All posts by Kemi Falodun

By Kemi Falodun

• Title: Mafoya and the Finish Line
• Author: Ayo Oyeku
• Publisher: Ouida Books
• Number of pages: 61
• Year of publication: 2018
• Category: Children

A prayer in Yorùbá goes, ‘Kí ẹyẹ kó dún bí ẹyẹ, eku kó dún bí eku, ọmọ ènìyàn kó f’ọhùn bí ènìyàn’. It is an acknowledgment that strange things may occur, hence the content of the prayer, that life should continue to go on normally and smoothly with birds chirping as birds, rats squeaking as rats and humans sounding like humans. So, when the protagonist of Mafoya and the Finish Line finds herself in a land where animals speak like humans, she is petrified. More…

By Kemi Falodun

• Title: The Book of Memory
  
• Author: Petina Gappah
• Publisher: Cassava Republic Press
• Number of pages: 311
• Year of publication: 2016
• Category: Fiction

‘Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders’, wrote Friedrich Nietzsche. For some people, forgetting is a defense mechanism against unwanted memories, a way to avoid pain: the one they were subjected to, the one they caused others, or both. For others, being involved in different activities may suppress, or at least help them cope with those unwanted memories. But what recourse is there for one who is imprisoned and has nothing more than silence, time and memories? How does such a one run from their past? More…

By Kemi Falodun

• Title: A Gecko’s Farewell
• Author: Maik Nwosu
• Publisher: Parrésia Publishers Ltd
• Number of pages: 256
• Year of publication: 2016
• Category: Fiction

There have been different narratives dealing with the themes of migration, displacement and home by many African writers. However, Maik Nwosu’s ability to weave different worlds into this novel makes A Gecko’s Farewell an unusual read. ‘A Gecko’s Farewell’ is also the title of an essay and the personal narrative of Mzilikazi, one of the three central characters of this novel and a core member of the Gecko X organisation. Etiaba and Nadia are the other two. These three young Africans, who are on different paths of struggle and discovery, meet on the internet via a platform created for Africans to tell their own stories. In Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah, Ifemelu creates a community on the blogosphere for people with similar experiences. Etiaba does something similar, Gecko X. The reader will later learn, as the story progresses, how the lives of these three characters intersect. More…

By Kemi Falodun

• Title: Unlikely
• Author: Colleen Crawford Cousins 
• Publisher: Modjaji Books
• Number of pages: 63
• Year of publication: 2016
• Category: Poetry

Different people make different demands of poetry and so it is wise that in this collection Colleen Crawford Cousins writes as one who is free of any pressure to meet everybody’s demands. What more could a poet ask for than a self-selecting audience that thinks it worthwhile to make the effort to connect with the poet’s words? Having already published two books, one co-authored, Unlikely presents an intimate blend of surrender and reinvention of self. More…