Towards the end of last year, I shared 14 new and exciting books that would be published in 2017. Since then, the cover for J J Bola's debut No Place to Call Home has been revealed, as well as Nnedi Okorafor's Akata Warrior, and there's also Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Dear Ijeawale.
Well, there are even more new releases - and here are 5 more. Honestly, I might need to make reading a full-time job.
January
A Thousand Tales of Johannesburg: A City Novel by Harry KalmerA spellbinding ode to Johannesburg and its people.
This is the story of Sara, who poses stiffly for a photo with her four children at Turfoontein concentration camp in 1901, and of Abraham, who paints the street names on Johannesburg's kerbs. It is the tale of their grandson Zweig, a young architect who has to leave Johannesburg when he falls in love with the wrong person, and of Marceline, a Congolese mother who flees to the city only to be caught up in a wave of xenophobic violence.
Spanning more than a hundred years, A Thousand Tales of Johannesburg is a novel that documents and probes the lives of the inhabitants of this incomparable African city - the exiled, those returning from exile, and those who never left.
March
After the Ceremonies: New and Selected Poems by Ama Ata Aidoo
Spanning three decades of work, the poems in this collection address themes of colonialism, independence, motherhood and gender in intimate, personal ways alongside commentary on broader social issues. After the Ceremonies is arranged in three parts: new and uncollected poems, some of which Aidoo calls 'misplaced or downright lost', selections from Aidoo's An Angry Letter in January and Other Poems; and selections from Someone Talking to Sometime.
It's 1970, and in the People's Republic of Congo a Marxist-Leninist revolution is ushering in a new age. But over at the orphanage on the outskirts of Pointe-Noire where young Moses has grown up, the revolution has only strengthened the reign of terror of Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako, the institution's corrupt director. So Moses escapes to Pointe-Noire, where he finds a home with a larcenous band of Congolese Merry Men and among the Zairian prostitutes of the Trois-Cents quarter. But the authorities won't leave Moses in peace, and intervene to chase both the Merry Men and the Trois-Cents girls out of town. All this injustice pushes poor Moses over the edge. Could he really be the Robin Hood of the Congo? Or is he just losing his marbles?Black Moses is a larger-than-life comic tale of a young man obsessed with helping the helpless in an unjust world. It is also a vital new extension of Mabanckou's extraordinary, interlinked body of work dedicated to his native Congo, and confirms his status as one of our great storytellers.
Desperate to make ends meet, Ombima commits a 'harmless' crime. When he tries to conceal his misdeed, the simple farm labourer becomes a reluctant participant in a sinister affair. If discovered, the consequences could be disastrous for Ombima's family, friends and a spate of unwitting, gossipy villagers.
A delicious tale of greed, lust and betrayal, Stanley Gazemba's Forbidden Fruit is more than a dramatic tale of rural life in western Kenya. The moral slips and desperate cover-ups - sometimes sad, sometimes farcical - are the stories of time and place beyond the village of Maragoli. Gazemba's novel, first published in Kenya as The Stone Hills of Maragoli (Kwani? 2010), won the prestigious Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature.
September
Beasts Made of Night by Tochi Onyebuchi
Packed with dark magic and thrilling action, Beasts Made of Night is a gritty Nigerian-influenced fantasy.
In the waled city of Kos, corrupt mages can magically call forth sin from a sinner in the form of sin-beasts - lethal creatures spawned from feelings of guilt.
Taj is the most talented of the aki, young sin-eaters indentured by the mages to slay the sin-beasts. But Taj's livelihood comes at a terrible cost. When he kills a sin-beast, a tattoo of the beasts appears on his skin while the guilt of committing the sin appears on his mind. Most aki are driven mad by the process, but 17-year-old Taj is cocky and desperate to provide for his family.
When Taj is called to eat a sin of a royal, he's suddenly thrust into the center of a dark conspiracy to destroy Kos. Now Taj might fight to save the princess that he loves - and his own life.
Debut author Tochi Onyebuchi delivers an unforgettable fantasy adventure that powerfully explores the true meaning of justice and guilt.
