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,…
Obioma revisits the Nigerian civil war in this skillfully written prose, The Road to the Country, which is full of heart-piercing metaphors. He juxtaposes mystical and physical realms in telling the story. The book is a carnival of stories of the Biafran dead. For his writing style and nuance, The New York Times in 2015…
Lola Akinmade Akerström’s In Every Mirror She’s Black is written in exquisite language. The novel explores the lives of three black women in Stockholm, each representing different social strata from the elite, middle and low-income class. Still, no class attainment in the city seems enough to shield any of them from open or subtle racism…
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