Ope Adedeji
Vagabonds! – A Refusal to be Defined
Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined. – Toni Morrison What does it mean to bring a city to life? To show its shapes and contours without yielding to the oft-tendency to romanticise? Eloghosa Osunde’s riveting debut, Vagabonds!, answers through a set of interlinked stories which can be read as a whole or independently, […]
The AKO Caine Prize: What’s in for us in 2021?
When you enter the world of Rémy Ngamije’s ‘Giver of Nicknames’, you’re probably not thinking of how teenagers perceive injustice. To reduce the story set in a Catholic school in urban Namibia to this one theme is to do injustice to the writing. The shortlisted stories in the 2021 AKO Caine Prize For African Writing […]
Pockets
The handkerchief Aunty presses into my hand is white and crisp. It has the strong musty smell of old clothes. She says she got it in camp during the Holy Ghost service in August, that the Reverend personally anointed it. She repeats the word “personally”, staring at the heart-shaped birthmark on my nose. ‘Make sure […]