Our regular Book Digest segment spotlights new books by Abdulrazak Gurnah, José Eduardo Agualusa, Laura Pegram, and Adam Oyebanji.
Dhulma by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Publisher: Mkuki Na Nyota
Date: May 31, 2025
Genre: Fiction
Language: Kiswahili (translated from English by Dr. Ida Hadjivayanis)
Where to find it: Mkuki Na Nyota
Abdulrazak Gurnah
Abdulrazak Gurnah is the 2021 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. He is the author of nine previous novels, including Paradise (shortlisted for the Booker Prize), By the Sea (longlisted for the Booker Prize and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize), and Desertion. Born and raised in Zanzibar, he is Professor Emeritus of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent. He lives in Canterbury, England.
Dr. Ida Hadjivayanis
Dr. Ida Hadjivayanis is a Senior Lecturer in Swahili Studies at SOAS (The School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London. This is her second translation of Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novels, preceded by the novel Peponi.
Dhulma
At the turn of the twenty-first century, three young people come of age in Tanzania. Karim returns to his sleepy hometown after university in Dar es Salaam with a new swagger and sense of ambition. There he catches the eye of Fauzia, who sees in him a chance at escape from a smothering upbringing. When the two of them offer a haven to Badar, a poor boy still unsure if the future holds anything for him at all, they little imagine how deeply their fates will entwine and diverge. As rapidly accelerating global change reaches even their quiet corner of the world, bringing tourists, technology, and unexpected opportunities and perils, each arrives at a different understanding of what it means to take your fate into your own hands.
Sing the Truth edited by Laura Pegram
Publisher: Authors Equity
Date: May 13, 2024
Genre: Nonfiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Simon & Schuster
Laura Pegram
Laura Pegram, founding editor and publisher of The Kweli Journal, is a multi-hyphenate artist whose work is influencing a new generation of writers. She is an author, educator, and jazz vocalist who teamed with acclaimed jazz pianist Donald Smith in cabaret performances. She is also a painter whose richly hued murals are part of several private collections. She was mentored by the poet-activist June Jordan, who taught her that the sky was her ceiling. She lives in Manhattan.
Sing the Truth
Hailed as “The Paris Review of BIPOC literature,” The Kweli Journal has been a launching pad for many of today’s most celebrated writers. Kweli—“truth” in Swahili—marks its fifteenth anniversary with this luminous collection edited by founder Laura Pegram. These vivid narratives explore the devastation of leaving home and the struggle to adapt to reimagined lives, lost loves, distant families, and buried pasts, deepening our understanding of the human experience. Featuring works from acclaimed authors Naima Coster, Nicole Dennis-Benn, Daphne Palasi Andreades, Susan Muaddi Darraj, and others, this anthology stands as a testament to voices too often overlooked in contemporary literature.
Quero Ser os Teus Domingos by José Eduardo Agualusa
Publisher: Quetzal Editores
Date: June 5, 2025
Genre: Fiction
Language: Portuguese
Where to find it: Quetzal Editores
José Eduardo Agualusa
José Eduardo Agualusa was born in the city of Huambo, Angola, on December 13, 1960. He studied Agronomy and Forestry. He lived in Lisbon, Luanda, Rio de Janeiro and Berlin. He is a novelist, short story writer, columnist and author of children’s literature. His novels have been distinguished with the most prestigious national and international awards, such as, for example, the Grande Prémio de Literatura RTP (awarded to Nação Crioula, 1998); His short stories and children’s books have also won awards, such as the APE Grand Prize for Short Stories and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Grand Prize for Children’s Literature, respectively. The Past Seller won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2004, and more recently, the novel General Theory of Oblivion was a finalist for the Man Booker International in 2016 and winner of the International Dublin Literary Award (formerly the IMPAC Dublin Award) in 2017.
Quero Ser os Teus Domingos
This is a book about the end times and a guide to the beginning of the world. In its pages you will find characters who – like you, dear reader – feel confused, lost and scared. Some see the angel of death coming, in one of his many forms; One of them deceived him, telling stories, because if in the beginning it was the word, in the end it will also be the word, that is, fiction, that restarts the world. Or not.
Kâmia left me a note: “I want to be your Sundays, including Mondays.” Days later, he disappeared. I had the note framed. I placed it on the wall in front of the front door. So I see him every time I walk into the house and I think, “Love is fickle.”
Esperance by Adam Oyebanji
Publisher: DAW
Date: May 20, 2025
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Penguin Random House
Adam Oyebanji
Of Scottish and Nigerian descent, Adam Oyebanji is an escapee from Birmingham University and Harvard Law School. He currently lives in Pittsburgh, PA with a wife, child, and two embarrassingly large dogs. When he’s not out among the stars, Adam works in the field of counter-terrorist financing: helping banks choke off the money supply that builds weapons of mass destruction, narcotics empires, and human trafficking networks.
Esperance
A whip-smart thriller in the vein of Blake Crouch, Andy Weir, and Neal Stephenson, Esperance plumbs the depths of a seemingly impossible crime rooted in racism, intergenerational trauma, and an inhuman concept of justice
Detective Ethan Krol is on the twentieth floor of a Chicago apartment building. A father and son have been found dead, their lungs full of sea water—hundreds of miles away from the ocean.
Abidemi Eniola has arrived in Bristol, England. She claims to be Nigerian, but her accent is wrong and she can do remarkable things with technology, things that her new friend, Hollie Rogers, has never seen before. Abi is in possession of a number of heirlooms that need to be returned to their rightful owners, and Hollie is more than happy to go along for the ride.
But neither Abidemi Eniola nor her heirlooms are quite what they seem. Abi is a target of Ethan Krol’s investigations, and Hollie’s life is about to become far stranger than she bargained for. In a clash of cultures, histories, and different ideas about justice, the consequences will be deadly…
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