Farafina’s edition of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s third book The Thing Around Your Neck is out now. Ms Adichie will appear at the Silverbird Lifestyle Store at the Silverbird Galleria next Saturday, July 11th, at 4pm for a book-reading.
Please join us to welcome one our most talented writers and a genuine role model as she presents The Thing Around Your Neck.
The “9 Writers, 4 Cities” book tour will return to Lagos for the final reading on the 6th of June, 2009. The 6-week tour has seen the collective of Nigerian writers travel to Lagos, Warri, Benin and Ibadan.
The book tour opened with a party at the African Artists’ Foundation in Lagos, then moved on to Cambridge House in Ibadan where Christopher Okigbo was said to have hosted parties for such literary luminaries as J. P. Clarke, Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka. The writers returned to Lagos one week later for the third reading, where they drew crowds at The Palms shopping mall. Then it was on to the city of Benin, where they put literature on the centre stage in a nightclub dancehall. This was followed one week later by a visit to the heart of the Niger Delta, as they dared the booming guns in Warri to accept the hearty welcome of Professor G. G. Darah and the US-based poet, novelist and academic, Tanure Ojaide.
The grand finale of the book tour will hold at 2 to 5 pm on Saturday the 6th of June at the same venue where it began exactly six weeks ago: the African Artists’ Foundation,54 Raymond Njoku Street, Ikoyi. The nine writers—Jumoke Verissimo, Toni Kan, A. Igoni Barrett, Eghosa Imasuen, Abimbola Adunni Adelakun, Tade Ipadeola, Odia Ofeimun, Lindsay Barrett and Joy Isi Bewaji—will relive the tour experience while reading fresh excerpts from their books and interacting with the public. Autographed copies of the nine writers’ books will be available for purchase.
For further information call 07061141232 or email auggustmedia@gmail.com
The first reading at the African Artist's Foundation
The Ibadan reading
The Book Tour in Benin
The Book Tour at The Palms, Lagos
The Warri reading
Warri-Effurun Welcomes the “9 Writers, 4 Cities Book Tour”
The Udje Heritage Centre welcomes the laureates of “9 Writers, 4 Cities: The Book Tour” to the made-for-poetry twin oil cities of Warri-Effurun. We welcome you with song in our throats, drumbeats in our feet, and rhythm in our veins. As we gather to enchant ourselves with images and sounds of merriment, we recall that the thunder and booms of guns and strife have just died down in some parts of our oil-rich mangroves and waterways.
The happy tidings is that Delta State—nay Nigeria—has chosen to walk away from another path of thunder as Christopher Okigbo would have chronicled the experience in verse. That is why we joyfully welcome the healing balms of literature and laughter that this occasion will foster. Ben Okri anticipated this moment years ago when he serenaded:
We are the miracles that God made
To taste the bitter fruit of Time
We are precious.
And one day our suffering
Will turn into the wonders of the earth.
(from An African Elegy)
Welcome to Warri-Effurun, to the labyrinths of the Delta, to the big heart of the nation, to the Niger Delta, the economic locomotive of Nigeria!
Being an excerpt from a paper presented at the Warri reading of “9 Writers, 4 Cities: The Book Tour” by Professor G. G. Darah on behalf of the Udje Heritage Centre
For the love of literature
G.G. Darah and Mrs Imasuen
Standing Tall
Tanure Ojaide and Jumoke Verissimo
The Audience
The Book Tour arrives Warri
The Venue
The Writers
Udje dancers opening the event
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