As we see from the title, the article basically talks about how the Nigerian writer is trapped in the hands of the West in order to make a name as a writer, or become famous, or get a wider readership and be able to sell their books.

The article-picture for this article is that of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, of whom the writer on many occassions used her body of works to support the article.

In one of the paragraphs, the writer states: ‘While Nigeria serves as a muse, many of these new authors must live abroad or tap into Western networks to earn a living from their writing.’

The writer supports most of the points raised by the voices of some promininent Nigerian writers. For instance, according to Nigerian author Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, ‘Unfortunately, no matter how well the book is written, writers who come into prominence, come into prominence because they are recognised by the West.’

The article ends with the voice of Chinelo Onwualu, the editor at Cassava Republic based in Nigeria. She said, ‘It’s really tough publishing in Nigeria right now, but once smebody discovers that golden formula to make it work in our environment, some very exciting things are going to take place.’

To read the full article, please get a copy of the Daily Dispatch of Tuesday, January 31, 2012.

I am excited to officially inform you of my participation in Kinna’s Africa Reading Challenge. The rules in this challenge are simple to follow and clearly outlined. I am more excited about the number of books to be read because honestly, this gives me no other reason not to participate. Kinna clearly states under the Reading Goal section:

’5 books.  That’s it.  There will be no other levels.  Of course, participants are encouraged to read more than 5 books.  Eligible books include those which are written by African writers, or take place in Africa, or are concerned with Africans and with historical and contemporary African issues. Note that at least 3 books must be written by African writers.’

I will come up with my list of books later on though I am excited to be picking most of the titles from Amazon Kindle Store.

For details of this challenge, visit here.

Teju Cole's Open City

I am delighted to inform my readers of Teju Cole’s Open City, available in paperback January 17^th.  Hailed by The New York Times Book Review as “a compassionate and masterly work” and The New Yorker as “beautiful, subtle–and original,” Open City tells the story of a half-Nigerian, half-German doctor doing his residency in New York City while searching for his place in the world. It examines the layers of New York history left exposed in the wake of 9/11, and probes the undercurrents of racial and immigrant anxiety in contemporary American life.

More Than 20 Publications Pick OPEN CITY As One of the Best Books of 2011!

 New York Times  ●  Time Magazine  ●  The New Yorker  ●  Newsweek/Daily Beast    ●  New York Magazine  ●  The Economist  ●  Kirkus  ●   Boston Globe  ● 

The Atlantic  ●  The Week Magazine  ●  The Economist  ●   Los Angeles Times  ●  Books and Culture  ●  Salon.com  ●  NPR.org  ●  Kansas City Star  ●  Seattle Times  ●  The New Republic  ●  Slate.com  ●  New Statesman  ●  The Guardian UK

Here is an excerpt:

COPYRIGHT: Excerpted from Open City by Teju Cole Copyright © 2011 by Teju Cole. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cole: OPEN CITY

PART 1

Death is a perfection of the eye

ONE

And so when I began to go on evening walks last fall, I found Morningside Heights an easy place from which to set out into the city. The path that drops down from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and crosses Morningside Park is only fifteen minutes from Central Park. In the other direction, going west, it is some ten minutes to Sakura Park, and walking northward from there brings you toward Harlem, along the Hudson, though traffic makes the river on the other side of the trees inaudible. These walks, a counterpoint to my busy days at the hospital, steadily lengthened, taking me farther and farther afield each time, so that I often found myself at quite a distance from home late at night, and was compelled to return home by subway. In this way, at the beginning of the final year of my psychiatry fellowship, New York City worked itself into my life at walking pace.

Not long before this aimless wandering began, I had fallen into the habit of watching bird migrations from my apartment, and I wonder now if the two are connected. On the days when I was home early enough from the hospital, I used to look out the window like someone taking auspices, hoping to see the miracle of natural immigration. Each time I caught sight of geese swooping in formation across the sky, I wondered how our life below might look from their perspective, and imagined that, were they ever to indulge in such speculation, the high-rises might seem to them like firs massed in a grove. Often, as I searched the sky, all I saw was rain, or the faint contrail of an airplane bisecting the window, and I doubted in some part of myself whether these birds, with their dark wings and throats, their pale bodies and tireless little hearts, really did exist. So amazed was I by them that I couldn’t trust my memory when they weren’t there.

Pigeons flew by from time to time, as did sparrows, wrens, orioles, tanagers, and swifts, though it was almost impossible to identify the birds from the tiny, solitary, and mostly colorless specks I saw fizzing across the sky. While I waited for the rare squadrons of geese, I would sometimes listen to the radio. I generally avoided American stations, which had too many commercials for my taste—Beethoven followed by ski jackets, Wagner after artisanal cheese—instead tuning to Internet stations from Canada, Germany, or the Netherlands. And though I often couldn’t understand the announcers, my comprehension of their languages being poor, the programming always met my evening mood with great exactness. Much of the music was familiar, as I had by this point been an avid listener to classical radio for more than fourteen years, but some of it was new. There were also rare moments of astonishment, like the first time I heard, on a station broadcasting from Hamburg, a bewitching piece for orchestra and alto solo by Shchedrin (or perhaps it was Ysaÿe) which, to this day, I have been unable to identify.

I liked the murmur of the announcers, the sounds of those voices speaking calmly from thousands of miles away. I turned the computer’s speakers low and looked outside, nestled in the comfort provided by those voices, and it wasn’t at all difficult to draw the comparison between myself, in my sparse apartment, and the radio host in his or her booth, during what must have been the middle of the night somewhere in Europe. Those disembodied voices remain connected in my mind, even now, with the apparition of migrating geese. Not that I actually saw the migrations more than three or four times in all: most days all I saw was the colors of the sky at dusk, its powder blues, dirty blushes, and russets, all of which gradually gave way to deep shadow. When it became dark, I would pick up a book and read by the light of an old desk lamp I had rescued from one of the dumpsters at the university; its bulb was hooded by a glass bell that cast a greenish light over my hands, the book on my lap, the worn upholstery of the sofa. Sometimes, I even spoke the words in the book out loud to myself, and doing so I noticed the odd way my voice mingled with the murmur of the French, German, or Dutch radio announcers, or with the thin texture of the violin strings of the orchestras, all of this intensified by the fact that whatever it was I was reading had likely been translated out of one of the European languages. That fall, I flitted from book to book: Barthes’s Camera Lucida, Peter Altenberg’s Telegrams of the Soul, Tahar Ben Jelloun’s The Last Friend, among others.

In that sonic fugue, I recalled St. Augustine, and his astonishment at St. Ambrose, who was reputed to have found a way to read without sounding out the words. It does seem an odd thing—it strikes me now as it did then—that we can comprehend words without voicing them. For Augustine, the weight and inner life of sentences were best experienced out loud, but much has changed in our idea of reading since then. We have for too long been taught that the sight of a man speaking to himself is a sign of eccentricity or madness; we are no longer at all habituated to our own voices, except in conversation or from within the safety of a shouting crowd. But a book suggests conversation: one person is speaking to another, and audible sound is, or should be, natural to that exchange. So I read aloud with myself as my audience, and gave voice to another’s words.

In any case, these unusual evening hours passed easily, and I often fell asleep right there on the sofa, dragging myself to bed only much later, usually at some point in the middle of the night. Then, after what always seemed mere minutes of sleep, I was jarred awake by the beeping of the alarm clock on my cellphone, which was set to a bizarre marimba-like arrangement of “O Tannenbaum.” In these first few moments of consciousness, in the sudden glare of morning light, my mind raced around itself, remembering fragments of dreams or pieces of the book I had been reading before I fell asleep. It was to break the monotony of those evenings that, two or three days each week after work, and on at least one of the weekend days, I went out walking.

At first, I encountered the streets as an incessant loudness, a shock after the day’s focus and relative tranquillity, as though someone had shattered the calm of a silent private chapel with the blare of a TV set. I wove my way through crowds of shoppers and workers, through road constructions and the horns of taxicabs. Walking through busy parts of town meant I laid eyes on more people, hundreds more, thousands even, than I was accustomed to seeing in the course of a day, but the impress of these countless faces did nothing to assuage my feelings of isolation; if anything, it intensified them. I became more tired, too, after the walks began, an exhaustion unlike any I had known since the first months of internship, three years earlier. One night, I simply went on and on, walking all the way down to Houston Street, a distance of some seven miles, and found myself in a state of disorienting fatigue, laboring to remain on my feet. That night I took the subway home, and instead of falling asleep immediately, I lay in bed, too tired to release myself from wakefulness, and I rehearsed in the dark the numerous incidents and sights I had encountered while roaming, sorting each encounter like a child playing with wooden blocks, trying to figure out which belonged where, which responded to which. Each neighborhood of the city appeared to be made of a different substance, each seemed to have a different air pressure, a different psychic weight: the bright lights and shuttered shops, the housing projects and luxury hotels, the fire escapes and city parks. My futile task of sorting went on until the forms began to morph into each other and assume abstract shapes unrelated to the real city, and only then did my hectic mind finally show some pity and still itself, only then did dreamless sleep arrive.

The walks met a need: they were a release from the tightly regulated mental environment of work, and once I discovered them as therapy, they became the normal thing, and I forgot what life had been like before I started walking. Work was a regimen of perfection and competence, and it neither allowed improvisation nor tolerated mistakes. As interesting as my research project was—I was conducting a clinical study of affective disorders in the elderly—the level of detail it demanded was of an intricacy that exceeded anything else I had done thus far. The streets served as a welcome opposite to all that. Every decision—where to turn left, how long to remain lost in thought in front of an abandoned building, whether to watch the sun set over New Jersey, or to lope in the shadows on the East Side looking across to Queens—was inconsequential, and was for that reason a reminder of freedom. I covered the city blocks as though measuring them with my stride, and the subway stations served as recurring motives in my aimless progress. The sight of large masses of people hurrying down into underground chambers was perpetually strange to me, and I felt that all of the human race were rushing, pushed by a counterinstinctive death drive, into movable catacombs. Aboveground I was with thousands of others in their solitude, but in the subway, standing close to strangers, jostling them and being jostled by them for space and breathing room, all of us reenacting unacknowledged traumas, the solitude intensified.

One Sunday morning in November, after a trek through the relatively quiet streets on the Upper West Side, I arrived at the large, sun-brightened plaza at Columbus Circle. The area had changed recently. It had become a more commercial and tourist destination thanks to the pair of buildings erected for the Time Warner corporation on the site. The buildings, constructed at great speed, had just opened, and were filled with shops selling tailored shirts, designer suits, jewelry, appliances for the gourmet cook, handmade leather accessories, and imported decorative items. On the upper floors were some of the costliest restaurants in the city, advertising truffles, caviar, Kobe beef, and pricey “tasting menus.” Above the restaurants were apartments that included the most expensive residence in the city. Curiosity had brought me into the shops on the ground level once or twice before, but the cost of the items, and what I perceived as the generally snobbish atmosphere, had kept me from returning until that Sunday morning.

It was the day of the New York Marathon. I hadn’t known. I was taken aback to see the round plaza in front of the glass towers filled with people, a massive, expectant throng setting itself into place close to the marathon’s finish line. The crowd lined the street leading away from the plaza toward the east. Nearer the west there was a bandstand, on which two men with guitars were tuning up, calling and responding to the silvery notes on each other’s amplified in- struments. Banners, signs, posters, flags, and streamers of all kinds flapped in the wind, and mounted police on blindered horses regulated the crowd with cordons, whistles, and hand movements. The cops were in dark blue and wore sunshades. The crowd was brightly attired, and looking at all that green, red, yellow, and white synthetic material in the sun hurt the eyes. To escape the din, which seemed to be mounting, I decided to go into the shopping center. In addition to the Armani and Hugo Boss shops, there was a bookshop on the second floor. In there, I thought, I might catch some quiet and drink a cup of coffee before heading back home. But the entrance was full of the crowd overflow from the street, and cordons made it impossible to get into the towers.

I changed my mind, and decided instead to visit an old teacher of mine who lived in the vicinity, in an apartment less than ten minutes’ walk away on Central Park South. Professor Saito was, at eighty-nine, the oldest person I knew. He had taken me under his wing when I was a junior at Maxwell. By that time he was already emeritus, though he continued to come to campus every day. He must have seen something in me that made him think I was someone on whom his rarefied subject (early English literature) would not be wasted. I was a disappointment in this regard, but he was kindhearted and, even after I failed to get a decent grade in his English Literature before Shakespeare seminar, invited me to meet with him several times in his office. He had, in those days, recently installed an intrusively loud coffee machine, so we drank coffee, and talked: about interpretations of Beowulf, and then later on about the classics, the endless labor of scholarship, the various consolations of academia, and of his studies just before the Second World War. This last subject was so total in its distance from my experience that it was perhaps of most interest to me. The war had broken out just as he was finishing his D.Phil, and he was forced to leave England and return to his family in the Pacific Northwest. With them, shortly afterward, he was taken to internment in the Minidoka Camp in Idaho.

In these conversations, as I now recall them, he did almost all the talking. I learned the art of listening from him, and the ability to trace out a story from what was omitted. Rarely did Professor Saito tell me anything about his family, but he did tell me about his life as a scholar, and about how he had responded to important issues of his day. He’d done an annotated translation of Piers Plowman in the 1970s, which had turned out to be his most notable academic success. When he mentioned it, he did so with a curious mixture of pride and disappointment. He alluded to another big project (he didn’t say on what) that had never been completed. He spoke, too, about departmental politics. I remember one afternoon that was taken up with his recollection of a onetime colleague whose name meant nothing to me when he said it and which I don’t remember now. This woman had become famous for her activism during the civil rights era and had, for a moment, been such a campus celebrity that her literature classes overflowed. He described her as an intelligent, sensitive individual but someone with whom he could never agree. He admired and disliked her. It’s a puzzle, I remember him saying, she was a good scholar, and she was on the right side of the struggles of the time, but I simply couldn’t stand her in person. She was abrasive and egotistical, heaven rest her soul. You can’t say a word against her around here, though. She’s still considered a saint.

After we became friends, I made it a point to see Professor Saito two or three times each semester, and those meetings became cherished highlights of my last two years at Maxwell. I came to view him as a grandfatherly figure entirely unlike either of my own grandfathers (only one of whom I’d known). I felt I had more in common with him than with the people who happened to be related to me. After graduation, when I left, first for my research stint at Cold Spring Harbor, and then to medical school in Madison, we lost touch with each other. We exchanged one or two letters, but it was hard to have our conversations in that medium, since news and updates were not the real substance of our interaction. But after I returned to the city for internship, I saw him several times. The first, entirely by accident—though it happened on a day when I had been thinking about him—was just outside a grocery store not far from Central Park South, where he had gone out walking with the aid of an assistant. Later on, I showed up unannounced at his apartment, as he had invited me to do, and found that he still maintained the same open-door policy he had back when he had his office at the college. The coffee machine from that office now sat disused in a corner of the room. Professor Saito told me he had prostate cancer. It wasn’t entirely debilitating, but he had stopped going to campus, and had begun to hold court at home. His social interactions had been curtailed to a degree that must have pained him; the number of guests he welcomed had declined steadily, until most of his visitors were either nurses or home health aides.

Eyes of the Slain Woman

This is a collection of three novellas that each explore grief and the tenacity of the human spirit. In Echoes of Hungry Blood, Solo, a disenchanted doctor, leaves his practice in Accra to work in a village, where he is presented with the challenge of caring for those who have committed crimes against his family. His decision has severe ramifications that lead to regret and eventual deliverance. In The Last Next, Solo returns to the city and remarries. His new wife is soon diagnosed with a terminal illness and, unable to cope with the pain, she asks him to euthanize her. His agreement and the ensuing murder trial and conviction become a journey of growth and redemption. Eyes of the Slain Woman narrates the harrowing experiences of Ma Ebo, a long-widowed woman, following the murder of her son. A friend persuades her to visit her son’s murderer in prison and in the process finds healing and the liberation of forgiveness.

Benjamin Kwakye is the author of The Clothes of Nakedness(1998), The Sun by Night(2005), The Other Crucifix(2010), and Legacy of Phantoms(2011). He has won the regional Commonwealth Writers Prize in both the Best first book (1998) and the Best Book (2006) categories. He also won the 2011 IPPY Award for Best Adult Multicultural Fiction. The Clothes of Nakedness was adapted for radio as a BBC Play of the week. he was born in Accra, Ghana and holds degrees from Darthmouth College and Harvard Law School.

Told in ten distinct scenes, PANORAMA begins in pastoral World War I–era Bohemia, where the boy passively witnesses the “wonders of the world” in a thrilling panorama display; follows him to a German boarding school full of creeping xenophobia and prejudice; and finds him in young adulthood sent to a labor camp and then to one of the infamous extermination camps, before he chooses exile abroad after the war. Josef’s philosophical journey mirrors the author’s own: from a stoic acceptance of events to a realization that “the viewer is also the participant” and that action must be taken in life, if only to make sure the dead are not forgotten.

Here is an excerpt from PANORAMA:

COPYRIGHT:

Excerpted from Panorama by H. G. Adler Copyright © 2011 by H. G. Adler. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Adler: PANORAMA

The Visit to the Panorama

There’s a new program today. We’re going to the panorama.” Josef hears the voice of his grandmother and looks up from his toy. Panorama. Various pictures from all over the world. “Really, are we going?” The toy is abandoned, the dominoes, the building set, the train. It’s a long way, yet Josef and his grandmother love the panorama. They sit in the streetcar, the motor rattles and sings. Josef often plays streetcar. He runs along the long curbstones of the sidewalk, which is the track. Josef hums with his mouth closed and imitates the streetcar. First he calls out, “Ding! Dong Dong!,” then comes the humming and sighing of the motor. Streetcar conductor is the best job of all, for you get to sell tickets, punch the tickets, and call out the stops.

“We have to get off, Josef, come!” They draw past the embankment and see many people all dressed up. “Give me your hand! It’s so crowded here.” Already they have turned in to the quiet little lane where the panorama is located. Now they stand before the door. It’s a simple storefront with a small display window, and there Josef peers at the beautiful pictures, whether it be Vesuvius, Niagara Falls, the Great Pyramid, or other wonders of the world. There’s also an announcement for that day’s program. Josef sounds it out: “Li-ma, the Cap-i-tal of Pe-ru.”—“Come, come, there’s more to see inside.” They next enter a little lobby that is separated from the actual panorama by a heavy curtain. Behind a table on which stands a sign that says tickets sits a powdered woman. Grandmother gives her a silver coin and takes from the powdery lady two little red tickets, as well as a nickel and some copper change. Josef is allowed to pocket the nickel. “Save it! Don’t spend it on sweets!”

The grandmother weaves her way with Josef through the curtain and enters an almost completely darkened room. Around a polyhedral wooden cabinet high stools are arranged. In front of each one there are two round openings, which are dark peepholes located beneath a metal shield. You hold your eyes up or press them to the shield and the program appears. An attendant receives the guests and takes them to two free spots. The grandmother sits down, but the attendant lifts Josef up and presses him close to the peepholes. The two peepholes are there so that you see everything just the way it really looks, and everything is enlarged so that it seems completely alive. Everything appears lit by brilliant golden light, as if dipped in tropical sunlight. Each picture stands there for a minute, maybe less. To Josef it feels like a good long time. He’s pleased that it lasts so long, for he can’t get enough of the splendid sights. But it’s a shame that the people, animals, and wagons in the pictures don’t move. Though the fact they don’t move doesn’t make the life depicted in the beautiful pictures any less marvelous, it does make them seem like something outside of time. Before the pictures change, the delicate strike of a little bell warns: “Attention, time’s up! Get ready for the next wonder!” Then the picture moves away, another draws near, the next stands before Josef at last. If he doesn’t turn his gaze away from the peepholes and presses his face hard against the shield, he feels completely alone with the pictures. The daily world disappears and is gone. The viewer and the picture become one on the inside, no one can get in. Josef himself, however, cannot wander off into the pictures, for he remains sitting on his stool, his upper body bent forward slightly. Because of this he cannot sit comfortably, nor is there any chair back, so there’s no resting at all. In the panorama, however, that doesn’t matter. Josef is content. One can be comfortable anywhere else, it’s only in the panorama that this isn’t possible. Everything here is hard and fixed and tense. That’s why it’s not necessary for the grandmother to say, “Pay attention, in order that you get something out of this and learn from it!” Only when the pictures change does the tension ease for just a moment. Josef scoots forward on his stool in order to see better still. Beneath the peepholes a piece of tin is attached against which he breathes. The tin gathers moisture and sometimes Josef likes to run his fingers over its smooth flatness so that his fingertips feel damp. The grandmother pays no attention to Josef, for she knows how the panorama captivates him, so much so that he is better behaved than usual. That’s why the little naughtiness with wiping his fingers remains ignored. Normally there is no opportunity here to misbehave. The otherwise familiar world has disappeared. Here is another world, which one can only gaze at, there being no other way to enter but to gaze. Only these little holes are there for the eyes. Josef can see so for himself, simply by touching the glass, that there is no other way in. All the people and the distant lands that you encounter in these pictures remain untouchable behind the glass walls that are only large enough for the eyes.

It’s fairly quiet in the panorama. Except for the little bell that announces the change in pictures, you only hear the guests coming and going, or a stool scraping, now and then a couple of words someone might whisper to his neighbor. You hardly ever hear the attendant. Thus the world you normally live in is turned off, and has in fact passed away. Another world is risen, which neither reading nor studying nor even dreams can manifest. Nonetheless, Josef can step only a little way into the other world, though he cannot take part in it. If he shoves his knee forward he immediately bumps up against the wooden cabinet. Soon it’s clear how little is allowed. Everywhere there are barriers, nowhere can you immerse yourself entirely. Josef sees the other world, but it doesn’t care about him. It consists only of parts that are put together. The only way for it to be different would be for the pictures to move, to continue on and flow into one another, yet each is presented on its own and is clearly separated from the next. The other world is a program that is immensely beautiful, but nothing more. Next week the program changes, and so on week after week. There is no whole, only individual pieces without end. Even today’s program has no proper end but just repeats itself over and over. There are perhaps sixty, maybe eighty pictures, though there certainly are not a hundred. Eventually a picture comes along that has been there already. Josef doubts this at first, but after the next chiming of the little bell another picture appears that is also familiar. The grandmother still looks on. She starts to get restless on her chair. After the little bell strikes again and a third picture arrives that most certainly has been there already, the grandmother turns to Josef. “It’s over, my dear. We’ve seen that one already. We have to go.”

The grandmother stands. The attendant is already there and lifts Josef down; the grandmother helps and takes the boy by the hand. Then the attendant pulls back the curtain. In the lobby the daylight is so strong that the grandmother warns, “Child, close your eyes!” She doesn’t have to say anything, for Josef squints and allows himself to be led out almost blind. The grandmother doesn’t let on how much it all pleased her, but says, “Be careful, and watch where you’re going.” Josef doesn’t know whether the warning is about the spectacle in the panorama or the way that leads home.

1. The Concubine by Elechi Amadi: Published in 1966,  I remarked that it is by far one of the best humorous books I have read. The story deals with themes like religion as well as the traditions in the society. It is also very much about the longing of love for one another. Elegi proves himself as a good storyteller by the way he handles the narrative, humorously.   

2. Far From Home by Na’ima B. Robert: Published in 2011, Far from Home is a powerful outlook into the political uproar in former Rhodesia but now Zimbabwe.  With the retelling of how white men, the varungu, first came to settle in Zimbabwe, we get a vivid understanding of the history of Zimbabwe from the days of the colonial era through to the claim for independence.

3. The Adventures of Kobby Badu-Smith by Dr. Mary A. Ashun: Ashun’s The Adventures of Kobby Badu-Smith is a space adventure series book suitable for children between eight to twelve years. I enjoyed this book tremendously.

4. The Canoe’s Story by Meshack Asare: Asare’s The Canoe’s Story is a simple but deep children’s story with pictures. It is sixty-three pages long. This is an author I discovered this year. Here is what I said about him: ‘Although I have not read enough children’s fiction from this author, I am tempted to pronounce Asare as a master of children’s fiction and more so want to read more from him.’

5. Diary of a Bad Year by J.M Coetzee: Published in 2007, Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year is not your usual page by page read-novel, for the form in which it is written or presented to the reader is unique on one hand and stylistic on the other. Diary of a Bad Year is an all encompassing read, a novel full of ideas, ideas that are thought-provoking and interesting. There is nothing more I can say to convince any reader to pick up this book.

6. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon:  Published in 2003, Haddon’s book is an interestingly ‘out of the ordinary’ kind of a novel. This is a book about a character who has a special kind of disability I have barely read about -  Asperger disorder.

 7. Summertime by J.M Coetzee: Published in 2010, Summertime is a book at the core of my heart. In fact, I am struggling to find words to describe how much I enjoyed this book. I better stop here and ask you to pick this up. It will not disappoint you.

8. In the Heart of the Country by J.M Coetzee: Published in 1977, this was one of the earliest books written by Coetzee. In fact, the question Coetzee’s character and young biographer, Vincent, asked the famous South African writer in Summertime seems to tell what the book is about: “Did you know that In the Heart of the Country would be about madness and patricide and so forth?” Again, a book I will recommend.

9. Powder Necklace by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond: Published in 2010, Powder Necklace is a coming of age novel where the main character, Lila searches for her own identity through several travels she embarks upon. In my opinion, this book is a celebration for the new crop of good writers coming out of Ghana and Africa.

10. True Murder by Yaba Badoe: Published in 2009, this book is about Eleven – year – old Ajuba who has been abandoned at a Devon boarding school by her Ghanaian father. Haunted by the circumstances of her mother’s breakdown, Ajuba falls under the spell of new girl Polly Venus, and her chaotic, glamorous family. I am happy to say that I met the author personally and had her autograph my copy.

Have you read any of this books? What do you make of my list?

CRP BOOK FAIR Flyer

If you’re looking for unique, affordable African-inspired gifts for the festive period, why not stop by the Abuja Arts and Crafts Village this weekend. Cassava Republic Press will be organising a Christmas fair at its new bookshop/gallery at No. 62b in the Arts and Craft Village, opposite the Sheraton Hotel on Saturday, 10^th of December from 2- 6 pm.

The fair will boast a bazaar featuring a wide variety of local goods – from pottery to Ankara bags and Batik quilts – for sale. Kids will be treated to an afternoon of storytelling and art tutorials.

In addition, we will be offering a special holiday discount of 10% on selected bundles of our titles. These easily affordable bundles will come wrapped in a trademark Cassava Republic wrapping paper or tied with cheerful Ankara cloth to give them a unique, festive touch.

Attendance for the fair is free and open to the public. It will be a fun day of shopping and exhibitions, showcasing the best of Nigerian talent. Best of all, it’ll be a great chance to check out the Cassava Republic Gallery and Bookshop, our new retail space in the heart of Abuja.

We offer great titles from all over the global south as well as a relaxing place to view paintings and photography from some of the undiscovered gems of Nigerian art. Make sure to come and grab some of our Nigerian and African authored books. We can’t wait to see you there!

About Cassava Republic

Cassava Republic is an Abuja-based independent book publisher. The company publishes high-quality fiction and non-fiction for adults, teens and children and is passionately committed to ensuring that engaging and beautifully made books are made available to the Nigerian market. We are also committed to promoting both a reading and a writing culture in Nigeria and West Africa.

Cassava Republic Press was founded in 2006. We are one of the leading new publishers on the continent. In 2008, the influential design magazine Monocles, named us as one of the brands worldwide to look out for. We have among our authors Orange Prize winners, Commonwealth and Caine Prize winners.

For vendors and businesses interested in a stand, registration is still open. For more information, contact info@cassavarepublic.biz or call: 0809 831 3250.

Writing Now edited by Irene Staunton: This is a collection of short stories. The book blurb reads: A sequel to the award-winning Writing Still, this new collection of stories paints an engaging – and sometimes challenging – picture of contemporary life and concerns in Zimbabwe. Thanks to my colleague blogger, friend and writer Novuyo Rosa Tshuma at Writerdelic for this.

The Boy Next Door by Irene Sabatini: I loved this book on my first read. I could not reject it when it was offered to me, again, by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma. I am planning on a second reading. I had a wonderful interview with Sabatini earlier on this year.

Death and the King’s Horseman by Wole Soyinka: This is a short play of some 84 pages. I have not read much from Soyinka so this is a welcome addition to my ever-growing library.

Down 2^nd Avenue by Es’kia Mphahlele: This book caught my attention and I could not turn back. It is Mphahlele’s personal account of his struggle for identity and dignity in the face of the discriminatory policies of the South African government. Mphahlele was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature for his novel The Wanderers (1968).

The Chicken Thief by Fiona Leonard: I was reading and enjoying this book when I lost it to viruses on my laptop. Thanks to the author for getting me a new copy.

Have you read any of these books? Have you come across any of them? Let me hear from you!

Mr Achebe said the concerns he raised about Nigeria when he first rejected the award in 2004 remain unresolved. At the time, Mr Achebe said the situation in poverty and violence-hit Nigeria was becoming worse.

Nigeria’s presidential spokesman, Reuben Abati, said his continued rejection was surprising and “flies in the face” of reality. He said Mr Jonathan was surprised that Mr Achebe – who gained worldwide fame for his novel Things Fall Apart – had turned down the Commander of the Federal Republic award, Nigeria’s second highest honour.

He said Mr Achebe – who lives in the US – was probably unaware of the true situation in Nigeria.

“The president continues to hold Prof Achebe in very high esteem in spite of his regrettable decision… and hopes he will find time to visit home soon and see for himself the progress being made by the Jonathan administration,” Mr Abati said.

Do you agree with Achebe’s rejection? What do you think?

Read the full article here.

Of what use is it, if I keep this reminder to myself without letting my fellow Ghanaian writers know about the impending deadlines. There is no better time than this, to encourage ourselves to participate in this year’s competition. A huge representation, I believe, gives us a better chance of good results.

The deadlines for both prizes are as follows:

Commonwealth Short Story Prize: Wednesday 30 November 2011 (5pm GMT)

Commonwealth Book Prize: Friday 9 December 2011 (5pm GMT)

Visit here for more information.

This article is my contribution to Kinna’s Ghanaian Literature Week.