Showing results by narrator "Ben Arogundade" in All Categories

On the Origin of Species is one of the most important and influential books of its time and remains one of the most significant contributions to philosophical and scientific thought. The theories Darwin sets out here had an immediate and profound impact on the literature and philosophical thought of his contemporaries and continue to provoke thought and debate today. Written for the general public of the 1850s, On the Origin of Species laid out an evolutionary view of the world which challenged contemporary beliefs about divine providence and the fixity of species.

Shigidi is a disgruntled and demotivated nightmare god in the Orisha spirit company, reluctantly answering prayers of his few remaining believers to maintain his existence long enough to find his next drink. When he meets Nneoma, a sort-of succubus with a long and secretive past, everything changes for him. Together, they attempt to break free of his obligations and the restrictions that have bound him to his godhood and navigate the parameters of their new relationship in the shadow of her past. But the elder gods that run the Orisha spirit company have other plans for Shigidi.

From the Hugo, Nebula, Locus and Nommo award nominated author of Shigidi and The Brass Head Of Obalufon comes a stunning new collection of stories that investigate the rapidly changing role of technology and belief in our lives as we search for meaning, for knowledge, for justice. The sixteen stories of Convergence Problems, which include work published for the first time in this collection, rare stories, and recently acclaimed work, showcase Talabi at his creative best: playful and profound, exciting and experimental, always interesting.

Among the defining figures of the Age of Revolution, Toussaint Louverture is the most enigmatic. Though the Haitian revolutionary’s image has multiplied across the globe—appearing on banknotes and in bronze, on T-shirts and in film—the only definitive portrait executed in his lifetime has been lost. Well versed in the work of everyone from Machiavelli to Rousseau, he was nonetheless dismissed by Thomas Jefferson as a “cannibal.” A Caribbean acolyte of the European Enlightenment, Toussaint nurtured a class of black Catholic clergymen who became one of the pillars of his rule.

The Haitian Revolution began in the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue with a slave revolt in August 1791 and culminated a dozen years later in the proclamation of the world's first independent Black state. After the abolition of slavery in 1793, Toussaint Louverture, himself a former slave, became the leader of the colony's Black population, the commander of its republican army and eventually its governor. Treacherously seized by Napoleon's invading army in 1802, he ended his days, in Wordsworth's phrase, 'the most unhappy man of men', imprisoned in a fortress in France.

Shigidi is a disgruntled and demotivated nightmare god in the Orisha spirit company, reluctantly answering prayers of his few remaining believers to maintain his existence long enough to find his next drink. When he meets Nneoma, a sort-of succubus with a long and secretive past, everything changes for him. Together, they attempt to break free of his obligations and the restrictions that have bound him to his godhood and navigate the parameters of their new relationship in the shadow of her past. But the elder gods that run the Orisha spirit company have other plans for Shigidi.

This outstanding collection brings together Orwell's longer, major essays and a fine selection of shorter pieces that includes 'My Country Right or Left', 'Decline of the English Murder', 'Shooting an Elephant' and 'A Hanging'. With great originality and wit Orwell unfolds his views on subjects ranging from a revaluation of Charles Dickens to the nature of socialism, from a comic yet profound discussion of naughty seaside postcards to a spirited defence of English cooking.

The entire town thinks 16-year-old Sadie Saunders is dead. Missing now for a week, they say she was murdered. And they think they know who did it. Sadie's five best friends aren’t so sure, and they vow to find out the truth. So they pack their bags and head into the woods where Sadie was last seen. But they’re not just friends, they’re suspects. And each of them has a secret. As the landscape opens up, and the darkness closes in, the reality of their situation becomes clear.... This was never really a search party. It’s a witch hunt. And not everyone will make it home alive.

Imagine if the transatlantic slave trade was reversed. Imagine Africans the masters and Europeans their slaves.... Now meet young Doris, living in a sleepy English cottage. One day she is kidnapped and put aboard a slave ship bound for the New World. On a strange tropical island, Doris is told she is an ugly, stupid savage. Her only purpose in life is to please her mistress. Then, as personal assistant to Bwana, Chief Kaga Konata Katamba I, she sees the horrors of the sugarcane fields. Slaves are worked to death under the blazing sun.

In a hard-boiled city of crooks, grifts and rackets lurk a pair of toughs: Box and _____. They're the kind of men capable of extracting apologies and reparations, of teaching you a chilling lesson. They seldom think twice and ask very few questions. Until one night over the poker table, they encounter a pulp writer with wild ideas and an unscrupulous private detective, leading them into what is either a classic mystery, a senseless maze of corpses or an inextricable fever dream....

Brought to you by Penguin. Sixteen-year-old Sadie Saunders is missing. Five friends set out into the woods to find her. But they're not just friends.... They're suspects. You see, this was never a search party. It's a witch hunt. And not everyone will make it home alive.

In his ground-breaking book, Gary Younge argues that we have recoiled into refuges of race or class, religion or national identity to survive in a state seemingly indifferent to our lives. Ranging from his Stevenage childhood to present day America, from the borders of Europe to division in South Africa, Younge explores the issues that bind the powerful elite and the poor immigrant, the fundamentalist and the conservative.

About to make his last stand, a soldier facing certain death at the hands of the enemy writes home to his love to explain how he ended up there. The Officer in the story has no name nor is his nation specified. While out for a walk, he stumbles upon officers enjoying a military barbecue and is persuaded to join them. He enjoys the comradeship of the event and is quickly seduced by the smart, tailored military uniform he is later fitted with, by the power bestowed upon it, by the respect commanded by it.

Content Warning: Everything concerns itself with the fugitive nature of being in the world especially, but not exclusively, within blackness. The poems reshape possibilities for poetry by paying close attention to the author's rhythm of thought, making a series of durable anthems from the noise of the contemporary moment.