Book picks similar to
Mental Fight by Ben Okri


poetry
fiction
ebook
african-literature

Blackass


A. Igoni Barrett - 2015
    As he hits the city streets running, still reeling from his new-found condition, Furo finds the dead ends of his life open out before him. As a white man in Nigeria, the world is seemingly his oyster – except for one thing: despite his radical transformation, Furo's ass remains robustly black . . .Funny, fierce, inventive and daringly provocative – this is a very modern satire, with a sting in the tail.

Rhyme Stew


Roald Dahl - 1989
    The perfect treat for Dahl fans tall and small. ‘There is no end to the Dahl invention, and this will join all the other cherished favourites. Quentin Blake is his perfect illustrator’ Books.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol


Oscar Wilde - 1896
    One hundred years after his release from Reading Gaol, the life and work of Oscar Wilde has lost none of its fascination. In his day, his wit and writings enchanted and scandalized society in equal measure; his downfall came at the height of his powers. Devastated by his notorious trial for indecency, imprisoned for ``homosexual offenses,'' he was to spend two ruinous years in solitary confinement. As he was later to tell Andre Gide, Reading Gaol ``was not fit for dogs. I thought I would go mad.'' The Ballad was written from personal experience, and there was to be no more writing after this. As Wilde observed: ``Something is killed in me.'' Bankrupt, disgraced, and in exile, Wilde was to die not long after his release at the age of 46. His final resting place is the cemetery of Pere Lachaise in Paris. His tomb bears an inscription from The Ballad of Reading Gaol: ``And alien tears will fill for him/Pity's long broken urn/For his mourners will be outcast men/And outcasts always mourn.'' This commemorative edition of the poem is illustrated with the powerfully moving wood engravings of Garrick Palmer. 48 pp 5 x 8 8 wood engravings

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner


Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1792
    Modern editions use a later revised version printed in 1817 and featuring a gloss. Along with other poems in Lyrical Ballads, it was a signal shift to modern poetry and the beginning of British Romantic literature.It relates the events experienced by a mariner who has returned from a long sea voyage. The Mariner stops a man on his way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story. The Wedding-Guest's reaction turns from bemusement to impatience, fear, and fascination as the Mariner's story progresses, as can be seen in the language style: for example, the use of narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create a sense of danger, or the supernatural, or serenity, depending on the mood each different part of the poem.

Jagua Nana


Cyprian Ekwensi - 1961
    Tells the story of Jagua Nana, an ageing high-lifer and habitue of the seedy club Tropicana, which is an evocation of the chaos and intensive life of Lagos.

Assembly


Natasha Brown - 2021
    Be civil in a hostile environment. Go to college, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things. Buy an apartment. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness. But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going.The narrator of Assembly is a black British woman. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend’s family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself. As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can’t escape the question: is it time to take it all apart?Assembly is a story about the stories we live within – those of race and class, safety and freedom, winners and losers.And it is about one woman daring to take control of her own story, even at the cost of her life. With a steely, unfaltering gaze, Natasha Brown dismantles the mythology of whiteness, lining up the debris in a neat row and walking away.

Mouthful of Forevers


Clementine von Radics - 2015
    Titled after the poem that burned up on Tumblr and has inspired wedding vows, paintings, songs, YouTube videos, and even tattoos among its fans, Mouthful of Forevers brings the first substantial collection of this gifted young poet’s work to the public.Clementine von Radics writes of love, loss, and the uncertainties and beauties of life with a ravishing poetic voice and piercing bravura that speak directly not only to the sensibility of her generation, but to anyone who has ever been young.

Our Numbered Days


Neil Hilborn - 2015
    To date, it has been watched over 10 million times. Our Numbered Days is Neil’s debut full-length poetry collection, containing 45 of Neil’s poems including “OCD”, “Joey”, “Future Tense”, “Liminality”, “Moving Day”, and many, many never-before-seen poems.

A Guide to Undressing Your Monsters


Sam Sax - 2014
    Sam Sax’s A Guide to Undressing Your Monsters, a runner up for the 2013 Button Poetry Prize.

The Ice Cream Girls


Dorothy Koomson - 2010
    Amid heated public debate, the two seemingly glamorous teens were dubbed ‘The Ice Cream Girls’ by the press and were dealt with by the courts.Years later, having led very different lives, Poppy is keen to set the record straight about what really happened, while married mother-of-two Serena wants no one in her present to find out about her past. But some secrets will not stay buried – and if theirs is revealed, everything will become a living hell all over again...

That Reminds Me


Derek Owusu - 2019
    He grows up in fields and woods, and he is happy, he thinks. When K is eleven, the city reclaims him. He returns to an unknown mother and a part-time father, trading the fields for flats and a community that is alien to him. Slowly, he finds friends. Eventually, he finds love. He learns how to navigate the city. But as he grows, he begins to realise that he needs more than the city can provide. He is a man made of pieces. Pieces that are slowly breaking apart.That Reminds Me is the story of one young man, from birth to adulthood, told in fragments of memory. It explores questions of identity, belonging, addiction, sexuality, violence, family and religion. It is a deeply moving and completely original work of literature from one of the brightest British writers of today.

Emergency Contact


Mary H.K. Choi - 2018
    Her friends were okay, her grades were fine, and while she somehow managed to land a boyfriend, he doesn’t actually know anything about her. When Penny heads to college in Austin, Texas, to learn how to become a writer, it’s seventy-nine miles and a zillion light years away from everything she can’t wait to leave behind.Sam’s stuck. Literally, figuratively, emotionally, financially. He works at a café and sleeps there too, on a mattress on the floor of an empty storage room upstairs. He knows that this is the god-awful chapter of his life that will serve as inspiration for when he’s a famous movie director but right this second the seventeen bucks in his checking account and his dying laptop are really testing him. When Sam and Penny cross paths it’s less meet-cute and more a collision of unbearable awkwardness. Still, they swap numbers and stay in touch—via text—and soon become digitally inseparable, sharing their deepest anxieties and secret dreams without the humiliating weirdness of having to see each other.

Black Girl, Call Home


Jasmine Mans - 2021
    With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself—and us—home. Each poem explores what it means to be a daughter of Newark, and America--and the painful, joyous path to adulthood as a young, queer Black woman.Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering Black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing.

The Flatshare


Beth O'Leary - 2019
    Leon Twomey works nights and needs cash. Their friends think they’re crazy, but it’s the perfect solution: Leon occupies the one-bed flat while Tiffy’s at work in the day, and she has the run of the place the rest of the time. But with obsessive ex-boyfriends, demanding clients at work, wrongly imprisoned brothers and, of course, the fact that they still haven’t met yet, they’re about to discover that if you want the perfect home you need to throw the rulebook out the window…

Legendborn


Tracy Deonn - 2020
    A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus.A flying demon feeding on human energies.A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down.And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw.The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates.She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets—and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down—or join the fight.