The Rising of the Ashes | Tahar Ben Jelloun
In this country the dead travel as statues and flames They wear eyeglasses and stretch out their scorched arms for flight. We say they became invisible Left to offer the living the years that remained...
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Life Must Go On
After the civil war, Imperi, a small Sierra Leonean town, tries to rebuild the life it used to have. Three characters, Kadie, Moiwa and Kainesi, come to their native town waiting for the return of the...
View ArticleThe True Prison | Ken Saro Wiwa
It is not the leaking roof Nor the singing mosquitoes In the damp, wretched cell It is not the clank of the key As the warden locks you in It is not the measly rations Unfit for beast or man Nor yet...
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Waiting for An Angel
“It was in the ships that the mouth-locks were used, so that they [the slaves] couldn’t console each other and rally their spirits and thereby revolt. To further discourage communication, no two...
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The Broken Man
What if integrity and honesty cannot offer a decent life ? What if, in a marriage, love is gone and is replaced by greed, remorse and routine ? What if, tired of too much correctness, people decide...
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On Destiny | Chris Abani
Destiny isn’t a deck of cards stacked up against you. It is the particular idiosyncrasies of the player, not the deck or dealer, that hold the key. Personality always sways the outcome of the game....
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The Sun on This Rubble | Dennis Brutus
The sun on this rubble after rain bruised though we must be some easement we require unarguably, though we argue against desire. Under jackboots our bones and spirits crunch forced into...
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Come Away, My Love | Joseph Kariuki
Come away, my love, from streets Where mankind eyes divide, And show windows reflect our difference. In the shelter of my faithful room rest. There, safe from opinions, being behind Myself, I can see...
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The Fishermen
Omi-Ala was a dreadful river. Long forsaken by the inhabitants of Akure town like a mother abandoned by her children.… It surrounded Akure like ans snaked through its length and breadth. Like many such...
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Haunting Identity in The Icarus Girl
Then, without opening her eyes, she was caught in the crisp outward shattering of glass as the mirror crack’d from side to side, fying out of its flame. At the centre of it all was TillyTilly,...
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The Day Ends Like Any Day
In 1990s Nigeria, Sam, a young man, begins his life’s journey in O. situated east of Port Harcourt; as the “lazy stroller” he calls himself, he moves constantly in and out of the text in a...
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Nqobile: The Story of Becoming
What does the world look like through a foreign student’s eyes ? What happens when, while going to the Promised Land, you find not the dream you had in mind, but much more and in a much more different...
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Homegoing
” Effia The night Effia Otcher was born into the musky heat of Fanteland, a fire raged through the woods just outside her father’s compound. It moved quickly, tearing a path for days. It lived off the...
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Wandering Feet on Pebbled Shores
“Of the road ahead no one told him though, how it bends like a snake, like an English old lane on and on it goes without end. (…) Tell the child fearful of vesperides and mirages, (…) that the road not...
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Crossroads.Women Coming of Age in Today’s Uganda
“The two women who raised me never read books and had little education (…) but each told me in these exact words: ‘Be whatever you want to be. Go wherever your fantasies take you, as long as that place...
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The Triangle
“Kalinda could sense Kabaka Mwanga, who sat on a chair in front of the crowd frowning, probably burning inside. Before the match, the Kabaka had been soft and sweet when saying the encouraging words to...
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Forbidden Fruit
“All his life into grey sideburned middle age, Ombima had never really stolen from anyone. He had always worked tirelessly for what little he had. Of course there were those petty offenses, like...
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The Miseducation of Obi Ifeanyi
« Obi got home to find Ike asleep beside Nkechi while she watched television. Seeing the image of his family, the one he had consciously created, made it crystal clear to him that these two people were...
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Nigeria : A Failed State ?
« Scapegoating has not helped any nation to evolve ; Nigeria won’t be the exception. The best approach is to search for the cause of the failures and confront it. A country where politics is the chief...
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Descent into Night
“ Beno and Wali were in the faculty of arts and Sika was studying law. We would spend entire afternoons at Beno’s place remaking the world. A broken world, in fragments scattered on the little low...
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