New fiction reads to take on your summer break

The summer break is approaching rapidly, and what better way to spend it than by having a good read in the sunshine. The African Library has compiled a selection of newly acquired novels to keep you entertained.

Necessary fiction/ Eloghosa Osunde.
London : 4th Estate, 2025. Across Lagos, a rolling cast of unforgettable characters seek out love in all its forms, daring to push all other relationships - with partners, family and friends - to the brink in the process. [From back cover]  

And then he sang a lullaby/ Ani Kayode Somtochukwu.
London : Grove Press UK, 2023. August is a God-fearing track star who has left home and the expectations of his overbearing sisters. In his first semester at Enugu State University, he can’t stop thinking about openly gay student Segun, who is clear that he only wants to be with a man who is comfortable in his own skin. August and Segun’s relationship defies the violence around them. But there is only so long Segun can stand being loved behind closed doors, and when a law is passed criminalising gay marriage, August and Segun’s love is tested like never before. [From back cover]

When we were fireflies/ Abubakar Adam Ibrahim.
Surulere, Lagos, Nigeria : Masobe, 2023. When brooding artist, Yarima Lalo, encounters a moving train for the first time, two serendipitous events occur. First, it triggers memories of past lives in which he was twice murdered - once on a train. He also meets Aziza, a woman with a complicated past of her own, who becomes key to helping him understand what he is experiencing. With a third death in his current life imminent, together they go hunting for remnants of his past lives. Will they find evidence that he is losing his mind, or the people who once loved or loathed him? [From back cover]

Vagabonds!/ Eloghosa Osunde.
New York : Riverhead Books, 2022. In the bustling streets and cloistered homes of Lagos, a cast of vivid characters - some haunted, some defiant - navigate danger, demons, and love in a quest to lead true lives. As in Nigeria, vagabonds are those whose existence is literally outlawed: the queer, the poor, the displaced, the footloose and rogue spirits. [Provided by publisher]

Little family/ Ishmael Beah.
New York : Riverhead Books, 2021. Hidden away from a harsh outside world, five young people have improvised a home in an abandoned airplane, a relic of their country's chaos. It seems as if the little family may be able to keep the world at bay and their household intact. But when one of them comes under the spell of the 'beautiful people' - the fortunate sons and daughters of the powerful - the desire to resume an interrupted coming of age and follow her own destiny proves impossible to resist. [From back cover]

Sankofa/ Chibundu Onuzo.
London, UK : Virago, 2021. Anna grew up in England with her white mother and knowing very little about her African father. In middle age, after separating from her husband and with her daughter all grown up, she finds herself alone and wondering who she really is. Her mother's death leads her to find her father's student diaries, chronicling his involvement in radical politics in 1970s London. She discovers that he later became the president - or dictator - of Bamana in West Africa, and is still alive. She decides to track him down, and so begins a fascinating journey, exploring race, identity and what we pass on to our children. [Provided by publisher]

Bird summons/ Leila Aboulela.
London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2020. Salma, Moni and Iman are embarking on a road trip to the highlands to pay homage to Lady Evelyn Cobbold, the first British woman convert to Islam to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca. The women are looking for more than a holiday. Each wants to escape her life; each wants an answer. On a remote hillside in Inverness, the women are visited by the Hoopoe, a sacred bird whose fables from Muslim and Celtic literature compel them to question the balance between faith and femininity, love, loyalty and sacrifice. [From author’s website]

The deep blue between/ Ayesha Harruna Attah.
London : Pushkin Press, 2020. Twin sisters Hassana and Husseina are torn apart after a brutal raid on their village. This tragedy will set them on a voyage to unfamiliar cities and cultures where they will forge new families, ward off dangers and begin to truly know themselves. As the twins pursue separate paths in Brazil and the Gold Coast of West Africa, they remain connected through their shared dreams. But will they ever manage to find each other again? [From back cover]

Flowers on the moon/ Billy Chapata.
Kansas City, Missouri : Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2020. Social media sensation Billy Chapata shares insight and advice into the powerful world of love, heartbreak, and what comes next. This collection of poetry and prose will justify heartache and inspire the fortitude to survive and prosper. [From publisher's website]

The girl with the louding voice : a novel/ Abi Daré.
[New York, N.Y.] : Dutton, 2020. Adunni, a fourteen-year-old Nigerian girl, knows what she wants: an education. This, her mother has told her, is the only way to get a louding voice - the ability to speak for herself and decide her own future. But instead, Adunni's father sells her to be the third wife of a local man. When Adunni runs away to the city, she ends up in  servitude to a wealthy family. But while misfortunes might muffle her voice for a time, they cannot mute it. And when she realizes that she must stand up not only for herself, but for other girls, she finds the resolve to speak, however she can, until she is heard [Provided by publisher]

David Mogo, godhunter/ Suyi Davies Okungbowa.
Osney Mead, Oxford, UK : Abaddon Books, 2019. Lagos will not be destroyed. The gods have fallen to earth in their thousands, and chaos reigns. Though broken and leaderless, the city endures. David Mogo, demigod and godhunter, has one task: capture two of the most powerful gods in the city and deliver them to the wizard gangster Lukmon Ajala. No problem, right? [From back cover]

Want to pick up one of these books? The African Library will stay open during the summer. Please check the adjusted summer schedule, in effect from 6 July to 30 August. Want to keep up-to-date? Check the literature section of our New Titles or subscribe to our alert service, indicating fiction/ novels and/or your countries of interest, to get personalised updates.

Germa Seuren