In the communal world of the compound in which he lives, Omovo has many friends and some enemies, but most important of all there is Ifeyiwa, a beautiful young married woman who he loves with an almost hopeless passion - not because she doesn't return his love, but because they can never be together.

    The wildly inventive imagery in these cinematic pieces lodges them somewhere between the surreal and the pure symbol, colorful and smooth like the lyrics of John Ashbery or Linda Pastan. In Chelotti’s poems, diamonds talk and sheriffs balance frogs on the tips of pens.The rain says, Listen to Debussy,go ahead, Debussy will fix you.—From “Migraine Cure”The secret to including everythingis to intricately divide your mindand then, all of a sudden,undivide it.—From “Still Life on a Scrolling Background”

    Predator, the debut collection by Michael Robbins, became one of the hottest and most celebrated works of poetry in the country, winning acclaim for its startling freshness and originality, and leading critics to say that it was the most likely book in years to open up poetry to a new readership.   Robbins’s poems are strange, wonderful, wild, and irrationally exuberant, mashing up high and low culture with “a sky-blue originality of utterance” (The New York Times). The thirty-six new poems in The Second Sex carry over the music, attitude, hilarity, and vulgarity of Alien vs. Predator, while also working deeper autobiographical and political veins.

    The artistry of QUESTIONS FOR ADA defies words, embodying the pain, the passion, and the power of love rising from the depths of our souls.  Ijeoma Umebinyuo’s poetry is a flower that will blossom in the spirit of every reader as she shares her heart with raw candor.  From lyrical lushness to smoky sensuality to raw truths, this tome of transforming verse is the book every woman wants to write but can’t until the broken mirrors of their lives have healed.  In this gifted author’s own words—“I am too full of life to be half-loved.”  A bold celebration of womanhood.

    THE SINGING KNIVES, originally published in 1971 by Broughton's Mill Mountain Press, is Frank Sanford's first collection of poetry. Reprinted by his own press, Lost Roads Publisher, after his death, THE SINGING KNIVES, debuts the work of a twenty-something year old boy way ahead of his time and in a state of unrest, capturing "poetry's more primal and mysterious possibilities"-David Clewell. "It is astonishing to me that I was not even aware of this superbly accomplished and moving poet. There is a great deal of pain in the poems, but it is a pain that makes sense, a tragic pain whose meaning rises from the way the poems are so firmly molded and formed from within"- James Wright.

    It is the winner of the Noma Award.

    Faced with the difficult choice of living with their abusive extended family or slithering into the dark underbelly of Lusaka’s streets, Chimuka and Ali escape and become street kids.Against the backdrop of a failed military coup, election riots and a declining economy, Chimuka and Ali are raised by drugs, crime and police brutality. As a teenager, Chimuka is caught between prostitution and the remnants of the fragile stability that existed before her parents’ death.The Mourning Bird is not just Chimuka’s story, it’s a national portrait of Zambia in an era of strife. With lively and unflinching prose, Kalimamukwento paints a country’s burden, shame and silence, which, when juxtaposed with Chimuka’s triumph, forms an empowering debut novel.

    But when young love is dashed in one sweet, pure moment, Will self-inflicts exile… to Africa, the start of his odyssey through life. Will’s older, astute and devious brother, Byron, has his own ideas on making his way through life, making money no matter who he treads on and that includes his own family. After four years away, Will returns to England with a small fortune. Seeking Byron’s advice, but unbeknown to Will, he is deceitfully manipulated. Money is the driver. Life becomes misplaced. Complicated. Africa becoming further away. Lost in his concrete desert with the thirst to fabricate her memory, how strong is the power of love? This is Peter Rimmer’s third standalone book in his African Trilogy. The first being Cry of the Fish Eagle and the second, Vultures in the Wind. Just the Memory of Love is philosophical, poignant and evocative sprinkled with a tapestry of deeply rich and entertaining characters. Rimmer has that rare ability to transport you to another time and place whether that be a soft, gentle English summer or the violence and terror of an Africa storm. Pick up Just the Memory of Love today and immerse yourself in Peter Rimmer’s latest novel.

    It provides an account of the exploitation of women in Africa and Europe, and tells of an immigrant who, having travelled to Germany to find a paradise, finds she has been betrayed by her husband and is forced into prostitution.

    Khumalo’s salon, and she is secure in her status until the handsome, smooth-talking Dumisani shows up one day for work. Despite her resistance, the two become friends, and eventually, Vimbai becomes Dumisani’s landlady. He is as charming as he is deft with the scissors, and Vimbai finds that he means more and more to her. Yet, by novel’s end, the pair’s deepening friendship—used or embraced by Dumisani and Vimbai with different futures in mind—collapses in unexpected brutality.The novel is an acute portrayal of a rapidly changing Zimbabwe. In addition to Vimbai and Dumisani’s personal development, the book shows us how social concerns shape the lives of everyday people.

    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.

    The story of Beukes - lonely, hunted, determined - who works for an illegal freedom organization, and of Elias Tekwane, captured by the South African police and tortured to death in their cells.

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

    

    Pictures the transition between the old white-dominated Southern Rhodesia, through the Bush War, to the new black regime of Zimbabwe.