A year after their best friend, Janet Uzor dies in a drowning incident, Pamela and Ebere are trying to cope and move on in their own unique ways. Pamela buries her emotions, while Ebere has been on a mission to find out what really happened to their friend, an excellent swimmer, whose death seems unfair and unconscionable.

People Live Here tells of Kanulia, a 25-year-old single mother, whose quest for a better job that will help her raise her son in the post-PMS subsidy removal crises of January 2012 lands her a foreign-aid nursing work in Sana’a in the aftermath of the Yemeni Uprising, the previous year. With the cast of eccentric yet friendly coworkers from all over the world, she eases into the old city and takes in the architecture. She begins a journey of friendship, trauma and rediscovery that will bring her back to Nigeria a changed woman, even though she is initially unaware of it, it’s a change that will save lives at the crisis-stricken Northern borders of her country.

A young refugee washes up unconscious on the beach of a small island inhabited by no one but Samuel, an old lighthouse keeper. Unsettled, Samuel is soon swept up in memories of his former life on the mainland: a life that saw his country suffer under colonisers, then fight for independence, only to fall under the rule of a cruel dictator; and he recalls his own part in its history. In this new man’s presence he begins to consider, as he did in his youth, what is meant by land and to whom it should belong.

The Curse of Happiness is a collection of short stories that finds ordinary people struggling and failing in extraordinary circumstances.

From a woman faced with a long waited miracle in “Baby Blue Joy” to a man who finds himself with humanity’s most terrifying manifestation, an enraged mob, in “What is Mine is Yours.”

Yakusak stretches the limits of the normal the perception of of decisions people take in situations beyond their control.

Peter Idenala’s stable but uninteresting life, as an ambitious young banker, is disrupted when he comes across a book, published as fiction, recounting the torrid experiences he lived through during his days in the university. He is shaken because the writer is Neta Okoye, a girl who broke his heart and dumped him six years before. Peter is forced to revisit his past, to relive his once complicated relationship with Neta and the mistakes that marred their years in school; the friendships they found and lost. 

When the book leads him directly to her, they are faced with a difficult decision: Continue with their emotionally-empty lives, independent of each other, or be together again and confront the trail of past misfortunes that binds them. For Neta, accepting Peter again comes with a promise of happiness, but it also carries the risk of uncovering the secrets she has carried throughout her life. Secrets involving a brother she used to sleep with.