Lagos, Life and Sexual Distraction

Lagos, Life and Sexual Distraction PDF Author: Tunde Ososanya
Publisher: Envelope Books
ISBN: 1915023386
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 99

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Book Description
ill Baami ever stop beating up his wife and become a commissioner? Will Ezinne ever go on a date with Chibuzor, Segun's answer to Cristiano Ronaldo? Will Oladayo always be bullied by Benjamin, the corrupt politician's son? Will Musa's friends Maryam and Kabiru survive Boko Haram's attack on their village? The life of the underprivileged, whether in urban Lagos or in the countryside in northern Nigeria, is always desperate and provisional. In this collection of twelve short stories, Tunde Ososanya exposes the challenges of daily life and the efforts of ordinary people to aspire in the face of overwhelming odds. There are distractions. Humour is one, observed in the audacity of conmen who ride the yellow danfo buses. Magic is another, in the spirit world that Mr Benson asks his Literature-in-English students to write about. But the most immediate is always sex, the ultimate escape. Twelve stories about invisible heroes, each fighting the tragedy of modern Nigeria in their own way.

Lagos, Life and Sexual Distraction

Lagos, Life and Sexual Distraction PDF Author: Tunde Ososanya
Publisher: Envelope Books
ISBN: 1915023386
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 99

Get Book Here

Book Description
ill Baami ever stop beating up his wife and become a commissioner? Will Ezinne ever go on a date with Chibuzor, Segun's answer to Cristiano Ronaldo? Will Oladayo always be bullied by Benjamin, the corrupt politician's son? Will Musa's friends Maryam and Kabiru survive Boko Haram's attack on their village? The life of the underprivileged, whether in urban Lagos or in the countryside in northern Nigeria, is always desperate and provisional. In this collection of twelve short stories, Tunde Ososanya exposes the challenges of daily life and the efforts of ordinary people to aspire in the face of overwhelming odds. There are distractions. Humour is one, observed in the audacity of conmen who ride the yellow danfo buses. Magic is another, in the spirit world that Mr Benson asks his Literature-in-English students to write about. But the most immediate is always sex, the ultimate escape. Twelve stories about invisible heroes, each fighting the tragedy of modern Nigeria in their own way.

A Question of Paternity: My Life As an Unaffiliated Reporter

A Question of Paternity: My Life As an Unaffiliated Reporter PDF Author: David Tereshchuk
Publisher: Envelope Books
ISBN: 1915023432
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
David Tereshchuk leapt from an unpromising childhood in a small town on the English-Scottish borders to a precocious high-flying career as a TV journalist, first in London, then New York. During his working life, he has managed to extract revealing answers from tyrants and the oppressed, but never managed to coax his mother into admitting who his father was, even after her revelation to him, when he was in his 50s, that she had been raped, aged 15, by a priest. Alongside his career, the search for his mother’s abuser has haunted him, adding further layers of stress to a life already marked by alcoholism and insecurity. This is his astonishing story, and one that deserves to sit alongside those of Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and David Brinkley. A compelling addition to EnvelopeBooks' "Media" and "Memoir" titles.

Mrs. Woodbine’s Prejudices

Mrs. Woodbine’s Prejudices PDF Author: Michael Ladner
Publisher: Envelope Books
ISBN: 1915023467
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Professor Arthur Lash, born Artur Lasch in pre-war Austria, takes his American wife and their three sons back to Vienna, in 1960, to see how well his father is rebuilding his life after regaining the factory stolen from him when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938. For Arthur, the journey helps him re-establish his links with the city he was brought up in; for the rest of his family, their European holiday triggers emotions of a very different kind—secret longings, near disasters and absurd mishaps—all disruptive in different ways, and all watched over by their wise but needy and uninvited travelling companion, Mrs. Woodbine, the family nanny. A masterly piece of writing.

Belle Nash and the Bath Circus

Belle Nash and the Bath Circus PDF Author: William Keeling
Publisher: Envelope Books
ISBN: 1915023416
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
In Volume 2 of The Gay Street Chronicles, gay hero Bellerophon (Belle) Nash returns to Regency Bath after a four-year exile in Grenada. It's 1835. Belle meets Pablo Fanque, which sets him off on an ill-advised course of action that brings him to a low ebb. Hoping that Pablo Fanque will serve as a substitute for the man he left behind in the Caribbean, Belle agrees to help him achieve his ambitions as England's first black circus entrepreneur. His plans run into trouble with the arrival in Bath of Lord Servitude, the most unapologetic slave owners in the West Indies, and with Pablo's refusal to be something that he isn't. The ensuring contests between good and bad, and compromise and principle, play out alongside a cast of eccentric characters, many of them portrayed with whimsical humour, in whose company Belle builds the moral courage to challenge the racism of his day while brought down by the awareness of his betrayal of himself.

My Modern Movement

My Modern Movement PDF Author: Robert Best
Publisher: Envelope Books
ISBN: 1915023335
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
For those of "advanced" tastes, ​the Modern Movement was a welcome corrective to the debased aesthetics of the commercial world. Massed housing of the 1920s and 30s was as untutored as the products of light industry and both operated far from the enlightened thinking coming out of Central Europe that sought to harness architecture and design to social progress. Robert Best, the only British industrialist to have trained at art school, shared the goal of better mass education but was troubled by the methods of Modernism's propagandists, for reasons that they found hard to understand. If "the few" knew better than "the many", and "the many" were incapable of raising their own standards, was it not reasonable for "the few" to impose those standards from above? And if they did not do so, were they not betraying their enlightenment and their obligation to help elevate the less capable? Best did not think so, and in this extraordinary memoir, written in the early 1950s but never published, he explores his own growing concerns about the sense of noblesse oblige that directed such bodies as the Council of Industrial Design, set up in 1944, to raise the quality of British manufacturing and its saleability. This overdue book needs to be read widely to understand what lay behind the idealism of the design world in the second quarter of the 20th century. With an introduction by Stephen Games, biographer of Sir Nikolaus Pevsner.

Sacrament of Bodies

Sacrament of Bodies PDF Author: Romeo Oriogun
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496219643
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 75

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Book Description
In this groundbreaking collection of poems, Sacrament of Bodies, Romeo Oriogun fearlessly interrogates how a queer man in Nigeria can heal in a society where everything is designed to prevent such restoration. With honesty, precision, tenderness of detail, and a light touch, Oriogun explores grief and how the body finds survival through migration.

Frances Creighton: Found and Lost

Frances Creighton: Found and Lost PDF Author: Kirby Porter
Publisher: Envelope Books
ISBN: 1915023327
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
Unable to cope with the death of his girlfriend, Londoner Michael Roberts tries to find comfort in memories of another time and another place when he was in love for the first time. But that first time was as a schoolboy in Belfast, at the start of The Troubles in the late 1960s, and in a culture dominated by divides that weren’t just sectarian. To his surprise and increasing anguish his memories—long buried—prove elusive, so that finding out what had really happened and why it got suppressed becomes more and more of an obsession. As Michael gradually uncovers forgotten truths he starts to learn something that challenges everything he ever knew about himself and the person he has become. Frances Creighton: Found and Lost is a deeply felt first novel that conveys the pain of late adolescence in a community where school and religion add more layers of cruelty to the underlying instability of daily life and Northern Irish politics.

Postmark Africa

Postmark Africa PDF Author: Michael Holman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Michael Holman's eye-witness reports on the state of sub-Saharan Africa for the Financial Times and other media provide rare insights into the region's post-independence successes and setbacks. From his accounts of the atrocities committed by Rhodesian forces in the 1960s to his interviews with those who would lead Africa into its own future and assessments of how they actually performed--often in obituaries--Postmark Africa brings together a lifetime of running commentaries on a continent he grew up in, knows acutely and loves dearly. Written with the benefit of unique access, Holman's writings still hold out hope for Africa, in spite of decades of disappointment at the structural mismanagement of the nations themselves, the destructive policies of donor countries and other funders, and the hateful legacy of colonialism. Alexander McCall Smith: "If you want to see what a good man in Africa has done, read this book. It contains profound observations of real and lasting significance on virtually every page ..." John Githongo: "Throughout his career as a journalist and author, Michael has been a rebel with a clear cause. He has a seamless capacity to get under the African skin, and a ruthless insight for sniffing out what's working, even though it may not look it, and what's an utter waste of time, even though no one else will admit. He has brought this insight and unapologetic attitude in his quest for the truth to everything he has ever done, on and for Africa. All of it is informed by a deep sense of empathy for the land of his upbringing, warts and all, and a biting sense of humour ..." Malcolm Rifkind: "This book should be read by anyone who not only wants to know the history of central and southern Africa but to understand its people, black and white. They are a fine people and in Michael they have had an honest, articulate and worthy champion, as rigorous, objective and professional in this book as he was in his journalism as Africa Correspondent for the Financial Times. He has an energy and an eloquence in recording not just what he knows or has analysed but also what he feels to be the reality of his homeland's tragic experience both under white, colonial domination and the black-led governments that followed ..." Ed Balls: "Africa has no fiercer critic and no greater advocate than Michael Holman. Passionate, sometimes angry but also caring and often hilarious, Michael Holman once again delivers his trademark combination of beautiful prose and compelling story-telling. This book is both a delight and a tragic tale of hopes still unfulfilled ..."

Mustard Seed Itinerary

Mustard Seed Itinerary PDF Author: Robert Mullen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781838172046
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
All roads lead to the Celestial City and when schoolmaster Po Cheng drinks too much and falls into a dream, he finds himself on just such a road. Assisted by teaching colleague Miss Ling, Po Cheng reaches the imperial capital, rising up through the giddy ranks of the Chinese civil service to become Prime Minister. Good fortune appears endless, not least when Miss Ling reappears as an artist's model who has changed her name to Precious Pearl so she can pose in the Forest of Brushes Academy of Art without her parents finding out. But what Heaven--and alcohol--hand out, they can also claw back. Trouble is brewing inside and outside the city walls, and Po Cheng's eminence means he must now take the rap and face consequences inevitable from the start. Mustard Seed Itinerary is a brilliant first novel by an important new voice, bringing to the formal conventions of traditional Chinese literature the wry humour of Carrollian satire. As Mullen says, 'In Daoism and Buddhism, dream journeys serve as voyages of discovery from which only a blockhead would return none the wiser. And Po Cheng is no blockhead.'

African Sexualities

African Sexualities PDF Author: Sylvia Tamale
Publisher: Fahamu/Pambazuka
ISBN: 0857490168
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 674

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Book Description
A groundbreaking book, accessible but scholarly, by African activists. It uses research, life stories, and artistic expression--including essays, case studies, poetry, news clips, songs, fiction, memoirs, letters, interviews, short film scripts, and photographs--to examine dominant and deviant sexualities and investigate the intersections between sex, power, masculinities, and femininities. It also opens a space, particularly for young people, to think about African sexualities in different ways.