In honour of the #whenweread campaign championed by Hilda Baci and Enioluwa, our editors have picked out six books from their threshold.
A mixture of both African and western literature. Growing up as an African child, we were indoctrinated with reading but while few found joy in it, others detested it. To encourage young people to read more, Eni and Hilda decided that they would be donating 5000 books to the public and we thought it best to give our own ideas on which books are best to be read immediately. So drop whatever you’re doing and go to your nearest bookstore because these books are Chef’s kiss.
Create some space on that bookshelf and take in our editors’ picks.
1. Half of a yellow sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Half of a Yellow Sun opens with Ugwu’s evolution from a village boy to a member of the educated elite. Odenigbo hires Ugwu as a servant and encourages the boy to pursue social mobility through education. As Ugwu becomes educated, he begins to admire the Nigerian intelligentsia.
Churchill befriends Odenigbo. The elite social circles of Nigeria dismiss Churchill’s interest in Nigeria as fetishistic. Odenigbo’s mother, a traditional village woman, arrives at Odenigbo’s home to denounce his relationship with Olanna. Amala, a village girl who later bears Odenigbo’s child, accompanies Odenigbo’s mother to Odenigbo’s home. Olanna abandons her plan to marry Mohammed because of her love for Odenigbo.
2. A thousand splendid suns by Khaled Hosseini
It is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives—the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness—are inextricable from the history playing out around them.
3. My sister, the serial killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
The book revolves around two sisters, Ayoola and Korede, and their complex relationship in Lagos, Nigeria. Ayoola is a stunning young woman who is notorious for killing her lovers and Korede is a nurse who always covers up Ayoola’s crimes.
4. The midnight library by Matt Haig
The book follows Nora Seed, a British woman in her mid-30s, who is deeply depressed. One night, she decides to commit suicide, but the overdose of sleeping pills sends her into a library between life and death.
5. Cinderella is dead by Kalynn Bayron
Cinderella Is Dead is a re-telling of the classic fairy-tale, Cinderella. Set in the town Mersailles, where every girl lives in fear of the day she is chosen by the King to attend the ball, it follows a girl who is determined to destroy the cruel rules she’s been forced to follow called Sophia.
6. Yinka, where is your husband by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn
Meet Yinka: a thirty-something, Oxford-educated, British Nigerian woman with a well-paid job, good friends, and a mother whose constant refrain is “Yinka, where is your huzband?”
Yinka’s Nigerian aunties frequently pray for her delivery from singledom, her work friends think she’s too traditional (she’s saving herself for marriage!), her girlfriends think she needs to get over her ex already, and the men in her life…well, that’s a whole other story. But Yinka herself has always believed that true love will find her when the time is right.
All these book summaries are the courtesy of google but as you enjoy each blurb, might as well also save them on your TBR (To be read) list.
Gracie Felix 
Amanda Jide