The first time I stumbled across Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, it was through my sister. She was preparing for the UTME, and the book was one of either WAEC or JAMB’s recommended texts. I still remember spotting it on her desk and wondering, “Purple hibiscus? What kind of flower is that?” Growing up,…
Ghostroots by Pemi Aguda is a hauntingly beautiful collection of short stories. In each of these stories, the ordinary flirts excessively with the supernatural. It’s very unsettling, but very human too. Altogether, there are twelve stories in this collection, but a few struck me so deeply that I had to sit still, staring into space,…
This is one hell of an opening line; the kind of sentence that immediately pulls you in, giving you no choice but to keep reading, and it does a fine job of foreshadowing the grief and mystery that course through Akwaeke Emezi’s The Death of Vivek Oji. The book begins with a devastating scene: Vivek…
Laila Lalami’s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits is a reflection on unemployment and underemployment and how they affect the lives of some ambitious Moroccan youths. Set in the late 90s and early 2000s, largely under the reign of King Hassan, the book follows the life of four Moroccans: two men and two women, who hoped…
“Presbyterian Nursery and Primary school was made up of two simple blocks and a church hall beside the field,” begins this tender, coming-of-age novel that discusses in hindsight, the remains of childhood and adolescent memories of Nosike, the narrator and the lead character. Readers are introduced to a perfect child who consoles his crying classmates,…