You in America by Chimamanda Adichie
March 24, 2008
Author: Chimamanda Adichie
Series: Kwanini
This is a love story disguised as a travelogue, the tale of a young Nigerian woman who wins a lottery whose prize is a green card to America. Does everyone there own a big house, a big car, and a gun? Not quite, though it turns out there are worse things than guns. Chimamanda Adichie takes us effortlessly from the shanties of Lagos to downtown Connecticut, where love – uninvited but not unwelcome – turns up to eat at a restaurant.
Weight of Whispers by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
March 24, 2008
Author: Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Series: Kwanini
Awards: 2003 Caine Prize
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor followed Wainaina’s example by winning the 2003 Caine Prize with her evocative tale of a Rwandan aristocrat who fled to Kenya in the wake of the 1994 genocide. The characters in Weight of Whispers come draped in history, wrapping the world’s dramas around their own as they struggle to adjust to their lengthy fall from grace. In this story of exile and death, Owuor draws us masterfully into a quest for light, and life.
Discovering Home by Binyavanga Wainaina
March 23, 2008
Author: Binyavanga Wainaina
Series: Kwanini
Awards: Winner of the 2002 Caine Prize for African fiction
Winner of the 2002 Caine Prize for African fiction, Discovering Home tells the Kenyan version of that universal story: returning home and seeing it for the first time. By turns compassionate and bitingly ironic, this Kwanini takes readers on a whirlwind journey from Rift Valley to Maasailand and beyond. Along the way, the social geography underlying family relations, political contacts, the Ndombolo dance and the Sunday sermon are revealed in all their solemn hilarity.
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Adichie
March 23, 2008
Author: Chimamanda Adichie
Series: Kwani
Chimamanda Adichie was 25 years old when she wrote her debut novel, which isn’t in itself a reason to read it. But it does add to the wonder evoked by such a gripping narration of the many forms oppression can take. Purple Hibiscus follows a young woman’s liberation from her tyrannical father; it is a drama within a drama, placed in the Nigerian context of western colonial influence and a powerful Christianity bent on stamping out the last traces of native religion.
