I was a child who was very dissatisfied with the idea that this world, with its rules and routines, is all there is. Sunday school filled me with a fear of hell, and heaven sounded boring, a lot of people wearing white and singing. This forced me into the world of fairy and folktales: spirits, tricksters, masquerades, elves, werecreatures, and merpeople. It was all so exciting and, more than that, comforting. The just were rewarded, and the wicked were punished within the timeframe of the story, not later when they died.
I loved this book because it is a collection of bizarre, weird, surreal, fabulist tales that tripped me up each time I thought I knew where it was going. The twists! The turns! The things that had no business existing in anyone's mind, let alone in print. Not one dud in this collection of fourteen stories.
Also, I learnt that I could applaud while puking up my lunch. That was fun.
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE LEONARD PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE
A dazzlingly accomplished debut collection explores the ties that bind parents and children, husbands and wives, lovers and friends to one another and to the places they call home.
In “Who Will Greet You at Home,” a National Magazine Award finalist for The New Yorker, A woman desperate for a child weaves one out…
Smutty ghost sex. I had no business reading this book at nine or whatever, but I had an appetite and the aptitude, and my parents were either too trusting or indifferent because SMUTTY GHOST SEX.
I can't remember much else about it, nor can I get a copy, but for nine-year-old me, it was forbidden and titillating.
I grew up reading fairy tales from other lands and taking our own oral stories back home for granted. At the very least, our stories belonged to dark, scary places.
This book changed all that. It was magical! It showed me new Igbo mythology and made my culture appealing and heroic. What's not to love?
I haven't read it in twenty years, having been introduced to Tutuola's work as part of my undergrad degree. It's a book full of ghosts and the sort of mind that perceives and interacts with them. It basically epitomises the saying, 'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,' but is the palm-wine drinkard a fool, brave, desperate, or just very, very drunk when he wanders off on his quest through the spirit world? Or is he all of the above?
This classic novel tells the phantasmagorical story of an alcoholic man and his search for his dead palm-wine tapster. As he travels through the land of the dead, he encounters a host of supernatural and often terrifying beings - among them the complete gentleman who returns his body parts to their owners and the insatiable hungry-creature. Mixing Yoruba folktales with what T. S. Eliot described as a 'creepy crawly imagination', The Palm-Wine Drinkard is regarded as the seminal work of African literature.
'Brief, thronged, grisly and bewitching.' Dylan Thomas, Observer
'Tutuola's art conceals - or rather clothes - his purpose,…
My default stance in life is ‘Meh,’ which infuriates my children, but it's pretty hard to get a rise out of me because I've seen some shit.
Nigeria is such a dysfunctional country full of laughter, sunshine, secrets, and puppeteers; it made everything in this book seem feasible. Like, if you stretch my country out like taffy we'd get to a mad stage that everyone would still shrug off and accept.
Rosewater is the start of an award-winning trilogy set in Nigeria, by one of science fiction's most engaging voices.
*Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, winner *Nommo Award for Best Speculative Fiction Novel, winner
Rosewater is a town on the edge. A community formed around the edges of a mysterious alien biodome, its residents comprise the hopeful, the hungry, and the helpless -- people eager for a glimpse inside the dome or a taste of its rumored healing powers.
Kaaro is a government agent with a criminal past. He has seen inside the biodome, and doesn't care…
Treasure and her mother lost everything when Treasure's daddy died. Haggling for scraps in the market, Treasure meets a spirit who promises to bring her father back - but she has to complete a monstrous task for him first.
Ozoemena has an itch in the middle of her back that can't be scratched. An itch that tells of her great and terrible destiny, passed down through generations, to defend her people by becoming a leopard. Her father impressed upon her what an honour this was before he vanished, but it's one she couldn't want less.
But as the two girls reckon with their burgeoning wildness and the legacy of their fathers' decisions, Ozoemena's fellow students at her new boarding school start to vanish. Treasure and Ozoemena will face frightening choices as they are drawn into battle with sinister forces - and it's a fight they can't both survive.
My wife suggested we try scuba diving while on holiday in Grand Cayman. We were already falling in love with the island, and the incredible experience underwater opened a whole new world to us. From that moment on, our yearly travels changed completely. Our destination choices were now based upon diving opportunities. That was twenty years ago. Today, I’m a certified divemaster with dives all over the US (including Hawaii), the Caribbean (including Cuba), Australia, and even Iceland. Throw in my sense of adventure as a former race car driver, motorcycle rider, and outdoor adventurer, and I had plenty of personal experiences to create the AJ Bailey series.
Readers who enjoy police procedurals with an offbeat main character and fascinating locations will love this thriller.
One missing girl. Two lives on the line. Four treacherous challenges.
Nora Sommer's first case for the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service is one she'll never forget... if she survives. When the daughter of a wealthy businessman is taken, Nora is first on the scene and unwittingly 'chosen' by the kidnapper.
With the crime live-streamed across the internet, the eyes of the world are upon her as she faces a sequence of difficult challenges with the life of the kidnapped girl hanging on…
One missing girl. Two lives on the line. Four treacherous challenges.
Nora Sommer's first case for the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service is one she'll never forget - if she survives.
When the daughter of a wealthy businessman is taken, Nora is first on the scene and unwittingly 'chosen' by the kidnapper. With the crime live-streamed across the internet, the eyes of the world are upon her as she faces a sequence of difficult challenges with the life of the kidnapped girl hanging on Nora's success - or failure.
Deadly Sommer is the thrilling first book in the Nora Sommer…
