While she can handle most challenges, from an erratic supply of Worcestershire sauce, the secret ingredient in her cooking, to the political tensions in East Africa's most notorious slum and a cholera outbreak that follows the freak floods in the state of Ubuntu, some threatening letters from London lawyers are beginning to overwhelm her. Well-meant but inept efforts to foil the lawyers by Edward Furniver, a former fund manager who runs Kibera's co-operative bank, bring Harrods International Bar to the brink of disaster, and Charity close to despair. In the nick of time an accidental riot, triggered by World Bank President Hardwick Hardwicke's visit to the slum, coupled with some quick thinking by Titus Ntoto, the 14-year-old leader of Kibera's toughest gang, the Mboya Boys United Football Club, help Charity - and Harrods - to triumph in the end.

    Set in modern-day Zimbabwe, the story is narrated through the four female protagonists. Joyce is the legitimate first wife of Jonasi Gomora. She has four kids, a shiny black Mercedes Benz and a life every woman is envious of. Joyce believes she has the perfect marriage until Matipa rears her coiffed head.Matipa is an ambitious, educated high flyer with an eye for the good things in life. She does not want to sit around waiting for a guy to realise his potential, she wants instant gratification, which comes in the form of Jonasi. He personifies everything she wants in a man. And so her driving ambition is usurp Joyce’s role as Jonasi’s wife and lover. Essie is the girl next door from the poverty-stricken township where Jonasi grew up in. She lacks Joyce’s sophistication and Matipa’s intelligence, but she cared for Jonasi long before he became the man he is. So Essie plays the role of second fiddle knowing he’ll always come back to herLindani is a beautiful young girl who has nothing going for her but her greatest assets: her beauty and her body. She hopes this lethal combination will be enough to ensnare the affections of a man who will marry her and leave her taken care of, no longer having to worry about how she’ll keep a solid roof over her head. Then she meets Jonasi and thinks all her problems have been answered, not knowing they have only just begun….Told in a gripping, accessible and somewhat shockingly frank style, Sue Nyathi takes readers on a journey beyond the bedroom door of a polygamous man and his four Mrs Rights. Yet lurking below the surface the question remains: is this kind of marriage practice really legitimate in a society plagued by HIV/Aids? Smart, sassy and sexy, The Polygamist shows that sometimes marriage isn’t what you envisioned – rather than being a secure refuge it can be a battlefield!

    Nozipo Maraire evokes the moving story of a mother reaching out to her daughter to share the lessons life has taught her and bring the two closer than ever before. Interweaving history and memories, disappointments and dreams, Zenzele tells the tales of Zimbabwe's struggle for independence and the men and women who shaped it: Zenzele's father, an outspoken activist lawyer; her aunt, a schoolteacher by day and secret guerrilla fighter by night; and her cousin, a maid and a spy.Rich with insight, history, and philosophy, Zenzele is a powerful and compelling story that is both revolutionary and revelatory--the story of one life that poignantly speaks of all lives.

    Libya, 1979. Nine-year-old Suleiman’s days are circumscribed by the narrow rituals of childhood: outings to the ruins surrounding Tripoli, games with friends played under the burning sun, exotic gifts from his father’s constant business trips abroad. But his nights have come to revolve around his mother’s increasingly disturbing bedside stories full of old family bitterness. And then one day Suleiman sees his father across the square of a busy marketplace, his face wrapped in a pair of dark sunglasses. Wasn’t he supposed to be away on business yet again? Why is he going into that strange building with the green shutters? Why did he lie? Suleiman is soon caught up in a world he cannot hope to understand—where the sound of the telephone ringing becomes a portent of grave danger; where his mother frantically burns his father’s cherished books; where a stranger full of sinister questions sits outside in a parked car all day; where his best friend’s father can disappear overnight, next to be seen publicly interrogated on state television. In the Country of Men is a stunning depiction of a child confronted with the private fallout of a public nightmare. But above all, it is a debut of rare insight and literary grace.

    It is the heyday of apartheid. Although not a word is exchanged, a strong erotic bond develops between the two of them, culminating in what is later seen as a rape and for which the narrator gets the death sentence. In an absolute tour de force the narrator, only ever referred to as Mr Sibiya, waiting to be executed, writes down his story - reconstructing bit by bit not only his own and a brief history of his family, but also his obsession with the white girl, the court proceedings, and his encounters with Dr Dufre, a Swiss criminologist who has been granted permission of compile a dossier of the case. One of the most remarkable things about the novel is the narrator's ability to be objective, to view himself and the series of events almost dispassionately.

    Here begins the story of a small African nation, told by a swarm-like chorus that calls itself man’s greatest nemesis. In 1904, in a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (black, white, brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond. As the generations pass, their lives – their triumphs, errors, losses and hopes – form a symphony about what it means to be human.From a woman covered with hair and another plagued with endless tears, to forbidden love affairs and fiery political ones, to homegrown technological marvels like Afronauts, microdrones and viral vaccines – this novel sweeps over the years and the globe.

    He has gone on to become one of the most powerful voices for cultural freedom on the whole of the African continent today. Ndebele evokes township life with humor and subtlety, rejecting the image of black South Africans as victims and focusing on the complexity and fierce energy of their lives. "Our literature," says Ndebele, "ought to seek to move away from an easy preoccupation with demonstrating the obvious existence of oppression. It exists. The task is to explore how and why people can survive under such harsh conditions." About Njabulo Ndebele: now Chancellor of Witwatersrand University in South Africa. Ndebele began publishing these stories from exile in Lesotho during the 1980s. Ndebele is now recognised as a major voice in South Africa's cultural life. This is his only fiction collection available in Europe or North America. Ndebele's stories first began appearing in Staffrider magazine, an innovative publishing venture linked to the Soweto branch of South African PEN. Founded after the bloody Soweto riots of the mid-1970s, the magazine took as its symbol the staffriders, un-ticketed commuters from the black townships who every day clung onto or balanced on top of buses and trains to get into the cities to work. Staffrider magazine, and in particular Ndebele's stories, helped define a new tone in black South African literature that went beyond and finally overcame apartheid.

    Douye aka Doughboy the career militant responsible for the crime. Amaibi the gentle university professor / eco-warrior accused. Kaniye the lawyer turned restaurateur who tries to get him off and Tubo an amoral oil company executive. Against a backdrop of corrupt practises, failed systems and injustice, these four friends tell the story of oil in a region and its effects on local communities and the Nigerian larger society.Chimeka Garricks in his extraordinary debut novel has written a frank and moving story about the realities of contemporary Nigeria. The evil long term effects of military rule resulting in the fragmentation and break down of moral values. His story paints a realistic picture of the very high price corruption exacts on a society and how no one is immune from its consequences.Chimeka has written a remarkable book; honest, insightful and tragic – Jude Dibia author of Blackbird.The book is absolute genius. Well researched, crisp lines, excellent and vivid dialogue, well developed characters. - Jekwu Ozoemene, author of The Anger of Unfulfillment.Tomorrow Died Yesterday is a chronicle of a region in turmoil, of a generation caught between the expectations of their parents and the depreciations of the Nigerian situation, each of these four men navigate their issues in different ways, and in their own voices. Mr Garricks is a new literary voice; unheralded, fresh, honest, unshorn of superficial flourish. Well worth the read. – Eghosa Imasuen, author of Fine Boys.Tomorrow Died Yesterday is a story of action and consequence, lies and love, greed and lust, the power of the truth and most poignantly, redemption. In a John Grisham-esque storytelling style, Chimeka Garricks carries the reader from the present to the past and back again in a seamless blend of storytelling, from the swamps of the Niger Delta to its courtrooms with some action, humour, suspense and just the right amount of romance thrown in. Tomorrow Died Yesterday is a novel by a Nigerian about Nigeria for the entire world. All in all, it is an impressive debut for a writer. - Seun Odukoya, reviewer www.naijastories.com

    Thirteen-year-old Zahrah Tsami feels like a normal girl -- she grows her own flora computer, has mirrors sewn onto her clothes, and stays clear of the Forbidden Greeny Jungle. But unlike other kids in the village of Kirki, Zahrah was born with the telling dadalocks. Only her best friend, Dari, isn't afraid of her, even when something unusual begins happening -- something that definitely makes Zahrah different. The two friends investigate, edging closer and closer to danger. When Dari's life is threatened. Zahrah must face her worst fears alone, including the very thing that makes her different.In this exciting debut novel by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, things aren't always what they seem -- monkeys tell fortunes, plants offer wisdom, and a teenage girl is the only one who stands a chance at saving her best friend's life.-from the Hardcover edition

    Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child and they, star-crossed, fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are also both girls. When their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself. But there is a cost to living inside a lie. As Edwidge Danticat has made personal the legacy of Haiti's political coming of age, Okparanta's Under the Udala Trees uses one woman's lifetime to examine the ways in which Nigerians continue to struggle toward selfhood. Even as their nation contends with and recovers from the effects of war and division, Nigerian lives are also wrecked and lost from taboo and prejudice. This story offers a glimmer of hope — a future where a woman might just be able to shape her life around truth and love.

    It is a story of the fight to endure in a world of limitless and waterless wastes, and a parable of the struggle to survive in the most dangerous landscape of all: human society.Rejected by his tribe and hunted by the kin of the man he killed, Ukhayyad and his thoroughbred camel flee across the desolate Tuareg deserts of the Libyan Sahara. Between bloody wars against the Italians in the north and famine raging in the south, Ukhayyad rides for the remote rock caves of Jebel Hasawna. There, he says farewell to the mount who has been his companion through thirst, disease, lust, and loneliness. Alone in the desert, haunted by the prophetic cave paintings of ancient hunting scenes and the cries of jinn in the night, Ukhayyad awaits the arrival of his pursuers and their insatiable hunger for blood and gold.

    Redefining what it means to be young, black and beautiful in the the New South Africa. Winner of the European Union Literary Award.

    When ten-year-old Birahima's mother dies, he leaves his native village in the Ivory Coast, accompanied by the sorcerer and cook Yacouba, to search for his aunt Mahan. Crossing the border into Liberia, they are seized by rebels and forced into military service. Birahima is given a Kalashnikov, minimal rations of food, a small supply of dope and a tiny wage. Fighting in a chaotic civil war alongside many other boys, Birahima sees death, torture, dismemberment and madness but somehow manages to retain his own sanity. Raw and unforgettable, despairing yet filled with laughter, Allah Is Not Obliged reveals the ways in which children's innocence and youth are compromised by war.

    At the moment of her death, Imogen Zula Nyoni – Genie – was seen to fly away on a giant pair of silver wings ...’ Said to have hatched from a golden egg, Genie spends her childhood playing in a field of sunflowers as her country reawakens after a fierce civil war. But Genie’s story stretches back much further: it tells of her grandfather, who quenched his wanderlust by walking into the Indian Ocean, and of her father, who spent countless hours building model aeroplanes to catch up with him. It is the tale of her mother, a singer self-styled after Dolly Parton with a dream of travelling to Nashville, and of her grandmother, who did everything in her power to raise her children to have character. With the lightest of touches, a cast of unforgettable characters, and moments of surreal beauty, The Theory of Flight sketches decades of history in this unnamed Southern African nation. It does not dwell on what has been lost in its war, but on the daily triumphs of its people, the necessity of art, and the power of its visionaries to take flight.

    Each guide also offers students fresh critical insights and provides a practical introduction to close reading and to analysing literary language and form. They provide up-to-date, authoritative but accessible guides to the most commonly studied classic texts.Chinua Achebe's remarkable novel Things Fall Apart (1958) is probably the best known African novel and has become one of the world's most influential literary masterpieces. Since publication, a total of nearly 12 million copies have been sold, with translations into more than 50 languages. Despite its undoubted success, its apparent simplicity has tended to blind readers to the dazzling storytelling resources and the inventive language, plot, setting, and characterization which first draw them to the novel and keep them reading. This is the ideal guide to the text, setting Things Fall Apart in its historical, intellectual and cultural contexts, offering analyses of its themes, style and structure, providing exemplary close readings, presenting an up-to-date account of its critical reception and examining its afterlife in literature, film and popular culture. It includes points for discussion, suggestions for further study and an annotated guide to relevant reading.