New generation publishing house, Cassava Republic Press, continues to inspire and energise the Nigerian literary landscape. In the last three months, it has released three new exciting titles. Starting with Sunny and the Mysteries of Osisi by the multi-award-winning America-based Nigerian sci-fi writer, Nnedi Okorafor, The Hundred Wells of Salaga by Ayesha Harruna Attah, and She Called Me Woman: Nigeria’s Queer Women Speak, edited by Chitra Nagarajan, Rafeeat Aliyu and Azeenarh Mohammed.
Okorafor’s Sunny and the Mysteries of Osisi is the sequel to the critically acclaimed young adult book, What Sunny Saw in the Flames (published in the US as Akata Warrior), which was published in 2012 by Cassava Republic Press and has sold over 30,000 copies in Nigeria alone. Okorafor, a Hugo award winning speculative fiction writer, is also a finalist for the 2018 World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) Award for her novel, What Sunny Saw in the Flames.
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Ghanaian writer, Attah, in her third novel, The Hundred Wells of Salaga takes on the courtly life of pre-colonial Ghana narrated through the experiences of two women, Aminah, a slave, and Wurche, her mistress. Attah is a 2016 Miles Morland Foundation Scholarship winner and was shortlisted for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, describes The Hundred Wells of Salaga as “the story of how both women liberate themselves and forge an unlikely friendship at the same time that Britain, Germany and, to a smaller extent, France, are slowly encroaching in on the area.”
Following the list of fiction releases by Cassava Republic is the groundbreaking non-fiction She Called Me Woman: Nigeria’s Queer Women Speak, a brave new book based on the first-hand narratives of 25 queer Nigerian women, whose stories challenge the stereotype about their existence while offering a narrative rooted in reality and truth.
Speaking on the new books, South-West Sales Manager, Cassava Republic Press, Kofo Okunola, noted, “The books are currently available for readers to purchase across major offline and online bookshops in Nigeria and they are also available via the company’s website. I think all lovers of African literature will find something for their taste in each of these books.”
Source: G Entertainment
