3 Nigerian Writers Short listed For Commonwealth Book Prize 2013!

3 Nigerian Writers Short listed For Commonwealth Book Prize 2013! 



Three Nigerian authors are among the 21 writers shortlisted for the 2013 highly coveted Commonwealth Book Prize and they are competing against five writers from Australia, five from India, three from the United Kingdom, two from Canada, one from Jamaica, one from South Africa and one from Sri Lanka

It is really a tough competition.



The three Nigerian writers are Ifeanyi Ajaegbo, Chibundu Onuzo and E.E. Sule.

The following are the titles of  their entries with the synopses.



Sarah House



 



  

Nita wakes up one night to discover herself in a dark world very
different from the life of opportunities promised to her by Slim, the
man she loved and trusted to take her away from the small island town of
Opobo, Nigeria. Soon she realises she is a slave, bought and sold
without her consent and forced into a life of prostitution and sleazy
strip clubs.


Every day Nita walks a tightrope of survival surrounded by vicious
pimps and thugs. She meets Tega, a fellow slave lured into prostitution
by Slim; she is sold to Madam, who runs Sarah House and makes money
from young girls and children; she finds favour with Chief, an
influential politician who provides protection for Madam’s illicit
business in human trafficking, and she must survive Lothar, a renegade
porn film maker. Life in this nightmare world gets more complicated when
Nita meets pretty, young Damka and is approached by a police detective
working undercover.

When Damka disappears and Nita discovers the child’s bloodied
clothes in a room in Sarah House, she knows she has to work with the
police in spite of the dangers to her own life.







 IFEANYI AJAEGBO is a development consultant and communications
practitioner who lives and works in Port Harcourt in Nigeria. His
writing has won awards and fellowships, including the 2005 African
regional prize for the Commonwealth Short Story Competition. Sarah House
is his first novel.





The Spider King’s Daughter



 




  

The Spider King’s Daughter’ is a modern-day Romeo and
Juliet set against the backdrop of a changing Lagos, a city torn between
tradition and modernity, corruption and truth, love and family loyalty.
Seventeen-year-old Abike Johnson is the favourite child of her wealthy
father. She lives in a sprawling mansion in Lagos, protected by armed
guards and ferried everywhere in a huge black jeep. But being her
father’s favourite comes with uncomfortable duties, and she is often
lonely behind the high walls of her house.


A world away from Abike’s mansion, in the city’s slums, lives a
seventeen-year-old hawker struggling to make sense of the world. His
family lost everything after his father’s death and now he runs after
cars on the roadside selling ice cream to support his mother and sister.

When Abike buys ice cream from the hawker one day, they strike up
an unlikely and tentative romance, defying the prejudices of Nigerian
society. But as they grow closer, revelations from the past threaten
their relationship and both Abike and the hawker must decide where their
loyalties lie.




  

CHIBUNDU ONUZO was born in Nigeria in 1991 and is the youngest
of four children. She is currently studying History at Kings College,
London. When not writing, Chibundu can be found playing the piano or
singing.



Sterile Sky



 



  



As the gifted young Murtala comes of age in Kano, violent riots and
his family’s own woes threaten to erase all he holds dear. Stalked by
monsters real and imagined, desperate to preserve a sense of self and
the future, Murtala hunts for answers in the wreckage of the city – and
gives us a unique insight into modern life in northern Nigeria.





 

E. E. SULE is the pen-name of Dr. Sule E. Egya who is an
associate professor in Department of English, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida
University, Lapai, Nigeria. Besides published academic work and essays,
Dr.Egya is the author of the short story collections Impotent Heavens and Dream and Shame, and the poetry volumes Naked Sun, Knifing Tongues and What the Sea Told Me. His poems, short stories, and critical work have appeared in numerous journals, anthologies and literary magazines. Sterile Sky is his first novel.







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