There are books you read, smile at, and neatly shelve away. Then there are books that drag you by the collar, hurl you into their world, and refuse to let go until you’re gasping. Leye Adenle’s Easy Motion Tourist belongs firmly in the latter camp. From its very first page, the novel sets the tone…
I’ve read When We Were Fireflies, a book of 409 pages, three times, and it’s not yet three years old. “No book is worth reading once,” said García Márquez, “if it is not worth reading many times.” As a protégé of Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, I can tell with certainty that no writer, dead or living,…
Yewande Omotoso’s The Woman Next Door explores the intricacies of gender, identity, and tradition, using post-apartheid South Africa as a case study. Centring the plot around the lives of two octogenarian neighbours from different racial and social backgrounds in Cape Town’s wealthy suburb of Katterijn; Hortensia James, a sharp-tongued Black woman of Caribbean descent, and…
“Run, Àjàyí, Run” is the apprehensive and lyrical title of the opening part of the posthumously published Biyi Bándélé’s Yorùbá Boy Running. When readers reach the passage that reveals the context of the phrase, one hardly escapes the nostalgia from the ending of Orwell’s Animal Farm, “Àjàyí looked at Ìjí and Ìjí looked at Àjàyí”…
The irony of Ogadinma’s title recalls Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood. Both novels hint at comfort and resolution, yet offer little relief to the reader. In Ogadinma, the name itself suggests that everything will be alright. And because it’s the protagonist’s name, the reader holds on to that hope, waiting for a turning point…
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