The Boko Haram Kidnappings & Islamic Militancy in Nigeria

The Chibok Girls

An urgent Penguin Special investigating the 2014 mass-kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls by the world's deadliest terrorists 
 
On 14th April 2014, 276 girls disappeared from a secondary school in northern Nigeria, kidnapped by the world's deadliest terror group. A tiny number have escaped back to their families but many remain missing. 
 
Reporting from inside the traumatised and blockaded community of Chibok, Helon Habila tracks down the survivors and the bereaved. Two years after the attack, he bears witness to their stories and to their grief. And moving from the personal to the political, he presents a comprehensive indictment of Boko Haram, tracing the circumstances of their ascent and the terrible fallout of their ongoing presence in Nigeria.

Publisher's description.  An urgent investigation of the infamous 2014 kidnapping of 276 girls from a school in Nigeria.  Reporting from inside the traumatised and blockaded community of Chibok, Helon Habila bears witness to this tragedy, interviewing grieving families and returning survivors, and presenting a comprehensive indictment of the terrorist crimes of Boko Haram.

Helon Habila is the author of Oil on Water, Measuring Time, Waiting for an Angel, andThe Chibok Girls. He is professor of creative writing at George Mason University and lives in Virginia with his wife and three children.

On 14th April 2014, 276 girls disappeared from a secondary school in northern Nigeria, kidnapped by the world's deadliest terror group. A tiny number have escaped back to their families but almost 200 remain missing. 
 
Reporting from inside the traumatised and blockaded community of Chibok, Helon Habila tracks down the survivors and the bereaved. Two years after the attack, he bears witness to their stories and to their grief. And moving from the personal to the political, he presents a comprehensive indictment of Boko Haram, tracing the circumstances of their ascent and the terrible fallout of their ongoing presence in Nigeria.

Oil on Water

Compassionate, emotive, masterly . . . draws on the tradition of the classic detective novel but also operates on a deeper, metaphorical and philosophical level

A lean, evocative novel - part thriller, part meditation on the deadly cost of the region's under-reported oil politics . . . a classic coming-of-age narrative

Powerful, accomplished . . . Oil on Water lays bare the real-life tragedy of the Niger delta, in which petrodollars warp human relationships as surely as leaking crude poisons birds and fish

Habila's writing has that combination of elegance and rattling-good-yarn that we associate with Conrad and Graham Greene . . . Terrific

Habila is a master at evoking the plight of characters who ask for little, and end up with even less . . . this is a book you can't put down

In a beautiful, almost cinematic style, Habila moves back and forth in time to tell a story swathed in the cynicism of modern global development and the mysteries of human longing

This is a powerful novel that is both creepy and engaging

From the desks of Nigeria's newsrooms, two journalists are recruited to find the kidnapped wife of a British oil engineer. Zaq, an infamous media hack, knows what's in store, but Rufus, a keen young journalist eager to get himself noticed, has no idea what he's let himself in for. Journeying into the oil-rich regions of the Niger Delta, where militants rule and the currency dealt in is the lives of hostages, Rufus soon finds himself acting as intermediary between editor, husband, captive and soldier. 
 
As they follow the trail of the missing woman, love for the 'story' becomes about much more than just uncovering her whereabouts, and instead becomes a mission to make sense of their own muddled lives. 
 
In a cruel twist of fate, Rufus finds himself taking on Zaq's role much more literally than he ever anticipated, and as the body count rises, and the environment burns, he learns that truth can often be a bitter pill to swallow.

Measuring Time

Nigeria's recent history is brought to vivid life in this acclaimed tale of twin brothers

In the small Nigerian village of Keti live Mamo and LaMamo, twin sons of a domineering father. When one day the boys try and escape the village, only LaMamo succeeds - and in time becomes a soldier well-versed in the ways of life and death. 
 
Mamo, too sickly to leave, remains in Keti finding solace in the arms of Zara while watching impotently as his detested father grows powerful and corrupt. Unable to wield a weapon, Mamo instead reaches for a pen and soon begins to write the true history of Keti and its people - all the time awaiting the return of his beloved brother, LaMamo ...

Waiting For an Angel

"A remarkable work of literature . . . at once brutal and tender, melancholy and funny. It has the authenticity of deep conviction" Jason Cowley, GUARDIAN

WAITING FOR AN ANGEL marks the debut of one of Africa's most promising new writers. 
 
Lomba is a young journalist living under military regime in Lagos, one of the most dangerous cities in the world. His mind is full of soul music and girls and thenovel he is writing. But his room-mate goes mad and is beaten up by soldiers, his first love is forced to marry a man she doesn't love, and his neighbours are planning a demo which is bound to incite riot and arrests. Lomba can no longer bury his head in the sand. He must write the truth about this reign of terror . . . 
 
WAITING FOR AN ANGEL captures the despair, the frenzy and the stubborn hope of a generation daring to speak out against one of the world's most oppressive regimes.

Helon Habila

Helon Habila's fourth novel has it all - intelligence, tragedy, poetry, love, intimacy, compassion and a serious, soulful, arms-wide engagement with one of the most acute human concerns of our age: the refugee crisis...

A wonderful gem. . . Heartbreaking but equally life-affirming tales that beautifully connect and intertwine, leaving us longing for more

Once I started reading Travellers, I couldn't stop. With power and control, it plunges the reader into a maze of lives that crisscross between Africa and Europe...The novel has all the weight of art with the sting of breaking news. It faces the urgent questions of our times and doesn't settle for easy answers...it is indeed Habila at his best.

Urgent, deeply empathetic, and resisting easy answers, TRAVELERS follows the interconnected lives of African immigrants and refugees in Europe and examines the meanings of freedom, diaspora and home. Habila is a masterful storyteller, and this novel a riveting testament to the power of fiction.

Describing worlds and convergences that are unforgettable, Helon Habila writes of individual lives - pulled apart by our wars, our failed states and our deepest fears - with insight and searing compassion

At once intimate and expansive, Travellers captivated me from the very first pages

a parable of our times and Habila tells it beautifully, shedding poignant light on the world of the dispossessed and the stateless.

Adroitly teasing out the rich quiddity of his characters' diverse journeys, he instead makes the simple yet valuable point that refugees' lives are as irreducibly complex as anyone else's.

A quietly haunting novel that captures the untethered, unreal nature of migrant and refugee existence.

Yarns of persecution, paranoia, even manslaughter, unspool across its patchwork pattern. Habila tells them with cunning, flair and a sleight-of-hand that lightens even the gloomiest scenes.

In an era of mass migration, Habila suggests, stories are a common ground, a means of making ourselves at home with our homelessness.

Modern Europe is a melting pot of migrating souls: among them a Nigerian American couple on a prestigious arts fellowship, a transgender film student seeking the freedom of authenticity, a Libyan doctor who lost his wife and child in the waters of the Mediterranean, and a Somalian shopkeeper trying to save his young daughter from forced marriage. And, though the divide between the self-chosen exiles and those who are forced to leave home may feel solid, in reality such boundaries are tenuous, shifting, and frighteningly soluble. 
 
Moving from a Berlin nightclub to a Sicilian refugee camp to the London apartment of a Malawian poet, Helon Habila evokes a rich mosaic of migrant experiences. And through his characters' interconnecting fates, he traces the extraordinary pilgrimages we all might make in pursuit of home.

Helon Habila

Praise for Travellers

Helon Habila's fourth novel has it all - intelligence, tragedy, poetry, love, intimacy, compassion and a serious, soulful, arms-wide engagement with one of the most acute human concerns of our age: the refuge ...

A wonderful gem. . . Heartbreaking but equally life-affirming tales that beautifully connect and intertwine, leaving us longing for more

Once I started reading Travellers, I couldn't stop. With power and control, it plunges the reader into a maze of lives that crisscross between Africa and Europe...The novel has all the weight of art with the ...

Helon Habila's fourth novel has it all - intelligence, tragedy, poetry, love, intimacy, compassion and a serious, soulful, arms-wide engagement with one of the most acute human concerns of our age: the refuge ...

A wonderful gem. . . Heartbreaking but equally life-affirming tales that beautifully connect and intertwine, leaving us longing for more

Once I started reading Travellers, I couldn't stop. With power and control, it plunges the reader into a maze of lives that crisscross between Africa and Europe...The novel has all the weight of art with the ...

Helon Habila's fourth novel has it all - intelligence, tragedy, poetry, love, intimacy, compassion and a serious, soulful, arms-wide engagement with one of the most acute human concerns of our age: the refuge ...

A wonderful gem. . . Heartbreaking but equally life-affirming tales that beautifully connect and intertwine, leaving us longing for more

Once I started reading Travellers, I couldn't stop. With power and control, it plunges the reader into a maze of lives that crisscross between Africa and Europe...The novel has all the weight of art with the ...

Books by Helon Habila

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