Afi Tekple is a young seamstress in Ghana. She is smart; she is pretty; and she has been convinced by her mother to marry a man she does not know. Afi knows who he is, of course—Elikem is a wealthy businessman whose mother has chosen Afi in the hopes that she will distract him from his relationship with a woman his family claims is inappropriate. But Afi is not prepared for the shift her life takes when she is moved from her small hometown of Ho to live in Accra, Ghana’s gleaming capital, a place of wealth and sophistication where she has days of nothing to do but cook meals for a man who may or may not show up to eat them. She has agreed to this marriage in order to give her mother the financial security she desperately needs, and so she must see it through. Or maybe not

Family expectations, personal traumas and cultural divides threaten to stand in their way. But in the vibrant chaos of Lagos, love can be as surprising as it is complicated.

Can Ṣemi and Lashe find common ground in their differences, or will their love story be another dream left unfulfilled?

Love, Lagos & Other Complications is Zainab Uche Imam’s debut novel.

In a village in south-east Nigeria on the brink of the Second World War, young Obi watches from a mango tree as a colonial army jeep speeds by, filled with soldiers laughing and shouting, their buttons shining in the sun. To Obi, their promise of a smart uniform and regular wages is hard to resist, especially as he has his sweetheart Rose to impress and a family to support.

Years later, when Rose falls pregnant to another man, his heart is shattered. As the Burma Campaign mounts and Obi is shipped out to fight, he is haunted by the mystery of Rose’s lover. When his identity comes to light, Obi’s devastation leads to a tragic chain of unexpected events.

After her husband’s unexpected death, everyone around Eve- her friends, her stifling Nigerian-British family, her toxic mother-in-law- is pushing her to move on.

But Eve isn’t ready to face the future yet. No, she intends to take to her bed like a consumptive Victoian lady, ignoring her mother’s earnest prayers and her sister’s cajoling. Instead, Eve begins looking back, combing through her memories in an attempt to understand where it all went wrong.

So begins this very unconventional love story.

Tourists know it as the City of Joy. For Ouled Nail dancers, Bousaada is a city of horrors.

It is 1931 when two sisters arrive in Bousaada bursting with dreams of becoming successful dancers. But the city, occupied by the ruthless French colonial army, changes their lives forever.
When they kill a soldier in self-defence, Fahima and Salima must outsmart the French Colonel who will stop at nothing to uncover the truth. The sisters are driven further into a cycle of violence with every attempt to hide their crime. Risking their lives and the lives of their loved ones, the dancers find themselves at the heart of a civilizational clash.

RUNNER-UP FOR THE 2022 ISLAND PRIZE FOR DEBUT AFRICAN NOVELS

SAND ROSES is a tale of resistance, sisterhood and the shameful past of two colliding nations. This extraordinarily immersive narrative thrusts its reader into the Algerian city of Bousaada during the 1930s and the story of the Nailiya dancers.