An Abundance Of Scorpions

Following a horrific tragedy, Tambaya leaves Kano for Accra to live with her brother, Aminu. Sadly, her dream of a new beginning is dashed when she can no longer endure the indignity she suffers at the hands of her brother's new wife. Vulnerable, and surrounded by malice, corruption and greed, Tambaya struggles to shape her destiny. An Abundance of Scorpions charts one woman's journey through grief and uncertainty to a road that leads to self-discovery, redemption and love.   BOOK INFORMATION AUTHOR: Hadiza Isma El-Rufai ISBN: 978-978-959-323-1 GENRE(S): Literary Fiction FORMAT: paperback NUMBER OF PAGES: 319 PUBLICATION DATE:  11 October 2017 PUBLISHER: Ouida Books IMPRINT: Ouida

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A Woman’s Body Is A Country

Dami Ajayi journeys into emotional borders that reveal the burdens of transitions, offering us lyrical poetry that reinvents perspectives. Here is the poetry of the quotidian, a philosophic and profound interrogation, and relationships, of words, of bodies and their burdens, of times and time. There is poetry here, and it breathes. BOOK INFORMATION AUTHOR: Dami Ajayi ISBN: 978-978-962-839-1 GENRE(S): Poetry FORMAT: Paperback NUMBER OF PAGES: 69 PUBLICATION DATE:  6 October 2017 PUBLISHER: Ouida Books IMPRINT: Ouida Poetry

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The Beautiful Side Of The Moon

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Stay With Me

Winner of the 2018 9mobile Prize for Literature. Winner of the 2020 Prix Les Afriques. Shortlisted for the Baileys Prize for Women’s Fiction, the Wellcome Book Prize and the Kwani? Manuscript. Longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award Prize. Yejide is hoping for a miracle, for a child. It is all her husband wants, all her mother-in-law wants, and she has tried everything - arduous pilgrimages, medical consultations, dances with prophets, appeals to God. But when her in-laws insist upon a new wife, it is too much for Yejide to bear. It will lead to jealousy, betrayal and despair. Unraveling against he social and political disturbance of 80s Nigeria, Stay With Me sings with the voices, colours, joys and fears of the time. This is a devastating story of the fragility of married love, the undoing of family, the wretchedness of grief, and the all-consuming bonds of motherhood. Stay With Me is a tale about our desperate attempts to save ourselves and those we love from heartbreak.   BOOK INFORMATION AUTHOR: Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ ISBN: 978-978-959-320-0 GENRE(S): Literary Fiction FORMAT: Paperback NUMBER OF PAGES: 284 PUBLICATION DATE:  10 April 2017 PUBLISHER: Ouida Books IMPRINT: Ouida

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The Teller Of Secrets

In this stunning debut novel-a tale of self discovery and feminist awakening-a feisty Nigerian-Ghanaian girl growing up amid the political upheaval of late 1960s postcolonial Ghana begins to question the hypocrisy of her patriarchal society, and the restrictions and unrealistic expectations placed on women. Young Esi Agyekum is the unofficial "secret keeper" of her family, as tight0lipped about her father's adultery as she is about her half-sister' sex lives. But after she is humiliated and punished for her own sexual exploration, Esi begins to question why women's secrets and men's secrets bear different consequences. It is the beginning of a journey of discovery that will lead her to unexpected places. As she navigates her burgeoning womanhood, Esi tries to reconcile her own ideals and dreams with her family's complicated past and troubled present, as well as society's many double standards that limit her and the other women. Against a fraught political climate, Esi fights to carve out her own identity, and learns to manifest her power in surprising and inspiring ways. BOOK INFORMATION AUTHOR: Bisi Adjapon ISBN: 978-978-991-964-2 GENRE(S): Literary Fiction FORMAT: Paperback NUMBER OF PAGES: 344 PUBLICATION DATE:  15 December 2021 PUBLISHER: Ouida Books IMPRINT: Ouida  

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When the Sky is Ready The Stars Will Appear

The yearnings of a young and restless orphan are ignited when an enigmatic drifter named Bros returns to Gulu Station from Rome, laden with gifts and the allure of other places. The orphan longs for escape too, for life to have meaning and so the whole village can look up to him.

When soldiers from the Seven Men Army descend on Gulu Station scouting for recruits, the young men of the village must face conscription or flee. Armed with little more than stories told to him by Bros, the narrator takes his first step towards realising his dreams. But how prepared is he for the perils of the desert and the sea that lie between him and Rome?

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Of This Our Country

To define Nigeria is to tell a half-truth. Many have tried, but most have concluded that it is impossible to capture the true scope and significance of Africa’s most populous nation through words or images. And yet here, through personal essays from 24 of its writers, a more accurate picture comes into view: one that details the realities and contradictions of patriotism, examines the role of class and privilege in Nigerian society, juxtaposes inherited tradition with the diasporic experience and explores the power of storytelling and its intrinsic link to Nigeria’s history. Within these pages, acclaimed and award-winning writers share memories and experiences of Nigeria that can be found nowhere else, bringing to the fore a country whose influence can be found everywhere. Powerful, lyrical and entirely unforgettable, OF THIS OUR COUNTRY weaves together a living portrait of Nigeria, one that is as beautiful as it is complex. With essays from: Nels Abbey, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, Yomi Adegoke, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Oyinkan Akande, Ike Anya, Sefi Atta, Bolu Babalola, J K Chukwu, Abi Daré, Inua Ellams, Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ, Caleb Femi, Helon Habila, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, Anietie Isong, Okey Ndibe, Chigozie Obioma, Irenosen Okojie, Cheluchi Onyemelukwe, Lola Shoneyin, Umar Turaki, Chika Unigwe and Hafsa Zayyan.   BOOK INFORMATION ISBN: 978-000-849-929-7 GENRE(S): Nonfiction (Essays) FORMAT: Paperback NUMBER OF PAGES: 274 PUBLICATION DATE:  1 October 2021 PUBLISHER: Ouida Books IMPRINT: Ouida

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Iyaji the Housegirl

Six-year-old Iyaji loves going to school in Igede, Benus State. One day, her father tells her she has to go and work as a housegirl in a big house in Lagos. Little Iyaji works as hard as she can but she misses her home, her family and her books. Just when Iyaji begins to lose all hope of going back home to school, a policewoman follows her home. Other books in the Northern Lights Series:

1. Do As You Are Told, Baji
2. Jamila’s Clever Plan
3. Anyibo and the Mother Hen
4. A Durbar Festival For Hassan and Hussaina

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Do As You Are Told, Baji!

Baji goes to Kwoi in Kaduna State to spend the weekend with Baba, his grandfather. Baba takes Baji to his farm, but soon discovers that Baji does not often do as he is told. As an eventful day on the farm comes to an end, fun-loving Baji has an interesting encounter with a stubborn donkey. Other books in the Northern Lights Series:

1. Jamila’s Clever Plan
2. Iyaji, The Housegirl
3. Anyibo and the Mother Hen
4. A Durbar Festival For Hassan and Hussaina

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Travellers

Shortlisted for the 2020 James Tait Black Memorial Prize

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Water Birds on the Lakeshore

These stories from the oldest continent and home to the world’s youngest population range from the fantastical to ruminations of youth during conflict, the unknowability of death as seen through adult eyes, to the perennial questions around family, friendship and sexual awakening. Despite the diverse themes, the stories in this historic first anthology of African young adult fiction speak with voices that anyone who is or has been a teenager will be familiar with: voices that are at times assertive, sometimes uncertain, but always aware of a world around them.   BOOK INFORMATION AUTHOR: Zukiswa Wanner (Editor) ISBN: 978-978-572-599-5 GENRE(S): Young Adult Fiction (Anthology) FORMAT: Paperback NUMBER OF PAGES: 255 PUBLICATION DATE:  15 December 2021 PUBLISHER: Ouida Books IMPRINT: Ouida

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Prince Of Monkeys

A provocative debut novel by a brilliant young Nigerian writer, tackling politics, class, spirituality, and power as a group of friends come of age in Lagos. Growing up in middle-class Lagos, Nigeria during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ihechi forms a band of close friends discovering Lagos together as teenagers with differing opinions of everything from film to football, Fela Kuti to spirituality, sex to politics. They remain close-knit until tragedy unfolds during an anti-government riot. Exiled from Lagos by his concerned mother, Ihechi moves in with his uncle’s family, where he struggles to find himself outside his former circle of friends. Ihechi eventually finds success by leveraging his connection with a notorious prostitution linchpin and political heavyweight, earning favor among the ruling elite. But just as Ihechi is about to make his final ascent into the elite political class, he reunites with his childhood friends and experiences a crisis of conscience that forces him to question his world, his motives, and whom he should become. Nnamdi Ehirim’s debut novel, Prince of Monkeys, is a lyrical, meditative observation of Nigerian life, religion, and politics at the end of the twentieth century.   BOOK INFORMATION AUTHOR: Nnamdi Ehirim ISBN: 978-978-976-461-7 GENRE(S): Literary Fiction FORMAT: Paperback NUMBER OF PAGES: 285 PUBLICATION DATE:  19 September 2019 PUBLISHER: Ouida Books IMPRINT: Ouida

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Story Story, Story Come!

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In the Nude

In their engrossing collection, poet Logan February documents and interrogates grief, and God, and examines what it is to be on the outside, even in the family setting-the reality of having a queer identity in the African world. In this volume, eroticism and manic depression are navigated alone. Some of the poems use a mannequin as a projective tool to dissect self hood, histories, and family connections in the aftermath of a fundamental bereavement. February additionally explores religious concepts to further mythologize the self, collecting Buddhist philosophies and Yoruba proverbs and myths, and putting them adjacent to the toxic tenets of Pentecostal Christianity, which is widespread in Nigeria. In the vein of confessional poetry, the narrative takes its pride in exposing the elements which are deemed taboo and advised to be hidden away. The poems are equally fearful and raunchy, tender and defiant, morose and youthful.   BOOK INFORMATION AUTHOR: Logan February ISBN: 978-978-974-193-9 GENRE(S): Poetry FORMAT: Paperback NUMBER OF PAGES: 57 PUBLICATION DATE: 1 March 2019 PUBLISHER: Ouida Books IMPRINT: Ouida Poetry

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The Boko Haram Doctrine

Since it erupted onto the world stage in 2009, people have asked, what is Boko Haram, and what does it stand for? Is there a coherent vision or set of beliefs behind it? Despite the growing literature about the group, few if any attempts have been made to answer these questions, even though Boko Haram is but the latest in a long line of millenarian Muslim reform groups to emerge in Northern Nigeria over the last two centuries.

The Boko Haram Doctrine offers an unprecedented collection of essential texts, documents, videos, audio, and nashids (martial hymns), translated into English from Hausa, Arabic and Kanuri, tracing the group’s origins, history, and evolution. Its editors, two Nigerian scholars, reveal how Boko Haram’s leaders manipulate Islamic theology for the legitimisation, radicalisation, indoctrination and dissemination of their ideas across West Africa.

Mandatory reading for anyone wishing to grasp the underpinnings of Boko Haram’s insurgency, particularly how the group strives to delegitimise its rivals and establish its beliefs as a dominant strand of Islamic thought in West Africa’s religious marketplace.

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