Book Digest

Book Digest: Jose Eduardo Agualusa, Zukiswa Wanner, Maame Blue, Amber McBride

In our regular Book Digest segment, we wrap up book news for our readers with books from Jose Eduardo Agualusa, Zukiswa Wanner, Maame Blue, and Amber McBride.

Mestre dos Batuques by Jose Eduardo Agualusa

Publisher:  Quetzal Publishers
Date:  September 2024
Genre:  Fiction, short stories
Language:  Portuguese
Where to find it:  Quetzal Publishers

Jose Eduardo Agualusa

Jose Eduardo Agualusa © Michael Meniane
Jose Eduardo Agualusa © Michael Meniane

José Eduardo Agualusa was born in the city of Huambo, Angola, on December 13, 1960. He studied Agronomy and Forestry. He has 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 the RTP Grand Prize for Literature (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 Seller of Pasts 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 the winner of the International Dublin Literary Award (formerly the IMPAC Dublin Award) in 2017. From 2013 onwards, José Eduardo Agualusa began publishing his work in Quetzal.

Mestre dos Batuques (English: Master of Batuques)

Mestre dos Batuques by Jose Eduardo Agualusa
Mestre dos Batuques by Jose Eduardo Agualusa

Leila Pinto is somewhere in the near future, writing a testimony that begins in 1902, in the central highlands of Angola, when a platoon of European soldiers is found dead, in extremely mysterious circumstances. Leila tells the love story between her grandparents, Jan and Lucrécia, and, in doing so, gives us a glimpse of a possible (or impossible) History of the Kingdom of Bailundo and contemporary Angola.

A secret society of Ovimbundu warriors; a magician king; a woman who knew the secrets of invisibility; a soldier who wanted to be a photographer. In the pages of this novel we find (and miss) almost real characters, and others almost fictional, who help us understand how a country is born — and how a country is lost, and how many fictions are used to make History.

Can love triumph over war and chaos?

Love Marry Kill by Zukiswa Wanner

Publisher:  Kwela (Southern Africa), Masobe (West Africa), Jahazi (East Africa)
Date:  September 2024
Genre:  Fiction
Language:  English
Where to find it:  Kwela, Masobe

Zukiswa Wanner

Zukiswa Wanner

Zukiswa Wanner is the author of novels The Madams (2006), Behind Every Successful Man (2008), Men of the South (2010), and London Cape Town Joburg (2014); four children’s books; a travel book; a satirical nonfiction work and a long-form essay on Palestine:  Vignettes of a People in an Apartheid State.  She is a 2022 Moi University African Cluster Centre Fellow, 2018 JIAS Fellow, and 2016 DIVA (Danish International Visiting Artist).  Wanner’s accolades include being selected among 2020’s New African 100 Most Influential Africans and Brittle Paper’s Literary Person of the Year in the same year. She has edited three multinational anthologies and has contributed to a few. Wanner’s work has been translated into Portuguese, French, Spanish, and Kiswahili. She has given several keynote addresses across the world on literature in Africa and black feminisms. You can hear her distinctive laugh in an African city near you without notice.

Love Marry Kill

Love Marry Kill by Zukiswa Wanner
Love Marry Kill by Zukiswa Wanner

Two couples. One steamy affair. And ninety-nine other problems.

Owami meets a man and believes they will live happily ever after. Three children later, she realises all that she thought they had wasn’t true when she finds out that her husband has rekindled a relationship with an ex-girlfriend. She escapes to her parents but fear for the future of her children and some manipulation from her in-laws and her mother, leads her to return to her marital home. This time, with open eyes.

Akani believes he has married close to the perfect girl. But when he quits his job to start a company and his wife becomes the main breadwinner, he notices that he has become a junior partner in what used to be a relationship of equals. Unable to deal with this state of affairs, he leaves home. Family intervention leads him back home to his wife and just when he thinks he can safely balance his loving life at home and the secret his wife knows nothing about, tragedy strikes.

Then on a rainy Johannesburg evening, Owami meets Akani and they both fall hopelessly in love. An intense relationship begins between the two and whatever they have found together, no marriage can put asunder. As they shoulder the weighty secrets and emotional baggage of their pasts, they must also weather the storms that threaten to separate them.

Zukiswa Wanner’s fifth novel is a thrilling tale of scorned love, resilience, healing love, retribution, losing yet finding oneself in love, and consequences.

The Rest of You by Maame Blue

Publisher:  HarperCollins, Verve Books
Date:  October 8, 2024
Genre:  Fiction
Language:  English
Where to find it:  Harper Collins

Maame Blue

Maame Blue
Maame Blue

Maame Blue is a Ghanaian Londoner, writer. As well as co-hosting Headscarves and Carry-ons-a podcast about black girls living abroad-she regularly runs social media campaigns for www.bmeprpros.co.uk and blogs at www.maamebluewrites.com. In 2018 she won the Africa Writes x AFREADA flash fiction competition for her story Black Sky. She has since been published in AFREADA, Afribuku, and Memoir Magazine; with stories forthcoming in Storm Cellar Quarterly and Litro Magazine.

The Rest of You

The Rest of You by Maame Blue
The Rest of You by Maame Blue

On the cusp of thirty, Ghanaian Londoner Whitney Appiah was born with a special gift. The massage therapist can physically sense where her clients’ trauma lies and heal them. But Whitney has no idea that she too, is suffering. Tragic events from her youth have left a terrible, unseen mark. When a dangerous encounter with the man she’s dating triggers a wave of fragmented recollections, Whitney embarks on a journey to reclaim her memories and the truth that is buried deep in her early years growing up in Kumasi, Ghana during the 1990s.

Spanning three decades, told through the viewpoints of Whitney, sisters Gloria and Aretha, and their house help Maame Serwaa, The Rest of You explores what happens when we try to move forward through the lacuna of our past.

A strikingly original novel inspired by the Twi proverb of Sankofa: looking back in order to move forward, The Rest of You is a story of generational healing, what it means to be Black British, and surviving familial migrant journeys. Tackling darkly serious themes yet full of hope and optimism, and told with an eye towards the future, Maame Blue’s extraordinary tale is an unforgettable celebration of womanhood, friendship, and family.

Onyx & Beyond by Amber McBride

Publisher:  Feiwel & Friends
Date:  October 1, 2024
Genre:  Fiction
Language:  English
Where to find it:  Macmillan
Amber McBride

Amber McBride
Amber McBride

Amber McBride estimates she reads about 100 books a year. Her work has been published in literary magazines including Ploughshares and Provincetown Arts. Her debut young adult novel, Me (Moth) was a finalist for the National Book Award, and won the 2022 Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent, among many other accolades. She is a professor of creative writing at University of Virginia, and lives in Charlottesville, Virgina.

Onyx & Beyond

Onyx and Beyond by Amber McBride
Onyx and Beyond by Amber McBride

Praised as “a story of perserverance and love” in a starred review by Kirkus, here is a story about keeping dreams alive.

Onyx lives with his mother, who is showing signs of early-onset dementia. He doesn’t want to bring attention to his home — if Child Protective Services finds out, they’ll put him into foster care.

As he’s trying to keep his life together, the Civil Rights Movement is accelerating. Is there anywhere that’s safe for a young Black boy? Maybe, if only Onyx can fulfill his dream of becoming an astronaut and exploring space, where none of these challenges will follow him. In the meantime, Onyx can dream. And try to get his mom the help she needs.

Based on her own father’s story of growing up in the 1960s and facing the same challenge with his own mother, award winner Amber McBride delivers another affecting depiction of being young and Black in America.

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