The Books We Read in 2024

For our final book recommendation of 2024, we have compiled a list of books we read and discussed over the past year. These books explore the complexities of human experience, memory, and imagination. These works address pressing issues such as migration, grief, societal norms, and environmental justice. Each title uniquely examines themes of identity, history, and belonging, weaving stories and characters that resonate both personally and culturally.  

From the spectral worlds of ’Pemi Aguda’s Ghostroots to a 50-year journey back in time celebrating Buchi Emecheta’s compelling work in Second-Class Citizen and Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s exploration of what it means to be an African writer today in The Most Secret Memory of Men, these books exemplify the richness of African storytelling. Together, the books—and the critical reviews contributed by The Republic’s writers—enrich the ongoing dialogue about who we are and where we belong in an ever-changing world. 

For their recommendations, read on.

‘Three elements have been consistent in ’Pemi Aguda’s work; her stories often feature a female protagonist, a supernatural or speculative catalyst and an interrogation or subversion of tropes and stereotypes about hysteria. Ghostroots, her debut collection of short stories, distils the themes Aguda has explored in her fiction over the past 15 years, while also celebrating the often-overlooked fourth element in her stories: Lagos,’ Edwin Okolo writes in his review. Read the full book review here.

According to Eniolá Abdulroqeeb Arówólò, ‘Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi’s powerful collection confronts the mind with haunting memories of recent global and national crimes. It also addresses the enduring stereotypes faced by Black people and those of Islamic faith. Cadaver of Red Roses isolates us into terrifying scenes where we are compelled to witness various disasters. It captures personal losses that evoke emotional turmoil, allowing us to sympathize with the poet-persona’s tragedies. Bobi fulfils James Baldwin’s notion of the artist as “a sort of emotional and spiritual historian,” shouldering the responsibility to enlighten readers about both the upheavals and the subtle graces of our existence.’ Read the full book review here.

‘In Loss is an Aftertaste of Memories we meet our narrator, Nọsike, who is living ahead of his time. We tread the murky waters of childhood and adolescence, sibling relationship, hopes and dreams, loss, and most importantly, love. Set in Benin City, in Edo State, Nọsike fondly remembers the early days of his childhood and beyond. We learn lessons alongside Nọsike as he shares how he views events that have shaped him, now through the lens of memory. Accompanied by startlingly vivid imagery, Chúkwúderà paints a beautiful portrait of a boy’s journey from childhood to adolescence. Nọsike recalls his kindergarten years and romanticizes being the child who consoled others, rather than being the consoled. This tendency to be a protector rather than the protected perhaps stems from Nọsike being the firstborn son, a trait that manifests in his relationship with Adaọra, his immediate younger sibling,’ Azubuike Obi writes. Read the full book review here.

According to Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto, ‘The African Poetry Book Fund (APBF) chapbook box set, Kumi, explores African identity, cultural inheritance, and collective memory. It includes prayers expressed in glossolalia, reflecting a desperate plea for survival. Themes shift from timid girlhood shaped by patriarchal culture to fierce modern womanhood, meditating on truth, illness, and mortality, and revealing the inescapable realities of human existence through contemporary African poetry.’ Read the full book review here.

In my review earlier this year, I wrote that: ‘Set in both Nigeria and the United Kingdom, Second-Class Citizen delivers a poignant portrayal of the challenges women face in Nigeria and the harsh realities Black women encounter in the West. What stands out to me about this novel is Emecheta’s deft execution, which thoroughly conveyed heavy themes with profound care and sensitivity. Emecheta’s fine storytelling and her ability to immerse readers in Adah’s life journey are particularly evident as she guides us through Adah’s adaptation to her new life in the United Kingdom. Despite its brevity, Second-Class Citizen packs a punch, portraying events, emotions, and experiences with such vividness that they require no second glance.’ Read the full book review here.

In his review, Dennis Mugaa writes that, ‘Small Country begins with a prologue. The narrator Gabriel, sometimes called Gaby, is recollecting a childhood memory from when he was almost eleven years old in Burundi in the early 90s. Two pages later, in a different chapter, it cuts to an adult Gaby, on his thirty-third birthday, living just outside of Paris. He has been in exile in France for over 20 years. He says, “I am haunted by the idea of returning. Not a day goes by without the country calling to me.” We see that even though he has lived in France for longer than he was in Burundi, he lives as if in suspension, between the past and his present life. This in-betweenness seems to be a permanent condition, as if it were a terminal illness. Sometimes, his narration in his present life feels as if he is conducting a séance for his past self, an identity and memories he is unable to come to terms with or let go of.’ Read the full book review here.

According to Edwin Okolo, ‘Like Purple Hibiscus, Blessings is unapologetic about being a bildungsroman. It is primarily concerned with Obiefuna and obsessively documents his journey into adulthood before, during and after the seminary. This choice allows us to experience Obiefuna’s queerness as a central influence in his life and follow his journey as he goes from naive to complicit to defiant, especially as he negotiates with the boundaries of his expression within the repressive dysphoria of boarding school life. Ibeh’s depictions of the same-sex boarding school experience are delightfully lurid. They will resonate with the book’s Nigerian millennial readers, many of whom have longed to see their experiences documented in literature.’ Read the full book review here.

‘In Michael Imossan’s debut chapbook—For the Love of Country and Memory—which won the 2022 Nigeria News Direct Chapbook Award, memory opens to readers a long passage of grief. It invents a kind of heaviness, effected by the palpable, blistering reminiscence of a country’s loss as captured in the book. For readers, the poems therein are not only the poet persona’s hurt; they become a shared reality of agony. The chapbook, 37 pages of collective sorrow, takes us back to a myriad of memories; memories that are familiar, frustrating, and festering. As a matter of fact, all the poems—practically prefaced by media reports—hauntingly perform a harsh divorce with hope or respite. We are surrendered to the brutality of a recurring sorrow,’ Eniolá Abdulroqeeb Arówólò writes. Read the full book review here.

‘Set in late eighties Ghana, the story of Akorfa and Selasi starts like any other deep-rooted friendship. The cousin-sisters are inseparable in Ho, a small city in southeast Ghana. They spend their days in Akorfa’s house playing with Barbie dolls, watching episodes of My Little Pony, and eating all the sweets Akorfa’s mom stocks in her home. Akorfa’s quiet, domicile self, paired with Selasi’s outspoken and witty persona, produces an imbalanced but functional relationship that isn’t uncommon in childhood friendships. Their paradise in Ho suddenly vanishes when Selasi is forced to move away from their estate to her grandmother’s house and Akorfa’s family relocates to Accra. In this novel, Medie—like her predecessors and contemporaries such as Buchi Emecheta, Bisi Adjapon, and Chimamanda Adichie—brilliantly uses complicated family dynamics and womanhood to speak to larger societal issues. Despite the page-turning plot twists and emotional turns, she doesn’t lose sight of her message,’ Kikachi Memeh writes. Read the full book review here.

According to Ancci, ‘Terminal Maladies is Nebeolisa’s intimate recounting of time spent with and apart from his mother, who lived with cancer “in her thigh for twenty-seven years,” as described in the poem “Nomenclature of My Mother’s Name”. She passed away on 23 July 2023. The book is divided into three sections—”Home”, “Abroad”, and “After”—each as reflective of its theme as the clearing of the cloudy sky after rainfall. Having left Nigeria for the United States in 2021 for his graduate education, Nebeolisa uses the first section, “Home”, to reflect on the moments shared with his mother at home as her illness took a lethal turn. The “Abroad” section is filled with longing, particularly in Nebeolisa’s imaginings of home, shaped by the necessary circumstance of his travel abroad. The final section, “After”, offers a poignant, universal meditation on the memories of his mother following her death.’ Read the full book review here.

‘The Road to the Country opens in 1967 with its hero, Kunle, at a desk writing. He is trying to “free himself” of a guilt he has carried for a decade. When Kunle was nine, to spend time with his sweetheart, Nkechi, he sends his brother, Tunde, out of the house. This harmless act—throwing a football into the street for Tunde to fetch—results in a car accident that cripples Tunde. The injury severs Kunle’s relationship with Nkechi, tethering her to Tunde, and thrusting Kunle into himself, so that “he has no friends and has avoided—as if by some inner protestation—anything that could bring him close to anyone.” Kunle is a law student at the University of Lagos, but he is so insular he does not know about the war brewing in his country. When he learns Tunde has followed Nkechi into Eastern Nigeria, the region now calling itself Biafra, it is this desire for absolution that propels him into finding his brother. This resolution of deep personal guilt amidst harrowing national devastation is an intriguing juxtaposition. In addition to being a war novel, The Road to the Country is also a quest novel, a bildungsroman, a mystical tale. Several realities are running concurrently,’ David Emeka writes. Read the full book review here.

‘In Adam, the late British-Nigerian poet, Odubanjo, sings in spiralling fervency. Emotionally complex and formally ambitious, the book informs us that we have come to the presence of something eviscerating, fascinating, uncanny and new. The central character of the book—an unidentified boy between four and eight, named “Adam” by the police, whose torso was discovered in the River Thames, London, on 21 September 2001—is not confined in Odubanjo’s literary reimagination to the singular tragedy of the fate of Adam. Adam is not stretched out merely for the sake of thematic discursiveness, but rather for maximal symbolic transumption,’ Ancci writes about the book. Read the full book review here.

According to Mazeedah Olutosin, ‘Ojo’s novel simply chronicles the life of Angela Hayford Wusu-Smyth. The entire story is a flashback recounting Angela’s birth, her struggles and successes, and her eventual relocation from Nigeria to Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire in search of a better life. However, her problems appear to follow her wherever she goes, and thus the story begins.’ Read the full book review here. 

‘This collection of short stories proves itself a clerestory with a profound, revelatory view of the Nigerian life. Buoyed by narratives conveyed in a delicate manner and no less by her virtuosic writing, Okonkwo’s stories revolve around characters whose grip on sanity is tenuous and whose motivations are oftentimes distressing; sometimes, dubious; and at other times, ironic, if not borderline ludicrous,’ Onyekachi Iloh writes. Read the full book review here.

According to Adesiyan Oluwapelumi, ‘The poems in Romeo Oriogun’s sophomore poetry collection, The Gathering of Bastards, build their worlds from the sea, a now recurring motif in Oriogun’s work, evident in his past collection, Nomad, which won the 2022 Nigeria Prize for Literature. Following in the footsteps of Nomad, The Gathering of Bastards has been shortlisted for the 2024 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. In this collection, Oriogun and his speakers serve as witnesses, traversing corporeal, sexual, mental, spiritual and political borders to explore themes of departure, remembrance and wandering. Everything in the collection migrates through borders, invisible or visible. Every boundary beckons to be crossed, abolished, or established. Oriogun achieves this through poetics that wrestle with the definition of home, centering the meaning of belonging around the concept of communalism—a conflict between self-ownership and societal ownership.’ Read the full book review here.

‘The Changing Man follows Ifelayo Adebola who arrives at elite Nithercott High feeling completely displaced. She wishes to return to her previous school and reunite with her friends. Before Ife’s arrival at Nithercott, the school had been dealing with the mysterious disappearance of Leon Small. Ife arrived with a gut feeling that something was quite amiss. Her curiosity was piqued when her closest friend, Malika, failed to show up for a planned trip and reappeared after a few hours, a completely changed person. Ife herself had had an encounter with a mysterious creature with glowing eyes, an orange mist, and the strong smell of petrichor pervading the air around it. Convinced that there was a conspiracy going on at Nithercott, Ife teamed up with Ben and Bijal. The trio, conducting investigations, were convinced that the school was involved in the disappearance of Leon and other weird occurrences. Digging deeper, they realize much to their dismay that they have been cohabiting with therimorphs, creatures that feed on humans and then clone them from organs of animals. Oyemakinde has set the mark for a paranormal work with a Black protagonist. The Changing Man makes a quite captivating read. It draws the reader in right from the prologue,’ Mazeedah Olutosin writes. Read the full book review here.

It is the ten-year anniversary of her sister’s death, and Nia is grappling with her grief, and balancing the complicated relationships weaving through her life. There is smart and sexy Temi; Melvin, her teenage love; and her new yet intimate friendship with Rahul and Crystal. But looming large over everything is her mother SuSu, whose battle with bipolar disorder continues to cast a profound shadow over Nia. Delving deep into the intricate tapestry of Nia’s life, Like Water Like Sea is a poignant tale of self-discovery and resilience, sexuality, motherhood, and falling apart to become truly whole. Read an excerpt of this book here. 

‘Across the poems in Nature Knows a Little About Slave Trade, Samuel takes on an acreage of serious subjects—from language, trauma, violence (cultural, historical, universal, and domestic), social policing, immigrant reality, childhood to slave trade. But, as the eponymous poem intimates, it is not thematic range alone, but also a command of poetic language and its various modalities that is the locus of Samuel’s claim to distinction,’ Ancci writes. Read the full book review here.

‘The Most Secret Memory of Men questions what it means to be an African writer today. It asks: what does it mean to write outside the centre? Sarr’s novel takes literature very seriously. It asks us to think about what African literature is and continues the conversation of the first African Writers Conference of 1962 held in Makerere University College, Uganda. It deftly shows the legacy of colonialism, and the choice of language in writing and questions the idea of what an African writer can write. Ultimately, it asks us to think of literature as the highest art form,’ Dennis Mugaa writes. Read the full book review here.

According to Ibrahim Williams, ‘Wole Soyinka’s Climate of Fear, published as a documentation of his remarkable 2004 Reith Lectures, is a poignant exploration of our fear-riddled globe. It is a non-fiction narrative of five compositions, solid observations, and two noteworthy qualities: its language, which, crafted in an unusual simplicity, marries facts to interventions; and its timeless relevance to our world’s affairs in ways that appear uncanny enough to merit conspiracy theories yet eerie enough to engulf us in wonder. It is a delineation of the disturbing instrumentalities employed by the purveyors of chaos in their quest to seek and consolidate control over an otherized group. The text is “lamentful” and strung with critical denunciation, and its primary actor, “the quasi-state”—an establishment Soyinka defines as a furtive invisible power… that lays no claim to any physical boundaries, flies no national flag [and] is unlisted in any international association—puts forth a new image of perpetrators: an image neither defined by legacy media’s propaganda nor indicative of social stereotypes, but one manifested in dictators, terrorists, and disturbingly, even peddlers of democracy.’ Read the full book review here⎈