is atypical of the learned. Filled with paranoia, the squeak of the door latch, the knock of a mailman is synonymous to the knocks of the landlady he can neither pay nor promise to pay the overdue rent bills. Losing his…