Fiction. African &amp; African American Studies. A young woman loses her grip on reality, destroyed by being the mistress of a powerful general. A pastor hides the innocent from marauding gangs hyped up by post- election fervor. A philosophy professor struggles against his better judgment to save everyone but himself. In present day Nigeria, there are many centers of the universe. Told from various points of view, THE SOUND OF THINGS TO COME departs from the strictures of linear narratives. Loosely centered on the activities of a church, the many colorfully drawn characters in Emmanuel Iduma's breakthrough novel illuminate the complex interconnectedness of a community where individuals struggle through their own painful dramas. First published in 2012 as Farad in Nigeria, Iduma's novel is the disruptive harbinger of Nigeria's rising generation of writers. "Iduma's prose is always fresh and illuminating. Intelligent, haunting and evocative, The Sound of Things to Come marks him as a unique talent to watch." —Ayobami Adebayo "In THE SOUND OF THINGS TO COME to Come Emmanuel Iduma deploys a meta-psychological technique where his characters are dissected for both experiences and motives. The innards of his characters are exhibited as though for contemplation…And in spite of this experimental foray, their humanity is left intact." —Dami Ajayi "THE SOUND OF THINGS TO COME, Emmanuel Iduma's formally adventurous and uncommonly sophisticated debut, seduces us into becoming witnesses to the quiet desperation in the lives of a diverse cast of sympathetically drawn characters. The gradual revelation of the connections between these disparate lives illuminates the unpredictable workings of our common humanity and compels us to confront our shared vulnerabilities. THE SOUND OF THINGS TO COME privileges the road less travelled in its aesthetic choices. It is an essential read for anyone interested in unconventional fictional investigations of contemporary experience." —Rotimi Babatunde "Like an expert charmer, Emmanuel Iduma strings the reader along with delectable character portraits, building anticipation until the last page. THE SOUND OF THINGS TO COME announces the arrival of another talented writer." —Abubakar Adam Ibrahim "Style and thematic matrix create a sense of the uncanny. Terse but lyrical prose and often-cryptic dialogue suggest hidden depths. Woven throughout are fragments of a shared postmodern culture that brackets Dostoyevsky and Kate Chopin, Eliot and Mia Couto, Hollywood and Nollywood, Europop and hip-hop, email and Twitter, elliptical quotes, as from Tóibín's The Story of the Night and Mercier's Night Train to Lisbon, and bits of songs that sign both angst and 'a new dawn,' like Michael Bublé's cover of 'Feeling Good' and Colbie Caillat's 'The Little Things.' Together they convey alienation and the thirst for connection and meaning." —Michele Levy

The Sound of Things to Come

Literature & Fiction

Iduma, Emmanuel

United States

The Mantle

"Powerful and transcendent" --Chigozie Obioma&nbsp; "Both epic and intimate"&nbsp;--&#8203;Margo Jefferson A deeply moving, lyrical journey through the author's homeland of Nigeria, in search of the truth about his disappeared uncle and the history of a war that shaped him, his family, and a nation In inimitable, rhythmic prose, the author and winner of the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize Emmanuel Iduma tells the story of his return to Nigeria, where he grew up, after years of living in New York. He traveled home with an elusive mission: to learn the fate of his uncle Emmanuel, his namesake, who disappeared in the Nigerian Civil War in the late 1960s. A conflict that left so many families broken, the war remains at the margins of the history books, almost taboo to discuss. To find answers, Iduma stopped in city after city throughout the former Biafra region, reconnecting with relatives dear and distant to probe their memories, prowling university libraries to furtively photocopy illicit books, and visiting half-abandoned monuments along the highway. Perhaps, he realized, if he could understand how his father grieved the loss of a brother in the war, he might learn how to grieve his late father in turn. &nbsp; His is also the story of countless families across the country and across the world who will never have answers or proper funerals for their loved ones. It's a story about the birth of an artist, about writing itself as an act both healing and political, even dangerous. And it's a story about family history and legacy, and all the questions the dead leave unanswered. How much of the author's identity is wrapped up in this inheritance? And what does it mean to return home, when the people who define it are gone? &nbsp; Equal parts memoir, national history, and political reckoning, I Am Still With You is a profoundly personal story of collective loss and making peace with the unknowable.

I Am Still With You: A Reckoning with Silence, Inheritance, and History

Parenting & Relationships

Algonquin Books

Through stories remembered and imagined, and images by acclaimed photographers, A Stranger's Pose draws the reader into a world of encounters in more than a dozen African towns. Iduma blends memoir, travelogue and storytelling in these fragments of a traveller’s journey across several African cities. Inspired by the author’s travels with photographers between 2011 and 2015, the author's own accounts are expanded to include other narratives about movement, estrangement, and intimacy. These include: an arrest in a market in N’djamena, being punished by a Gendarmes officer on a Cameroonian highway and meeting the famed photographer Malick Sidibe in Bamako.

A Stranger's Pose

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

Cassava Republic Press

A publication devoted to the British-Liberian artist to commemorate her first solo museum exhibition. Lina Iris Viktor's mixed media works reflect on the relationship between art, prophecy, and spiritual belief. Merging self-portraiture with opulent geometric backdrops, Viktor draws from a variety of influences such as ancient mythology, West and Central African tribal cosmologies, Aboriginal dream paintings, African textiles, astronomy and contemporary visual culture. Viktor's new series for the New Orleans Museum of Art looks to the history of the Republic of Liberia, from which her parents were forced to flee amidst civil war in the 1980s. Liberia, established in West Africa as an act of American "altruism" following the abolishment of the international slave trade, exists as a place of confusion for the artist and is presented as an uneasy utopia and a cautionary tale. The nation was founded in the early nineteenth century by the American Colonization Society, a private society that petitioned for the abolition of slavery as well as the resettlement of freed African Americans in West Africa. Extending Viktor's engagement with the entanglement of Liberia's founding to the history of slavery and abolitionism in the United States prior to the Civil War, this exhibition will also feature works that consider the history of slavery in the U.S. South as well as the complexity of New Orleans' own historical and cultural links to Africa.

Lina Iris Viktor: A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred

Individual Artists

Skira

Farad

Literary

Parresia Books

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