The World Was in Our Hands: Voices from the Boko Haram Conflict, published by Cassava Press, is now available to pre-order in the U.S. with a release date of April 22, 2025.

Edited by Nigerian writer and activist Chitra Nagarajan, The World Was in Our Hands is a harrowing collection of first hand accounts of people living through the Boko Haram conflict. While news about the conflict has been easily available, this is book offers stories told by real people living through something unimaginable, in their own words–something that cannot be captured by the news coverage.

The storytellers encompass a wide range of people from abducted girls to brash soldiers to community leaders to simple fishermen. Together, their stories offer insights into patriarchy, the economy, climate change, and corruption. This “essential cultural archive” brings new dimensions to light about a historical and political moment we thought we already knew, and is an important record of an ongoing conflict.

Chitra Nagarajan is a journalist and writer who writes on climate change, conflict, feminism, foreign policy, migration, Nigeria and the wider Lake Chad region, race and  sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. She has written for The Guardian, New Humanist, New Internationalist, This is Africa and Ventures Africa and appeared on Sky News and the BBC World Service. She co-edited She Called Me Woman: Nigeria’s Queer Women Speak, a book of narratives also published by Cassava Republic Press.

Pre-order The World Was in Our Hands here!