At nineteen, he is a Death Row warder at Maximum Security Prison in Pretoria, South Africa: a shepherd who cares for the condemned - and a butcher who escorts them to the gallows. In the summer of 1987, after thirty-two men were hanged in two weeks (all real cases), Leon loses control, with tragic results. And now he's the one facing the death penalty. Only the most precarious line of legal argument stands between Leon and the gallows. Chasing a defense, his advocate trawls the deepest recesses of life in the Pot - the twilight world of Death Row - in order to determine the effect of multiple executions on his young client. In 1987, 164 people were executed at Maximum Security. Two years later, the last man went to the gallows, after more than four thousand hangings in Pretoria in that century. Shepherds & Butchers portrays legal execution in unprecedented detail, revealing its devastating impact on all those involved. At the same time, it exposes the callous violence on the other side of the noose, where murderers reign. Chris Marnewick's first novel is a gripping courtroom drama steeped in the factual.

    They have only one desire: to make a fortune by exploiting the mineral wealths of the country. They work during the day in mining concession and, as soon as night falls, they go out to get drunk, dance, eat and abandon themselves in Tram 83, the only night-club of the city, the den of all the outlaws: ex children-soldiers, prostitutes, blank students, unmarried mothers, sorcerers' apprentices …Lucien, a professional writer, fleeing the exactions and the censorship, finds refuge in the city thanks to Requiem, a youth friend. Requiem lives mainly on theft and on swindle while Lucien only thinks of writing and living honestly. Around them gravitate gangsters and young girls, retired or runaway men, profit-seeking tourists and federal agents of a non-existent State.Tram 83 plunges the reader into the atmosphere of a gold rush as cynical as, sometimes, comic and colorfully exotic. It's an observation of human relationships in a world that has become a global village. It could be described as an African-rap or rhapsody novel or puzzle-novel hammered by rhythms of jazz.

    The middle-class pair become victims of the same brutal violence that the poor and powerless suffer.

    Odidi Oganda, running for his life, is gunned down in the streets of Nairobi. His grief-stricken sister, Ajany, just returned from Brazil, and their father bring his body back to their crumbling home in the Kenyan drylands, seeking some comfort and peace. But the murder has stirred memories long left untouched and unleashed a series of unexpected events: Odidi and Ajany’s mercurial mother flees in a fit of rage; a young Englishman arrives at the Ogandas’ house, seeking his missing father; a hardened policeman who has borne witness to unspeakable acts reopens a cold case; and an all-seeing Trader with a murky identity plots an overdue revenge. In scenes stretching from the violent upheaval of contemporary Kenya back through a shocking political assassination in 1969 and the Mau Mau uprisings against British colonial rule in the 1950s, we come to learn the secrets held by this parched landscape, buried deep within the shared past of the family and of a conflicted nation. Here is a spellbinding novel about a brother and sister who have lost their way; about how myths come to pass, history is written, and war stains us forever.

    Set primarily on Zongo Street, a fictitious community in West Africa, the stories -- which are reminiscent of the works of Ben Okri and Amos Tutuola -- introduce us to wonderfully quirky characters and the most uproarious, poignant, and rawest moments of life. There's Kumi, the enigmatic title character who teaches a young boy to finally ask questions of his traditions. And as Ali moves his characters to America we meet Felix, who struggles with America's love of the exotic in "Rachmaninov."The Prophet of Zongo Street heralds a new voice and showcases Mohammed Naseehu Ali's extraordinary ability to craft stories that are both allegorical and unforgettable.

    British lawyer Paula Shackleton is mourning a lost love when a small man in a lemon-coloured suit accosts her over breakfast in a Boston hotel. Winston Peabody represents the African state of North Darrar, embroiled in a border arbitration case with its giant neighbour. He needs help with the hearings in The Hague, Paula needs to forget the past.She flies to the state’s capital determined to lose herself in work, but soon discovers that even jobs taken with the purest intentions can involve moral compromise. Taking testimony in scorching refugee camps, delving into the colonial past, she becomes increasingly uneasy about her role. Budding friendships with a scarred former rebel and an idealistic young doctor whittle away at her pose of sardonic indifference, until Paula finds herself taking a step no decent lawyer should ever contemplate.Michela Wrong has been writing about Africa for two decades. In this taut legal thriller, rich with the Horn of Africa’s colours and aromas, she probes the motives underlying Western engagement with the continent, questioning the value of universal justice and exploring how history itself is forged. Above all her first novel is the story of a young woman’s anguished quest for redemption.

    So when she returns there after her father's death, for the first time in twenty-five years, it means facing a past she thought she had put behind her. But even as childhood memories threaten to paralyze her, Ellie sets out to discover the dark secret at the heart of her father's life and her parents' marriage, hoping the truth will allow her to break free from the past that has haunted her life.

    Hanover Park. The heart of the Cape Flats. It is 1986. Michael Jackson and Brenda Fassie rule every hi-fi. Princess Di and George Michael hairstyles are all the rage. There are plans to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the 1976 student uprising.Neville and Magda Fourie live in Magnolia Court with their three children. They are trying to ‘raise them decent’ in a township festering with gang wars and barricaded with burning tyres. Suzette, the eldest, is beautiful and determined to escape her family’s poverty. Nicky, the sensitive middle child, has ambitions to use her intellect as a way out. Anthony, the only son, attracted by power and wealth, is lured away from his family by a gangster. In What Will People Say? a rich variety of township characters – the preachers, the teachers, the gangsters and the defeated – come to life in vivid language as they eke out their lives in the shadows of grey concrete blocks of flats.Which members of the Fourie family will thrive, which ones will not survive?Generously spiced with Cape Flats slang; lots of vivid and gritty description that give an authentic feel to the story; plenty of plot – the writer draws us in and makes us curious about what will happen next; and very human characters we come to care about.

    As the main characters convert their library center into a practical street initiative, the novel invokes the squalor, health risks, and vicious cycles of poverty and violence that drive children to the streets and women to prostitution; and, from which, ultimately, no one in the society is free.

    This is the story of how things fell apart.’The years between 1983 and 1993 were momentous for Nigeria. Military rule was a time of increased violence, rampant corruption, coups, coup plotting and coup baiting. It moulded the conditions and character of Nigeria today, forcing seismic changes on the political, economic and religious landscape that nearly tore the country apart on several occasions.Soldiers of Fortune is a fast-paced and thrilling narrative of the major events of the Buhari and Babangida era. The book draws on previously uncovered observations from interviews conducted with insiders (including a former member of the Brigade of Guards and Nigerian Airways personnel who witnessed the attempted kidnap of Umaru Dikko), to compile step-by-step dramatic reconstructions of disputed events and intrigues. Siollun’s fresh perspective challenges preconceived views to reveal the true story behind controversies of the period: the annulment of the June 12 election, the dubious execution of Mamman Vatsa, the foiled kidnapping of Umaru Dikko, the Orkar coup and the inconclusive case of the assassination of Dele Giwa.Historian Max Siollun gives an intimate, fly-on-the-wall portrait of the major events and dramatis personae of the period. He paints a vivid picture of leaders such as Ibrahim Babangida, whose ‘amiable personality, effusive charm and warm bonhomie’ distracted from his determined grip on power, political cunning and retention of detested laws. Siollun also relates anecdotes from how ‘pillow talk’ had a role in the 1983 coup, to the troubled final hours of the condemned Mamman Vatsa, childhood friend of Babangida. We are reminded of the important role played by civilians in supporting and sponsoring successive coups, and as such, we are forced to reassess apparent heroes such as the business tycoon, M.K.O Abiola.Alongside its close-up, dramatised narrative, Soldiers of Fortune also provides clear and detailed analysis of the period, revealing Nigerians’ complicity in the corruption of everyday life. It makes use of charts, lists and neatly delineated sections to pick apart the complex and often murky details of military rule, effectively demonstrating how the key events and protagonists of the period had a long-lasting impact which still resonates throughout Nigeria today.Both gripping and informative, Soldiers of Fortune is a must-read for all Nigerians and Nigeria-watchers. Its dramatic narrative style and clear attention to detail will engage casual, journalistic and academic readers alike.

    But when his embittered spinster daughter Magda feels shamed, this lurch across the racial divide marks the end of a tenuous feudal peace. As she dreams madly of bloody revenge, Magda's consciousness starts to drift and the line between fact and the workings of her excited imagination becomes blurred. What follows is the fable of a woman's passionate, obsessed and violent response to an Africa that will not heed her.

    Settler wagons in their hundreds left the safety of the Cape Colony; generations on, their descendents are still fighting to keep a land they love...... "For that smallest of moments the two men stared at each other. Between them flew a hundred years, a thousand reasons. Ancient prophecies, the creak of wagons over rough ground and a woman's yearning for infinite horizons, the strengthening of one man's belief and the imminent death of another."From Rhodesia's final years, the clock turns back to the windswept, dusty streets of Kimberley’s infamous diamond fields. For Catherine Goddard and her son, Mathew, their decision to cross the Limpopo as part of a settler wagon train is one borne of desperation and a boy's need to be reunited with his father. For three months their ox-drawn trek wagon stands as their only defence against the African wilderness and the bloodlust of Lobengula Khumalo’s warring impis.Throughout the passage of a hundred years, three racially divided families are fatefully drawn together. Dynasties are shaped and smashed by kings, warrior chiefs and the indomitable lust for power and wealth by men like Cecil Rhodes and the perpetrators of Zimbabwe’s chaotic new order.From the latter part of the nineteenth century, Sons of Africa runs inexorably to the demise of Rhodesia’s white minority rule and the emergence of the new Zimbabwe.

    Drawing on the West African Yoruba oral folktale tradition, Tutuola described the odyssey of a devoted palm-wine drinker through a nightmare of fantastic adventure. Since then, The Palm-Wine Drinkard has been translated into more than 15 languages and has come to be regarded as a masterwork of one of Africa's most influential writers. Tutuola's second novel, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, recounts the fate of mortals who stray into the world of ghosts, the heart of the tropical forest. Here, as every hunter and traveler knows, mortals venture at great peril, and it is here that a small boy is left alone.

    However, her early adult life is marred by childlessness in a society that places a great premium on children and motherhood as the ultimate mark of womanhood. Worldreader presents this e-book in a new series showcasing fiction from Sub-Saharan Africa. Are you a worldreader? Read more about this not-for-profit social enterprise at worldreader.org.

    Money, fame, power. He had created a multibillion dollar company from almost nothing and turned Ryan's Future technology inc into one of the forefronts of technological innovation.He had it all, yet he gambled it all on a crackpot idea that Earth had it's own wormhole.He'd proven it too, and now he was in for the adventure of his life. No, he wasn't going to sit back and let others go in his stead, he was going to be on the forefront of this grand adventure.To move mankind one step further closer to the stars.He'd found adventure all right, all that and more as he found his team cut off, trapped in the middle of an invasion.Princess Deidra and her younger Sister Zara were having a series of bad days. When the neighboring kingdom suddenly invaded they found themselves on the front lines and swiftly in danger. But will the dashing Gaijin save them? Save them from the wilds of their world, the invaders, and more importantly, themselves?Princess Deidra isn't so sure she wants to be saved!