“In the Dream, Everything Speaks”: Ben Okri’s The Famished Road and the Cost of Seeing Too Much
The first time I read The Famished Road, I didn’t really read it, I floated through it. I remember reaching
The first time I read The Famished Road, I didn’t really read it, I floated through it. I remember reaching
In Tomorrow I Become a Woman, Aiwanose Odafen’s luminous debut novel, the act of “becoming” is less a rite of
J. Cole has often cast himself as hip hop’s moral center, a moral inquiry into fame, ambition, and Black American
In Swallow, Nigerian novelist Sefi Atta takes us back to 1980s Lagos, not with nostalgia, but with the steady gaze
Ebo Taylor with multiple grammy-nominated Ghanaian artiste, Rocky Dawuni. Picture courtesy: Rocky Dawuni Facebook page. Ebo Taylor, one of the
I first read No Sweetness Here and Other Stories by Ama Ata Aidoo in 2005, tucked into a corner of
There are books that raise their voices in protest, and there are books that examine, with forensic precision, why so
I was listening to the World Service last Tuesday when news of The Gambia’s case at the International Court of
There are novels that demand your attention with fireworks; plot twists, pyrotechnic prose, unrelenting spectacle. Tomorrow Died Yesterday is not
There is a quiet tension at the heart of Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi’s second novel, that never quite resolves, a
There’s a moment early in Small Worlds when Stephen, the book’s young narrator, steps into a dance circle at a
There is a certain kind of silence that follows a book like Giovanni’s Room. It’s the silence that comes after
In Ancestor Stones, Aminatta Forna constructs a memory palace from the scattered fragments of West African womanhood, opening its doors
To read Ama Ata Aidoo’s Our Sister Killjoy: or Reflections from a Black-eyed Squint today, nearly five decades after its
In Dream Count, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s latest offering, the Nigerian writer returns with the precise, humane intelligence that has defined