Fiction
Book Review: My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Book: My Sister the Serial Killer Author: Oyinkan Braithwaite My Sister the Serial Killer, a debut dark thriller, written by Oyinkan Braithwaite, tells of the lives and relationship between two sisters, Korede and Ayoola. The story is set in Lagos, Nigeria, with Korede, the elder sister, as the narrator. As the bold and dark title…
Book Review – The Hairdresser of Harare by Tendai Huchu
Book: The Hairdress of Harare Author: Tendai Huchu Hair is life. Vimbai understands this, it is why when customers come into the Khumalo Hair and Beauty Treatment salon and plop themselves in her coveted chair with demands to look like whatever supermodel in the torn out American fashion magazine page clutched in their hands, she…
Book Review: Tomorrow I’ll Be Twenty by Alain Mabanckou
Book: Tomorrow I’ll Be Twenty Book Author: Alain Mabanckou Michel is a 10 year old carefree sweetheart who simply wants to grow up in peace, eat his favourite beans and beef on weekends with his parents, have a great time with his other seven brothers and sisters from his step-mother, Mama Martine, watch planes land with…
The Stranger by Rabi’atu Yakubu
It happened when I was fifteen-years old. I had been watching a football match on the television with my uncle, Baba Hassan when a young boy suddenly appeared from nowhere and began to hit him. I could not see the young boy’s face but I could see Baba Hassan’s. It felt as though he was…
Freedom’s March
They were coming for her soon. This, she knew because her mother had told her so. Moreso, her mother had gone the same way. ‘You must march at dawn, Koko. When you see these signs…’. She’d told her, an overpowering sadness swimming in her shiny orb-like eyes. That was the night before she was taken.…
It Wasn’t A Dream
The sun stretched this morning, a pale gold offering. I saw it through the tall grasses between my window and the river. It stretched but didn’t rise. This morning, I was killed in my dream by my ex-lover, Emenike. In the dream, I wouldn’t take him back, even though he begged, but I wouldn’t leave…
Book Review: Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Book: KINTU Author: Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi Kintu is the debut novel of Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi and it tells the complicated and yet so enthralling tale of Kintu Kidda, Ppookino (governor) of Buddu province in pre colonial Uganda known as Buganda who in an attempt to chastise his adopted son Kalema, accidentally kills him and then tries…
Book Review: Blackass by Igoni Barrett
Book: BLACKASS Author: Igoni Barrett Furo Wariboko, the protagonist in Igoni Barrett’s Kafkaesque dark satirical comedy wakes up and discovers that ‘dreams can lose their way and turn up on the wrong side of sleep’. Like Gregor Samsa in Metamorphosis, he is quite erm different than when he went to bed; only in this instance, he is…
Book Review: Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire
Book: Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth Author: Warsan Shire ‘I don’t know when love became elusive. What I know is: no one I know has it’. If this sounds familiar, it is because you heard it in a voiceover in Beyonce’s audiovisual ‘Lemonade’ album. But before Warsan Shire’s poetry also found its way…
Book Review: The Teacher, The Pianist and The Seamstress by Ogenna Ojukwu
Book: The Teacher, The Pianist and The Seamstress Author: Ogenna Ojukwu With his debut novel, Ogenna Ojukwu leads the reader through the complicated life of Onyeka; teacher and vice-principal hopeful, foster mother to her nephew and maid and a woman of broken things as personified by the room of haunting memories hidden away in her…