Recommendations based on "Lagoon"

The newest novel by the author of Akata Witch and the forthcoming Marvel comic book series about Shuri, Black Panther's sister!“The most imaginative, gripping, enchanting fantasy novels I have ever read!” —Laurie Halse Anderson, New York Times bestselling author of SpeakA year ago, Sunny Nwazue, an American-born girl Nigerian girl, was inducted into the secret Leopard Society. As she began to develop her magical powers, Sunny learned that she had been chosen to lead a dangerous mission to avert an apocalypse, brought about by the terrifying masquerade, Ekwensu. Now, stronger, feistier, and a bit older, Sunny is studying with her mentor Sugar Cream and struggling to unlock the secrets in her strange Nsibidi book.Eventually, Sunny knows she must confront her destiny. With the support of her Leopard Society friends, Orlu, Chichi, and Sasha, and of her spirit face, Anyanwu, she will travel through worlds both visible and invisible to the mysteries town of Osisi, where she will fight a climactic battle to save humanity.Much-honored Nnedi Okorafor, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards, merges today’s Nigeria with a unique world she creates. Akata Warrior blends mythology, fantasy, history and magic into a compelling tale that will keep readers spellbound.

Mahlangeni, the Tsonga word for "meeting place", is one of the most remote ranger stations in the Kruger National Park. Far from everywhere, this isolated corner of the wilderness was home for eleven years to Kobie Kruger, wife of the ranger in charge of the station, and their their three daughters. Running a household and raising a family in a place where leopards, elephants, snakes and the like are your only neighbours, where you have no telephone, and where a trip to town means first crossing a river full of hippos and crocodiles, is hardly a straightforward business. But Kobie Kruger tackled each problem with undaunted pragmatism and an energy that gives new meaning to word resourceful.

In Lose Your Mother, Saidiya Hartman journeys along a slave route in Ghana, following the trail of captives from the hinterland to the Atlantic coast. She retraces the history of the Atlantic slave trade from the fifteenth to the twentieth century and reckons with the blank slate of her own genealogy. There were no survivors of Hartman's lineage, nor far-flung relatives in Ghana of whom she had come in search. She traveled to Ghana in search of strangers. The most universal definition of the slave is a stranger--torn from kin and country. To lose your mother is to suffer the loss of kin, to forget your past, and to inhabit the world as a stranger. As both the offspring of slaves and an American in Africa, Hartman, too, was a stranger. Her reflections on history and memory unfold as an intimate encounter with places--a holding cell, a slave market, a walled town built to repel slave raiders--and with people: an Akan prince who granted the Portuguese permission to build the first permanent trading fort in West Africa; an adolescent boy who was kidnapped while playing; a fourteen-year-old girl who was murdered aboard a slave ship. Eloquent, thoughtful, and deeply affecting, Lose Your Mother is a powerful meditation on history, memory, and the Atlantic slave trade.

A renowned healer and shaman’s life-changing journey of discovery, healing, and wisdom“Malidoma has kept faith with the ancestors and with his own heart. His journey is a shimmering ‘missing piece’ in the story of the earth.” —Alice WalkerWhen he was a young boy growing up in Burkina Faso, Malidoma Somé was taken from his village and brought to a Jesuit mission school, where he spent years being harshly indoctrinated in European ways of thought and worship. In this vivid and paradigm-shifting memoir, Malidoma recounts his journey home—and his initiation into the healing traditions of the Dagara culture, where the natural and supernatural blend together, and every person is encircled by family, community, and the wisdom of ancestors.By turns humbling, harrowing, magical, and transcendent, Malidoma’s spiritual awakening imparted ancient wisdom that he would spend the rest of his life sharing with others around the world—as an antidote to alienation, a tool for self-transformation, and a bridge between cultures and worlds.

"A dozen interlinked, music-oriented stories set in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, where Garricks was raised... Each songlike story feels like a breakout hit encapsulating the brokenness and the beauty in life’s soundtrack."—Booklist, starred review“Beautifully woven . . . a magical delight.”—Hari Kunzru, author of White TearsA Broken People’s Playlist is set to the soundtrack of life, comprised of twelve music-inspired tales about love, the human condition, micro-moments, and the search for meaning and sometimes, redemption. It is also Chimeka Garricks’s love letter to his native city, Port Harcourt, introducing us to a cast of indelible characters in these loosely interlocked tales.There is the teenage wannabe-DJ eager to play his first gig even as his family disastrously falls apart—who reappears many years later as an unhappy middle-aged man drunk-calling his ex-wife; a man who throws a living funeral for his dying brother; three friends who ponder penis captivus and one’s peculiar erectile dysfunction; a troubled woman who tries to find her peace-place in the world, helped by a headful of songs and a pot of ginger tea.Infused with the author’s resonant and evocative storytelling, each page holds “the depth of a novel” (Hari Kunzru); a character, a moment that will—like a favorite song—long linger in the heart and mind.

Based on interviews with young women who were kidnapped by Boko Haram, this poignant novel by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani tells the timely story of one girl who was taken from her home in Nigeria and her harrowing fight for survival. Includes an afterword by award-winning journalist Viviana Mazza.A new pair of shoes, a university degree, a husband—these are the things that a girl dreams of in a Nigerian village. And with a government scholarship right around the corner, everyone can see that these dreams aren’t too far out of reach.But the girl’s dreams turn to nightmares when her village is attacked by Boko Haram, a terrorist group, in the middle of the night. Kidnapped, she is taken with other girls and women into the forest where she is forced to follow her captors’ radical beliefs and watch as her best friend slowly accepts everything she’s been told.Still, the girl defends her existence. As impossible as escape may seem, her life—her future—is hers to fight for.

New York Times Bestseller • An Oprah Book Club Pick“Powerful . . . [Kingsolver] has with infinitely steady hands worked the prickly threads of religion, politics, race, sin and redemption into a thing of terrible beauty.” —Los Angeles Times Book ReviewTaking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, this ambitious novel established Barbara Kingsolver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers.The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family’s tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.

The urgent and unforgettable true story of post-Katrina New Orleans . . .In August 2005, as Hurricane Katrina blew in, the city of New Orleans has been abandoned by most citizens. But resident Abdulrahman Zeitoun, though his wife and family had gone, refused to leave. For days he traversed an apocalyptic landscape of flooded streets by canoe. But eventually he came to the attention of those 'guarding' this drowned city. Only then did Zeitoun's nightmare really begin.Zeitoun is the powerful, ultimately uplifting true story of one man's courage when confronted with an awesome force of nature followed by more troubling human oppression.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • John Grisham takes you to a different kind of court in his first basketball novel. Samuel “Sooley” Sooleymon is a raw, young talent with big hoop dreams—and even bigger challenges off the court.“Hard to put down ... the pages turn quickly ... building to a climax that won’t leave readers doubting whether this is a John Grisham novel.” —Associated PressIn the summer of his seventeenth year, Samuel Sooleymon gets the chance of a lifetime: a trip to the United States with his South Sudanese teammates to play in a showcase basketball tournament. He has never been away from home, nor has he ever been on an airplane. The opportunity to be scouted by dozens of college coaches is a dream come true.Samuel is an amazing athlete, with speed, quickness, and an astonishing vertical leap. The rest of his game, though, needs work, and the American coaches are less than impressed.During the tournament, Samuel receives devastating news from home: A civil war is raging across South Sudan, and rebel troops have ransacked his village. His father is dead, his sister is missing, and his mother and two younger brothers are in a refugee camp.Samuel desperately wants to go home, but it’s just not possible. Partly out of sympathy, the coach of North Carolina Central offers him a scholarship. Samuel moves to Durham, enrolls in classes, joins the team, and prepares to sit out his freshman season. There is plenty of more mature talent and he isn’t immediately needed.But Samuel has something no other player has: a fierce determination to succeed so he can bring his family to America. He works tirelessly on his game, shooting baskets every morning at dawn by himself in the gym, and soon he’s dominating everyone in practice. With the Central team losing and suffering injury after injury, Sooley, as he is nicknamed, is called off the bench. And the legend begins.But how far can Sooley take his team? And will success allow him to save his family?Gripping and moving, Sooley showcases John Grisham’s unparalleled storytelling powers in a whole new light. This is Grisham at the top of his game.Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020A Spectator Book of the Year‘A literary rendering of the Top Boy generation… I cannot conjure another work which captures this culture in such depth – or with such brutal honesty – as only lived experience can tell ’ Graeme Armstrong, author of The Young Team’An astonishingly powerful book’ Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of The Last Act of LoveThis life is like being in an ocean. Some people keep swimming towards the bottom. Some people touch the bottom with one foot, or even both, and then push themselves off it to get back up to the top, where you can breathe. Others get to the bottom and decide they want to stay there. I don’t want to get to the bottom because I’m already drowning.This is a story of a London you won’t find in any guidebooks.This is a story about what it’s like to exist in the moment, about boys too eager to become men, growing up in the hidden war zones of big cities – and the girls trying to make it their own way.This is a story of reputations made and lost, of violence and vengeance – and never counting the cost.This is a story of concrete towers and blank eyed windows, of endless nights in police stations and prison cells, of brotherhood and betrayal.This is about the boredom, the rush, the despair, the fear and the hope.This is about what’s left behind.Perfect for fans of Diane Cook, Douglas Stuart and Colum McCann.