AkooBooks Audio: African Writers / Nigeria

Stolen Girls

Survivors of Boko Haram Tell Their Story

By: Wolfgang Bauer
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 5 hours

One night in April 2014, members of the terrorist organization Boko Haram raided the small town of Chibok in northeast Nigeria and abducted 276 young girls from the local boarding school. The event caused massive, international outrage. Using the hashtag "Bring Back Our Girls," politicians, activists, and celebrities from all around the... Read more

In Dependence

By: Sarah Ladipo Manyika
Narrated by: Sarah Ladipo Manyika
Length: 8 hours 3 minutes

In the early sixties, Tayo Ajayi sails to England from Nigeria to take up a scholarship at Oxford University. There he discovers a whole generation high on visions of a new and better world. He meets Vanessa Richardson, the beautiful daughter of a former colonial officer. Their story, which spans four decades, is a bittersweet tale of a... Read more

Welcome to Lagos

A Novel

By: Chibundu Onuzo
Narrated by: Robin Miles
Length: 9 hours 23 minutes

When army officer Chike Ameobi is ordered to kill innocent civilians, he knows it is time to desert his post. As he travels toward Lagos with Yemi, his junior officer, and into the heart of a political scandal involving Nigeria's education minister, Chike becomes the leader of a new platoon, a band of runaways who share his desire for a... Read more

GraceLand

By: Chris Abani
Narrated by: Chris Abani
Length: 12 hours 30 minutes

The Elvis Oke of Chris Abani's novel is a child left to fend for himself in the urban jungle of Lagos, Nigeria. He has a talent for Elvis impersonations (hence the name) and wants to make it big so he can escape his violent and tumultuous life. In a place where angels fear to tread and only fools rush in, Elvis searches for redemption and a... Read more

And After Many Days

A Novel

By: Jowhor Ile
Narrated by: Chukwudi Iwuji
Length: 7 hours 25 minutes

An unforgettable debut novel about a boy who goes missing, a family that is torn apart, and a nation on the brink

     During the rainy season of 1995, in the bustling town of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, one family's life is disrupted by the sudden disappearance of seventeen-year-old Paul Utu, beloved brother and son. As they grapple with the sudden... Read more

Freshwater

By: Akwaeke Emezi
Narrated by: Akwaeke Emezi
Length: 6 hours 42 minutes

An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born "with one foot on the other side." Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of... Read more

Pet

By: Akwaeke Emezi
Narrated by: Christopher Myers
Length: 5 hours 32 minutes

National Book Award Finalist

Stonewall Book Award Winner

"[A] beautiful, genre-expanding debut...Pet is a nesting doll of creative possibilities." (The New York Times)

The award-winning, genre-defying novel by the New York Times best-selling author of The Death of Vivek Oji that explores themes of identity and justice and asks: How do you share the... Read more

The Death of Vivek Oji

A Novel

By: Akwaeke Emezi
Narrated by: Yetide Badaki & Chukwudi Iwuji
Length: 7 hours 38 minutes

“I am fairly new to audiobooks because I've found myself to be incredibly picky when it comes to narration. That being said, I couldn't have picked a better book to listen to. Not only is this a beautiful and important story, but the narrators are nothing short of brilliant. I still think about this one often and highly recommend! Read more

Born on a Tuesday

By: Elnathan John
Narrated by: Corey Allen
Length: 7 hours 41 minutes

From two-time Caine Prize finalist Elnathan John, a dynamic young voice from Nigeria, Born on a Tuesday is a stirring, starkly rendered first novel about a young boy struggling to find his place in a society that is fracturing along religious and political lines.
In far northwestern Nigeria, Dantala lives among a gang of street boys who sleep... Read more

Becoming Nigerian

A Guide

By: Elnathan John
Narrated by: Elnathan John
Length: 3 hours 59 minutes

In Be(com)ing Nigerian: A Guide, Elnathan John provides an affecting, unrestrained and satirical guide to the Nigerians you will meet at home and abroad, or on your way to hell and to heaven. It is a searing look at how power is performed, negotiated and abused in private and in public; in politics, business, religious institutions and in... Read more

Boy, Snow, Bird

By: Helen Oyeyemi
Narrated by: Susan Bennett & Carra Patterson
Length: 9 hours 19 minutes

From the prizewinning author of Mr. Fox , the Snow White fairy tale brilliantly recast as a story of family secrets, race, beauty, and vanity. In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty-- the opposite of the life she' s left behind in New York. She marries a local... Read more

Mr. Fox

A Novel

By: Helen Oyeyemi
Narrated by: Carole Boyd
Length: 8 hours 15 minutes

Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding, and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It is not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold... Read more

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

By: Helen Oyeyemi
Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon, Piter Marek & Bahni Turpin
Length: 7 hours 42 minutes

From the award-winning author of Boy, Snow, Bird and Mr. Fox comes an enchanting collection of intertwined stories. Playful, ambitious, and exquisitely imagined, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is cleverly built around the idea of keys, literal and metaphorical. The key to a house, the key to a heart, the key to a secret-Oyeyemi's keys not only... Read more

Gingerbread

A Novel

By: Helen Oyeyemi
Narrated by: Helen Oyeyemi
Length: 7 hours 28 minutes

“To me, any new book by Helen Oyeyemi is a cause for celebration, and Gingerbread is no exception. Harriet Lee is a mother, a daughter, a PTA-wannabe, a tutor, and a gingerbread baker. She is also Druhastranian—a refugee from a country that may (or may not) exist. No one is quite sure where Druhastana is or how to get there, but Harriet’s... Read more

What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky

Stories

By: Lesley Nneka Arimah
Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
Length: 5 hours 19 minutes

“Intense, haunting, and exquisitely rendered, the stories in Lesley Nneka Arimah's debut collection exist in a category of their own. They are individual worlds linked together by familiar themes - self-discovery, yearnings to love and be loved, generational divides, and the meanings of home and place - refashioned in a fresh, new light. Arimah... Read more

The Girl with the Louding Voice

A Novel

By: Abi Daré
Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
Length: 12 hours 6 minutes

“This year is overflowing with phenomenal debuts — including this one from Abi Daré. It tells the story of Adunni, a young girl in Nigeria whose dreams and ambition focus in on one thing: education. In a city where girls like her are looked down upon and considered unworthy, she comes to find that change can begin with even the smallest of... Read more

Stay with Me

A novel

By: Ayobami Adebayo
Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
Length: 7 hours 59 minutes

A New York Times Notable Book
The New York Times’ Critics’ Top Books of the Year
Named a Best Book of the Year by San Francisco Chronicle, National Public Radio, The Economist, Buzzfeed, Paste Magazine, Southern Living, HelloGiggles, and Shelf Awareness
Huffington Post’s Best Feminist Books of the Year
The New York Post’s Most Thrilling and... Read more

Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree

By: Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani & Viviana Mazza
Narrated by: Robin Miles
Length: 5 hours 57 minutes

Based on interviews with young women who were kidnapped by Boko Haram, this poignant novel by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani tells the timely story of one girl who was taken from her home in Nigeria and her harrowing fight for survival. Includes an afterword by award-winning journalist Viviana Mazza. A new pair of shoes, a university degree, a... Read more

Prayer For The Living

By: Ben Okri
Narrated by: Ben Okri
Length: 4 hours 40 minutes

Topical and timely, Booker Prize-winning author Ben Okri's new collection of short stories blur parallel realities and walk the line between darkness and magic.
Is what you see all there is? Look again. Playful, frightening, even shocking – the stories in this collection blur the lines between illusion and reality. This is a writer at the height... Read more

The Freedom Artist

By: Ben Okri
Narrated by: Ben Okri
Length: 6 hours 51 minutes

In a world uncomfortably like our own, a young woman called Amalantis is arrested for asking a question. Her question is this: Who is the Prisoner?

When Amalantis disappears, her lover Karnak goes looking for her. He searches desperately at first, then with a growing realization that to find Amalantis, he must first understand the meaning of... Read more