The Tale of the Harmattan

The Tale of the Harmattan
Author: Ojaide, Tanure
Publisher: Kraft Books
Total Pages: 71
Release: 2016-10-06
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9789183119

In this collection, Nigerian poet Tanure Ojaide adopts the persona of a homeboy griot returning from travels to be confronted by the devastation wrought by oil greed, politics, and technology upon his beloved Niger Delta; its environment, civilisation and people. It becomes a tragedy of corruption, suffering and dispossession in sharp contrast to the eco-sensitive animism of his youth. Angry, elegiac and lyrical, this collection allows the reader insight far beyond the reach of journalism or prose.

The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar

The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar
Author: Syl Cheney-Coker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 587
Release: 2024-01-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1803288876

Winner of the 1991 Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Syl Cheney-Coker's acclaimed debut novel, The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar traces the history of a nation's rise and fall, as prophesied by an ancient sorcerer. A military general sits in one of Malagueta's prison cells, awaiting his execution. He has just failed to overthrow the government. In the same land, over two centuries ago, the wife of a formerly enslaved man takes her first steps towards freedom. From the creation of Malagueta to its devastating fall, Alusine Dunbar, the wizened old diviner, has prophesied it all. And what he sees, he calls a tragedy. One of Sierra Leone's most renowned novelists and poets, Sly Cheney-Coker creates a world teeming with magical realism as he paints the journey from precolonial Africa to its shaky independence.

Harmattan

Harmattan
Author: Gavin Weston
Publisher:
Total Pages: 515
Release: 2013
Genre: General fiction
ISBN: 9781471222252

Harmattan tells the story of Haoua, a young girl growing up in the Republic of Niger. Spirited independent and intelligent, she has benefitted from a loving and attentive mother. Haoua worships her elder brother, Abdelkrim, a serving soldier who sends money home to support the family. But, on his last home visit, Abdelkrim quarrels with their father accusing him of gambling away their money and being the cause of their mother's worsening health. As civil strife mounts in Niger, Haoua begins to fear for Abdelkrim's safety. Her mother's illness is much more serious than anyone had recognised and her father has threatening plans. Approaching her twelfth birthday, Haoua is vulnerable for the very first time in her life...

Harmattan

Harmattan
Author: Marcello Di Cintio
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2002
Genre: Africa, West
ISBN: 9781894663328

This is a travelogue of a different order: the searing beauty and somber reality of West Africa are distilled into poetic moments of refreshingly honest insight, a world transformed through the wide eyes of a new traveler.

The Call of Zulina

The Call of Zulina
Author: Kay Marshall Strom
Publisher: Abingdon Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2010-03-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1426713819

The Grace in Africa series is a sweeping three-part historical saga of slavery and freedom that takes the reader from an island off the west coast of Africa to Southern plantations and finally on to Canada. All her life, Grace Winslow, the daughter of a mixed marriage between an English sea captain and an African princess, has been sheltered from the truth about the family business--the capture and trade of slaves. Set in 1787 in West Africa, The Call of Zulina opens as the scorching harmattan winds blow. Desperate to avoid marriage to an odious suitor, Grace escapes the family compound only to be caught up in a slave revolt at the fortress of Zulina. Soon, she begins to grasp the brutality and ferocity of the family business. Held for ransom, viciously maimed by a runaway slave, and threatened with death, Grace is finally jerked into reality and comes to sympathize with the plight of the captives. She admires their strength and courage and is genuinely moved by the African Cabeto’s passion, determination, and willingness to sacrifice anything, including his own life, for his people’s freedom.

The Activist

The Activist
Author: Tanure Ojaide
Publisher: Farafina Books
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2006
Genre: Nigeria
ISBN: 9780745785

Kabu Kabu

Kabu Kabu
Author: Nnedi Okorafor
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781607014058

Presents a variety of takes on the future of Africa, including robots serving foreign interests find common cause with artists, women fall victim to society's order, and assassins ponder the effects of their efforts to provoke reform.

Sacred River

Sacred River
Author: Syl Cheney-Coker
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Total Pages: 445
Release: 2013-03-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0821444654

The reincarnation of a legendary nineteenth-century Caribbean emperor as a contemporary African leader is at the heart of this novel. Sacred River deals with the extraordinary lives, hopes, powerful myths, stories, and tragedies of the people of a modern West African nation. It is also the compelling love story of an idealistic philosophy professor and an ex-courtesan of incomparable beauty. Two hundred years after his death, the great Haitian emperor Henri Christophe miraculously appears in a dream to Tankor Satani, president of the fictional West African country of Kissi, with instructions for Tankor to continue Henri Christophe’s rule, which had been interrupted by “that damned Napoleon.” Ambitious in scope, Sacred River is a diaspora-inspired novel, in which Cheney-Coker has tackled the major themes of politics, social strife, crime and punishment, and human frailty and redemption in Malagueta, the fictional, magical town and its surroundings first created by the author in The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar, for which he was awarded the coveted Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Sacred River is equally about love and politics, and marks the return to fiction of one of Africa’s major writers.

Quiet Flows the Una

Quiet Flows the Una
Author: Faruk Šehić
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Bosnia and Herzegovina
ISBN: 9781908236494

Quiet Flows the Una is the story a man trying to overcome the personal trauma caused by the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. The book covers three time periods, taking in the hero's childhood before the war, the battle lines during the war, and his attempt to continue with normal life in a post-conflict society. Through his meditative prose, Sehic attempts to reconstruct the life of a man who is bipolar in nature; being both a veteran and a poet. At times, he manages to pick up the pieces of his life, but at other times it escapes him. His memories of the recent war and the killings are dirty and disgusting, while he views his present as humdrum and his identity feels incomplete. With the help of his memories, he uses his mind and strength to look for a way out of the maze in which he is confined, acting as both archivist and chronicler of the past - roles that allow him the opportunity to rebuild everything again. In parallel to this story, the book's passages on the city next to the river Una take on mythical and dreamlike dimensions. Here, the novel expands into a poetic description of nature, seasons, flora and fauna, as well as childhood memories not yet tainted by all that will happen after 1992. The book is dedicated to people who believe in the power and beauty of life in the face of death and mass destruction.