Book Digest

Book Digest: Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa, Nthikeng Mohlele, Aniefiok Ekpoudom, Helen Oyeyemi

We wrap up book news for our readers in our regular Book Digest segment with books from Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa, Nthikeng Mohlele, Aniefiok Ekpoudom, and Helen Oyeyemi.

Assim Não Senhor Presidente by Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa

Publisher: Alcance Editores
Date:  October 24, 2023
Genre:  Fiction
Language:  Portuguese
Where to find it:  Alcance Editores

Assim Não Senhor Presidente

Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa
Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa

In this 204-page novel, the author addresses stories that explore social disparities, reflecting on the Mozambican reality in terms of empathy and social relations. The voices of the different characters in the work are an expression of Ba Ka Khosa’s intention to narrate the social differences present in the Mozambican context.

Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa

Assim Não Senhor Presidente by Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa

The author of many books, Khosa’s career took off with the 1987 publication of Ualalapi. The text won the Grand Prize of Mozambican Fiction in 1990, and in 2002, a panel of judges in Accra, Ghana ranked Ualalapi one of the 100 best works of African fiction of the 20th century. Next, Khosa published two collections of short stories, Orgia dos Loucos (1990) and Histórias de Amor e Espanto (1993), followed by the novel No Reino dos Abutres (2002). His novel Os Sobreviventes da Noite (2005), a portrayal of the use of child soldiers and child concubines in the Mozambican war of destabilization, won the José Craveirinha Award in 2007.  

Where We Come From by Aniefiok Ekpoudom

Publisher: Faber
Date:  January 18
Genre:  Nonfiction
Language:  English
Where to find it:  Faber

Aniefiok Ekpoudom

Aniefiok Ekpoudom
Aniefiok Ekpoudom

Aniefiok ‘Neef’ Ekpoudom is a writer and journalist from south London who documents the people, voices and communities of modern Britain. He has written for publications including the Guardian, GQ, Vogue and VICE, and has previously worked with grassroot platforms such as GRM Daily, Link Up TV and SBTV. Ekpoudom has also contributed essays to SAFE: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space (2019), Keisha The Sket (2021) and A New Formation: How Black Players Shaped The Modern Game (2022). He was the recipient of the Barbara Blake-Hannah Award at the 2021 British Journalism Awards and the Culture Writer of the Year Award at the 2021 Freelance Writers Awards. In 2022 he was named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 List in Media & Marketing. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Where We Come From

Where We Come From by Aniefiok Ekpoudom

I met people who never quite fit in where they were supposed to, who found solace, salvation and meaning in these sounds, these words.

Something is happening in Britain, trembling the tracks as it unfolds. Recent years have borne witness to underground genres leaking out from the inner cities, going on to become some of the most popular music in the nation.

In this groundbreaking social history, journalist Aniefiok Ekpoudom travels the country to paint a compelling portrait of the dawn, boom and subsequent blossoming of UK rap and grime. Taking us from the heart of south London to the West Midlands and South Wales, he explores how a history of migration and an enduring spirit of resistance have shaped the current realities of these linked communities and the music they produce. These sounds have become vessels for the marginalised, carrying Black and working-class stories into the light.

Vividly depicted and compassionately told, Where We Come From weaves together intimate stories of resilience, courage and loss, as well as a shared music culture that gave refuge and purpose to those in search of belonging. Ekpoudom offers a rich chronicle of rap, identity, place and, above all, the social and human condition in modern Britain.

Revolutionaries’ House by Nthikeng Mohlele

Publisher:  Jacana Media
Date:  January 31
Genre:  Literary Fiction
Language:  English
Where to find it:  Jacana Media

Nthikeng Mohlele

Nthikeng Mohlele
Nthikeng Mohlele

Novelist, short story writer, playwright, Nthikeng Mohlele is the author of eight novels and two short story collections. His novels include: The Scent of Bliss (2008), Small Things (2013), Rusty Bell (2014), Pleasure (2016), Michael K (2018), Illumination (2019), Breasts, etc. (2023) and two short-story collections, The Discovery of Love (2021) and A Little Light (2023). Pleasure is the 2017 winner of the University of Johannesburg Main Prize for South African Writing in English, the K Sello Duiker Memorial Prize and, was also long listed for the Dublin International Prize. The Discovery of Love won the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences Award 2022 for Best Fiction: Short Stories. Revolutionaries’ House (2024) is Mohlele’s eighth novel. He writes journalism and literary reviews.

Revolutionaries’ House

Revolutionaries’ House by Nthikeng Mohlele

“We are again at the crossroads: of history and morality, of conscience. But our people don’t trust us anymore, because for three decades we abused them, took them for granted. What now?”

Mister Wilson is a substantial man, an honest man, a ‘good’ politician. Or this is how he likes to see himself. But as his marriage falls apart and his party’s hypocrisies and failings become impossible to ignore, this easy image starts to crack, and he goes from being a potential president to a man washing dishes and sleeping under bridges. With lucid prose and startingly beautiful imagery, Nthikeng Molehle reaches into the consciousness of a man fallen from grace, and the disillusionment, fractured morals and unravelling personal life which have led to this spiritual exile is revealed. Revolutionaries’ House is a haunting novel of love and attachment, and their many betrayals.

Declarative and insightful, Revolutionaries’ House comes in a time where cynicism is rife and self-serving actions abound. It is an invitation to be hopeful again.

Parasol Against The Axe by Helen Oyeyemi

Publisher:  Riverhead Books
Date:  January 30, 2024
Genre:  Literary fiction
Language:  English
Where to find it:  Penguin Random House, Faber.

Helen Oyeyemi

Helen Oyeyemi
Helen Oyeyemi

Helen Oyeyemi is the author of seven novels, including Peaces, Gingerbread, and Boy, Snow, Bird, and of the story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours. Winner of the PEN Open Book and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Oyeyemi was named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists.

Parasol Against The Axe

Parasol Against The Axe by Helen Oyeyemi

The prize-winning, bestselling author of Peaces and Gingerbread returns with a novel about competitive friendship, the elastic boundaries of storytelling, and the meddling influence of a city called Prague

In Helen Oyeyemi’s joyous new novel, the Czech capital is a living thing—one that can let you in or spit you out.

For reasons of her own, Hero Tojosoa accepts an invitation she was half expected to decline, and finds herself in Prague on a bachelorette weekend hosted by her estranged friend Sofie. Little does she know she’s arrived in a city with a penchant for playing tricks on the unsuspecting. A book Hero has brought with her seems to be warping her mind: the text changes depending on when it’s being read and who’s doing the reading, revealing startling new stories of fictional Praguers past and present. Uninvited companions appear at bachelorette activities and at city landmarks, offering opinions, humor, and even a taste of treachery. When a third woman from Hero and Sofie’s past appears unexpectedly, the tensions between the friends’ different accounts of the past reach a new level.

An adventurous, kaleidoscopic novel, Parasol Against the Axe considers the lines between illusion and delusion, fact and interpretation, and weighs the risks of attaching too firmly to the stories of a place, or a person, or a shared history. How much is a tale influenced by its reader, or vice versa? And finally, in a battle between friends, is it better to be the parasol or the axe?

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