Kazuo Ishiguro achieved worldwide fame and recognition upon publication of his Booker prize winning novel, The Remains of the Day which was later made into an award-winning movie starring Anthony Hopkins. Since The Remains of the Day, Ishiguro has struggled,…
Me, Linda Ikeji and this OUR pregnancy – Toni Kan
The biggest news in the Nigerian blogosphere is Linda Ikeji’s pregnancy. Everybody and their mother is talking about it – how big her tummy is, how she managed to hide it, the Bentley-with-a-surname she just ordered and who the father…
Toni Kan’s ‘The Carnivorous City’ on CrimeReads’ best new crime novels list
Barely 24 hours after The Carnivorous City by Toni Kan made its American debut on May 15, the prestigious CrimeReads magazine has listed the book as one of the best crime novels around the world for May 2018. Consider this…
A measure of war
A review of Burma Boy by Biyi Bandele Farafina 212pp Of two abiding mysteries of war, the first is that men who have seen active combat seem to always recognise each other. When war veterans who have been at bloody…
Of coincidences, chance encounters, cause and effects
Review of Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins Ebury Press, Random House, London 2005 250pp What is America’s “Manifest Destiny”? How did goats eating refuse on the streets of Saudi Arabia give rise to the monster that is…
Yaba “Bend Down” Market saved my life – Toni Kan
One day in February 1992, my father came to see me in school. I was in my first semester at the University of Jos. It was a cold morning. Jos was still shrugging off the harmattan. I dashed out of…
Lagos and its benighted denizens
Review of Ayo Arigbabu’s A Fistful of Tales Dada Books 2009 140pp Ayo Arigbabu is one of those multi-hyphenates: architect, author, publisher and art administrator. The creative and administrative brain behind DADA books, Ayo’s second literary coming happened five years…
A new star burning incandescent in the literary firmament
Review of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower Farrar, Straus And Giroux 238pp 2009 The literary world is always on the lookout for the next bright writing star. They are always looking to canonise, to put forward a fresh…