Must read books today!
Owusu lived a nomadic childhood — the instability of which was deepened by family secrets and fractures, both lived and inherited. Aftershocks is the way she hauled herself from the wreckage of her life’s perpetual quaking, the means by which she finally comes to understand that the only ground firm enough to count on is the one written into existence by her own hand. ( US: Simon & Schuster, January 12/ UK: Sceptre, February 4)
African Novel of Ideas focuses on the role of the philosophical novel and the place of philosophy more broadly in the intellectual life of the African continent, from the early 20th century to today. In charting philosophy’s evolution from a dominant to marginal presence in African literary discourse across the past hundred years, it assesses the push and pull of subjective experience and abstract thought. ( Princeton UP, January 12)
this nuanced consideration of the African experience, Mbembe intervenes i n debates about citi zenship, i dentity, democracy, and modernity. The book develops a new reading of African modernity that furthers the notion of Afropolitanism, reconstructing our frameworks for understanding colonial and postcolonial events and expanding our sense of the futures made possible by decolonisation. ( Columbia UP, January 19)
book examines tragedy and tragic philosophy from the Greeks through Shakespeare to the present day. It explores key themes in the links between suffering and ethics through postcolonial literature. Ato Quayson reconceives how we think of World literature under the singular and fertile rubric of tragedy. ( Cambridge UP, UK January 21/ US March 31)
students are brutally murdered in a Nigerian university town. Their killers are caught on social media, but what no one knows is why they were killed. As the trial begins, investigative psychologist Philip Taiwo is contacted by the father of one of the boys, desperate for answers. But Philip is not a detective, and he soon feels out of his depth. ( UK: Raven Books, February 4/ US: Mulholland Books, March 2)