Elinor Sisulu, Chair of the Judges, commented:

ABOUT THE BOOK

Uwem Akpan’s stunning stories humanise the perils of poverty and violence so piercingly that few readers will feel they’ve ever encountered Africa so immediately. The eight-year-old narrator of “An Ex-Mas Feast” needs only enough money to buy books and pay fees in order to attend school. Even when his twelve-year-old sister takes to the streets to raise these meager funds, his dream can’t be granted. Food comes first. His family lives in a street shanty in Nairobi, Kenya, but their way of both loving and taking advantage of each other strikes a universal chord.

In the second of his stories, Akpan takes us far beyond what we thought we knew about the tribal conflict in Rwanda. The story is told by a young girl, who, with her little brother, witnesses the worst possible scenario between parents. They are asked to do the previously unimaginable in order to protect their children. This singular collection will also take the reader inside Nigeria, Benin, and Ethiopia, revealing in beautiful prose the harsh consequences of life for children in Africa.

Akpan’s voice is a literary miracle, rendering lives of almost unimaginable deprivation and terror into stories that are nothing short of transcendent.

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Uwem Akpan was born in the village of Ikot Akpan Eda in southern Nigeria. After studying philosophy and English at Creighton and Gonzaga universities, he studied theology for three years at the Catholic University of East Africa. He was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 2003 and received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan in 2006. My Parents’ Bedroom, a story included in this, his first collection, was one of five short stories by African writers chosen as finalists for The Caine Prize for African Writing. In 2007 Akpan began a teaching assignment at a Jesuit college in Harare, Zimbabwe.

Related posts:

1. Say Youre One Of Them Wins Best First Book – Uwem Akpan Penguin Books is proud to announce that Uwem Akpan...
2. Herta Muller wins Nobel Prize ! Herta Muller, author of  The Land of Green Plums has...
3. The White Tiger Wins The Man Booker Prize For Fiction 2008 Aravind Adiga, a thirty-three year old novelist who has...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Soon enough I found myself outside the airport in what felt like a market – a wall of people shouting and heckling, selling newspapers, phone cards, even boiled eggs. But it wasn’t the people that stopped me in my tracks, it was the heat. The heat made New Orleans on a hot summer day feel like spring. Humid, thick and salty to taste, that was Nairobi heat.

 

When a beautiful blonde girl is found murdered on the porch of an African university professor in Maple Bluff, Madison, USA, hard-working detective Ishmael Fofona knows immediately that it will be the news event of the year. What he cannot know however is that the discovery of the dead girl will change his life forever and that barely seventy-two hours after being called to the scene he will find himself on African soil, hunting for clues in a case that seemingly makes no sense. Why would Joshua Hakizimana – a hero of the Rwandan genocide, a man who had saved hundreds of people from the machetes of the genocidaires – kill a random white girl and then dump her body outside his house? The answers, it would seem, lie in Africa. And there is only one way to get at them.        

Kenyan author Mukoma wa Ngugi’s debut novel is a gripping and hard-hitting detective thriller that questions race, identity and class.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mukoma wa Ngugi was born in Illinois and is the son of African writer, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. He is a Political Columnist for the BBC Focus on Africa Magazine.

His essays and columns have appeared in the Guardian, International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times, South African Labour Bulletin, South Africa’s Mail and Guardian, Kenya’s Business Daily Africa, amongst others. He has been a guest commentator on Democracy Now and the BBC World Service. He is the author of an anthology of poetry titled Hurling Words at Consciousness (2006), as well as Conversing with Africa: Politics of Change (2003). His poems have appeared in the New York Quarterly, and in several anthologies.

Nairobi Heat will be released on the 1st of October 2009

No related posts.

The much anticipated book Baking Cakes in Kigali by debut author Gaile Parkin is now available in stores. Gaile Parkin was born and raised in Zambia, and studied at universities in South Africa and England. She has lived in many different parts of Africa, including Rwanda, where Baking Cakes in Kigali is set.

She is currently a freelance consultant in the fields of education, gender and HIV/AIDS.

No related posts.