At thirty-nine, Deola Bello, a Nigerian expatriate in London, is dissatisfied with being single and working overseas. Deola works as a financial reviewer for an international charity, and when her job takes her back to Nigeria in time for her father’s five-year memorial service, she finds herself turning her scrutiny inward. In Nigeria, Deola encounters changes in her family and in the urban landscape of her home, and new acquaintances who offer unexpected possibilities. Deola’s journey is as much about evading others’ expectations to get to the heart of her frustration as it is about exposing the differences between foreign images of Africa and the realities of contemporary Nigerian life. Deola’s urgent, incisive voice captivates and guides us through the intricate layers and vivid scenes of a life lived across continents. With Sefi Atta’s characteristic boldness and vision, A Bit of Difference limns the complexities of our contemporary world. This is a novel not to be missed.

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When an American tourist named Mr Finecountry arrives in Wahala Land for a visit, he encounters a variety of people, including various public officials, a taxi driver, a prostitute, and armed robbers. He faces mishap after mishap as he runs up against the mismanagement and rot within the fabric of the country’s systems. Tourist in Wahala Land presents a political satire designed to cast literary light on the corrupt goings-on in the dysfunctional systems of most third world states. It also points out the roles developed societies play in contributing to the failures of these third world nations and seeks to expose the hypocrisy of some religious adherents who sneak into the red-light districts to partake in sexual activities at dusk while feigning chastity, sanctity, and sanctimony during the day. In all, this play reveals the near absence of justice and communal welfare in a failed society as everyone struggles for what they and their cronies alone can benefit from the corrupt system.

In Queens of Afrobeat, the women of Afrobeat music—a unique blend of jazz, soul, highlife, and West African rhythms—are finally given the recognition they deserve. This extensive study takes a multifaceted view of the storied lives of the women behind Fela Kuti's activist music. Dotun Ayobade's wide-ranging research pulls from interviews with surviving queens, ethnographic narratives, the exploration of newspaper archives, and close readings of album covers, photographs, and promotional materials to help us see and understand the women who surrounded Fela Kuti on stage and in everyday life. Not only were these artists crucial performers and backup singers for Kuti's most important compositions, they also played key roles in his activism and campaigns of social protest against the Nigerian government in the 1970s. Drawing on previously untapped material, Queens of Afrobeat weaves together an intricate narrative of women's participation in popular music. The stories of these remarkable women transform and uniquely personalize our understanding of the politics and performance of one of the major modern musical traditions in Africa.

An Estonian proverb says, “If the bread in the oven is a failure, you lose a week; if the harvest is a failure, you lose a year, but if a marriage is a failure, you lose a life. ‘For better for worse’ is a ubiquitous marriage vow expression. But the ultimate question is: does true love truly conquer all? Kelvin and Anne were a happily married couple – having fallen in love during their university days. Life was rosy and the colours of their rainbow shone ever brightly…until life threw them a number of curves that eventually bursts their bubble of happiness. Kelvin lost his writing job at a major publishing house as a result of his unyielding scruples – leaving Anne, a banker, to shoulder the family responsibilities, including caring for their young son. Pretty soon the financial strain became more than she could handle, as her moralist husband failed to secure another job. The emotional and psychological effects of their dire situation, slowly began to eat at the fabric of their union and eventually tore the once-loving couple apart. A demanding job, an overbearing superior, her perceived nonchalant attitude of Kelvin, towards their plight, and the lure of a luxurious life by another man, eventually compelled Anne to walk out of her marriage and into an illicit affair. But she soon learnt the reality of the adage: all that glitters isn’t gold. Meanwhile Kelvin, engulfed by ineffable feelings of rejection and abandonment found himself in a very dark place. Haunted by an unrelenting sense of failure, he spiraled into depression, prompting him to commit suicide… Limes and Lemonades is a powerful and poignant story about love, lust, power, and betrayal. Readers will definitely be thrilled from the very first page to the last sentence

Sparkling Glass is a thought-provoking tale about rape, survival, and justice. It is a story about Naomi, a young and beautiful girl from a village in Kogi State, Nigeria; who had great aspirations for the future. This emotive narrative is about how Naomi at the age of thirteen witnessed her friends being gang-raped by some hoodlums in her village. And sadly, as it turned out, at the age of seventeen, she became a victim of rape at the hands of a relative in Lagos. This literary piece is an impassioned account about how Naomi was abused and violated. And about how she was plagued by a deep sense of shame, debilitating guilt and utter insignificance. It describes the toll of the physical and psychological trauma of the abuse, how it eroded her self-esteem with each passing day, and resulted in her loathing life itself. It is a heartrending story of the voiceless sobs of the helpless and how they are expected to find a way to smile, amidst their pain, even as they sing the notes of woe.

Assembling Export Markets explores the new ‘frontier regions’ of the global fresh produce market that has emerged in Ghana over the past decade. Represents a major and empirically rich contribution to the emerging field of the social studies of economization and marketization Offers one of the first ethnographic accounts on the making of global commodity chains ‘from below’ Denaturalizes global markets by unpacking their local engagement, materially entangled construction, need for maintenance, and fragile character Offers a trans-disciplinary engagement with the construction and extension of market relations in two frontier regions of global capitalism Critically examines the opportunities and risks for firms and farms in Ghana entering global fresh produce markets

A quest of an undying soul Three men bargain to conquer poverty by taking a bold step into an uncertain future, a deal to work a good job with benefits and life-threatening risks. The story provides a way out of poverty for three desperate men. Fate has brought them two jobs. One at the oil rig another at an organiser criminal organisation that provides all the benefits of a good job but is attached to life-threatening risks. Both jobs are meant to shield them from poverty; however, the choices of men show which job puts them and the community in abject poverty. The storyline cuts across what every African community blessed (cursed) with black gold has to face. From the workers in the oil rig to the surrounding community. The black gold has cut rot deep into the hearts and land of its victims. A misconceived criminal organisation called the oil gangs takes a desperate risky measure to correct social injustice negatively affecting the sons of the land and their communities, but they never played it fair. Eloho, Mobo and Dafe take on the job with a misconceived criminal organisation, the oil gang. Let's see whether or not their lives change for the better as they strive for survival and escape the wrath of the law. Readers will be perused through themes like trust love, pain, sacrifice, man inhumanity to man dedication and more.

Institutional shareholder participation has long been considered as vital to good corporate governance yet its potential does not seem to have been realized. The recent banking crisis exposed the passivity of some institutional shareholders, many of whom appear to have chosen to sell their stakes in the banks rather than intervene or challenge the board when they realized the strategies followed by the banks were excessively risky. Institutional shareholders’ role to scrutinize and monitor the decisions of boards and executive management in the banking sector in the UK is considered by many to be a failure, resulting in the phenomenon of ‘ownerless corporations’, as described by Lord Myners. In China, despite the fast rising of institutional investment in the securities market, institutional shareholders have not yet played a contributory role in monitoring corporate managers in listed companies. Drawing on empirical evidence this book seeks to systematically analyses institutional shareholders’ incentives to activism to explain when and why shareholder activism will occur. The book puts forward a model which explains the factors that determine institutional shareholders’ propensity for activism. The model both elaborates the collective benefits of activism as a means of achieving managerial accountability asks whether and when shareholder activism is rational for any individual shareholder. The book then goes to on to apply these finding to both the UK and China in order to explain the varying levels of shareholder activism in each jurisdiction. The book is the first to take an in-depth look at institutional share-holder activism in China providing prescriptions to promote greater shareholder engagement and exploring the potential it holds for improving corporate governance in the region.