Even More New Releases for 2016
It's been over six months since
my New Releases for 2016 post; and four
months into the year there's already even more amazing books to be excited
about. Since then, Yewande Omotoso's second novel's cover was revealed and Cassava Republic Press UK launched on April 1st; and with that came three new releases - including the UK edition of Born on A Tuesday. Cassava Republic Press' 2016 Catalogue also reveals some really exciting 2016 titles to look forward to including The Carnivorous City by Toni Kan - a crime novel set in Lagos; and Longthroat Memoirs: Soups,Sex and Nigerian Taste Buds by Yemisi Aribisala - 'a sumptuous menu of essays about Nigerian food'.
Also Nii Ayikwei Parkes has two upcoming works - The City Will Love You, a collection of short stories and Azucar - his upcoming novel. Also, the US editions of Lauren Beukes' Zoo City and Moxyland will be published August 16.
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| Some of the forthcoming exciting titles from Cassava Republic Press. Blurry camera phone images courtesy of the CRP 2016 catalogue |
Here are some other books to add to your reading list.
Easy Motion Tourist by
Leye Adenle (April 1 2016)
In the murk of a hot, groaning and bloody
police station cell, Collins fears the worst. But then Amaka, a sassy guardian
angel of Lagos working girls, talks the police station chief around. She
assumes Collins is a BBC journo who can broadcast the city's witchcraft and
body parts trade that she's on a one-woman mission to stop.
With Easy Motion
Tourist's astonishing cast, Tarantino has landed in Lagos. This page turning
debut crime novel pulses with the rhythm of Nigeria's mega-city, reeks of its open
drains and sparkles like the champagne quaffed in its upmarket districts.
Like a Mule Bringing Ice-cream to the Sun by Sarah Ladipo Manyinka (April 1 2016)
Also published by Cassava
Republic Press, Morayo Da Silva, a cosmopolitan Nigerian
woman, lives in hip San Francisco. On the cusp of seventy-five, she is in good
health and makes the most of it, enjoying road trips in her vintage Porsche,
chatting to strangers, and recollecting characters from her favourite novels.
Then she has a fall and her independence crumbles.
Without the support of
family, she relies on friends and chance encounters. As Morayo recounts her
story, moving seamlessly between past and present, we meet Dawud, a charming
Palestinian shopkeeper, Sage, a feisty, homeless Grateful Dead devotee, and
Antonio, the poet whom Morayo desired more than her ambassador husband.
A
subtle story about ageing, friendship and loss, this is also a nuanced study of
the erotic yearnings of an older woman.
When Nyamugari,
an adolescent mute, attempts to ask a young woman in rural Burundi for
directions to an appropriate place to relieve himself, his gestures are
mistaken as premeditation for rape. To the young woman's community, his fleeing
confirms his guilt, setting off a chain reaction of pursuit, mob justice, and
Nyamugari's attempts at explanation.
Young Burundian novelist Roland Rugero's
second novel Baho!, is published by Phoneme
Media and is the first Burundian novel
to ever be translated into English, explores the concepts of miscommunication
and justice against the backdrop of war-torn Burundi's beautiful green
hillsides.
Mount Pleasant by Patrice Nganang; Translated by Amy Reid (April
12, 2016)
In Cameroon in
1931, Sara is taken from her family and brought to Mount Pleasant as a gift for
Sultan Njoya, the Bamum leader cast into exile by French colonialists. Just
nine years old and on the verge of becoming one of the sultan's hundreds of
wives, Sara's story takes an unexpected turn when she is recognized by Bertha,
the slave in charge of training Njoya's brides, as Nebu, the son she lost
tragically years before. In Sara's new life as a boy she bears witness to the
world of Sultan Njoya--a magical yet declining place of artistic and
intellectual minds--and hears the story of the sultan's last days in the Palace
of All Dreams and of the sad fate of Nebu, the greatest artist their culture
had seen.
Seven decades later, a student returns home to
Cameroon to research the place it once was, and she finds Sara, silent for
decades, ready to tell her story. In her serpentine tale, a lost kingdom lives
again in the compromised intersection between flawed memory, tangled fiction,
and faintly discernible truth. In this telling, history is invented anew and
transformed--a man awakens from a coma to find the animal kingdom dancing a
waltz; a spirit haunts a cocoa plantation; and a sculptor re-creates his lost
love in a work of art that challenges the boundary between truth and the ideal.
The award-winning novelist Patrice Nganang's lyrical and majestic Mount Pleasant is a resurrection of the world of early-twentieth-century
Cameroon and an elegy for the men and women swept up in the forces of colonisation.
Safe House: Explorations in Creative NonFiction edited by Ellah Wakatama Allfrey (May 2016)
Published by Dundurn, this collection includes illuminating African narratives for readers both inside and
outside the continent.
A Nigerian immigrant to Senegal explores the
increasing influence of China across the region, a Kenyan student activist
writes of exile in Kampala, a Liberian scientist shares her diary of the Ebola
crisis, a Nigerian journalist travels to the north to meet a community at risk,
a Kenyan author travels to Senegal to interview a gay rights activist, and a
South African writer recounts a tale of family discord and murder in a remote
seaside town.
In a collection that ranges from travel writing and memoir to
reportage and meditative essays, editor Ellah Wakatama Allfrey has brought
together some of the most talented writers of creative nonfiction from across
Africa.
Song for Night by Chris Abani (May 2016)
A new edition of Song for Night is
being published to mark the tenth anniversary of Telegram Books. Winner of the
PEN Beyond the Margins Award, Song for Night is a devastating
portrait of a boy soldier in West Africa who has been separated from his
platoon whilst fighting in an unnamed civil war.
Even
with the knowledge that there are some sins too big for even God to forgive,
every night my sky is still full of stars; a wonderful song for night.
Trained
as a human mine detector, a boy soldier in West Africa witnesses and takes part
in unspeakable brutality. At 12 his vocal cords are cut to prevent him from
screaming and giving away his platoon’s presence, should he be blown up.
Awaking
after an explosion to find that he’s lost his platoon, he traces his steps back
through abandoned villages and rotting corpses – and through his own memories –
in search of his comrades. The horror of past events is relived and gradually
come to terms with as he finds some glimmers of hope and beauty in this
nightmarish place.
Taduno's Song by Odafe Atogun (July 14 2016)
Arriving full of trepidation, the musician discovers that his community no longer recognises him, believing that Taduno is dead. His girlfriend, Lela, has disappeared, taken away by government agents. As he wanders through his house in search of clues, he realises that any traces of his old life have been erased. All that was left of his life and himself are memories. But Taduno finds a new purpose: to unravel the mystery of his lost life and to find his lost love. Through this search, he comes to face a difficult decision: to sing for love or to sing for his people.
Taduno's Song is a moving tale of sacrifice, love and courage. It is published by Canongate and is the debut novel from Nigerian writer Odafe Atogun.
Known and Strange Things by Teju
Cole (August 9 2016)
Published by PenguinRandomHouse, this is a blazingly intelligent first book of essays from the award-winning
author of Open City and Every Day Is for the Thief.With this collection of more than fifty pieces on politics, photography, travel, history, and literature, Teju Cole solidifies his place as one of today’s most powerful and original voices. On page after page, deploying prose dense with beauty and ideas, he finds fresh and potent ways of interpreting art, people, and historical moments, taking in subjects from Virginia Woolf, Shakespeare, and W. G. Sebald to Instagram, Barack Obama, and Boko Haram.
Cole brings us new considerations of James Baldwin in the age
of Black Lives Matter; the African American photographer Roy DeCarava, who,
forced to shoot with film calibrated exclusively for white skin tones, found
his way to a startling and true depiction of black subjects; and (in an essay
that inspired both praise and pushback) the White Savior Industrial Complex,
the system by which African nations are sentimentally aided by an America
“developed on pillage.”
Persuasive
and provocative, erudite yet accessible, Known and Strange Things is
an opportunity to live within Teju Cole’s wide-ranging enthusiasms,
curiosities, and passions, and a chance to see the world in surprising and
affecting new frames.
Speak Gigantular by
Ireonsen Okojie (September 29 2016)
Published by Jacaranda, Speak Gigantular is a startling short story collection
from one of Britain’s rising literary stars. These stories are captivating,
erotic, enigmatic and disturbing. Irenosen Okojie’s gift is in her understated
humour, her light touch, her razor-sharp assessment of the best and worst of
humankind, and her unflinching gaze into the darkest corners of the human
experience.
In these stories Okojie creates worlds where lovelorn aliens
abduct innocent coffee shop waitresses, where the London Underground is
inhabited by the ghosts of errant Londoners caught between here and the
hereafter, where insensitive men cheat on their mistresses and can only muster
enough interest to fall for one- dimensional poster girls and where brave young
women attempt to be erotically empowered at their own peril. Sexy, serious and
at times downright disturbing, this brilliant debut collection sizzles with
originality.
Also check out this list from BooksLive on (mainly) South African fiction to look forward to in 2016 (January to June). It includes The Powers of the Knife, the first book in the Shadow Chaser trilogy -
an African fantasy adventure by Bontle Senne. What if you discovered that you come from an ancient family of Shadow Chasers, with a duty to protect others from an evil Army of Shadows? Nom is an outsider at school. When she and Zithembe become friends, life still seems ̶ well ̶ a little ordinary. But when an army of monsters threatens their world, it’s all up to the two of them … and the start of a journey into the dreamworld on a quest that will change their lives. As well as Outside the Line by Ameera Patel - a thriller and family drama about two women: Cathleen, a troubled young woman living in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg who disappears; and Flora, who is the domestic worker at Cathleen's house.
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