One day, when he was a child, Níyì Ọ̀ṣúndáre’s father called him into the living room to present a gift he had brought for him from Lagos. In Ìkẹ́rẹ́ Èkìtì at this time in pre-independence Nigeria, much of what now defines “enlightenment” was limited to big cities and not generally accessible to all parts […]
Tag Archives: book review
Does “Stay With Me” Stay with You? | Kayode Faniyi | Essay
1. UK political parties were in the thick of electioneering when the worst happened. Before Salman Abedi seized the narrative, Theresa May’s incontinent manifesto-making and an unlikely Corbyn surge dominated the news. In the wake of the deadly suicide bomb attack on the aftermath of an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena, political parties […]
Dystopia in Many Words | Review of Lauren Beukes’ Slipping | By Kola Tubosun
Lauren Beukes loves dystopia, or has at least has spent a lot of time thinking about it. A number of stories in her latest collection, titled Slipping, examine dire futuristic scenarios, from hyper-commercialization of television to exploitative medical sciences to biotech advertising to air travel — all of them packing sufficient decibels of discomfiture, in […]
Joe Ruzvidzo’s Behind Enemy Lines Explores the Lives of Ordinary People and Anti-heroes
Sometime in the middle of last year, we published this story about an adorable little boy taking a flight of fancy into the world of espionage and battle. That story, titled “Behind Enemy Lines,” is now the headline story in a lovely little collection of stories by Zimbabwean writer Joe Ruzvidzo. Behind Enemy Lines and […]
Art Chasing Life Blatantly | Review of Chibundu Onuzo’s Welcome to Lagos | by Kola Tubosun
For almost two-thirds of Chibundu Onuzo’s new book, one searches in vain to find the source of the title, Welcome to Lagos (Faber & Faber, 2016). Was it ironically chosen to direct the reader on some chase of relevant nuggets of the city’s peculiarities or selected just for the foreboding it suggests to those already […]
Review of Isaac Newton Akah’s Living in ‘Gidi | by Ikhide Ikheloa
If you go to Amazon and search for Living in ‘Gidi by Isaac Newton Akah, a slim e-book less than eighty pages in length will impishly raise her hand and ask to be taken home. Buy it and enjoy a brisk read, an entertaining and playfully eclectic piece on Lagos, well, mostly Mainland Lagos. For […]
“A Bit Racist” | Aaron Bady Airs His Criticism of Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers
American writer, Aaron Bady, has read Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers and is’t altogether impressed. In his review published on LitHub, he expresses reservations about certain aspects of the novel’s representation of Africa and Africans. Behold the Dreamers has been out for a few months. The novel follows the struggles of a Cameroonian man living in NYC […]
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