Reluctantly leaving America when his wife is given a prestigious fellowship in Berlin, a Nigerian grad student struggles with the suffering of the African refugees and immigrants he encounters in his new home.

"An impressive coming-of-age novel and a gripping investigation into the life of a mysterious author. A prolific novel and a true ode to literature in the vein of Roberto Bolaño's Savage Detectives, written by one of the most prominent figures in contemporary literature. In 2018, Diégane Latyr Faye, a young Senegalese writer, discovers a legendary book in Paris, published in 1938 and entitled Le labyrinthe de l'inhumain (The Maze of Inhumanity)....

In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation's history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo's firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave...

Unhappy with her name, a little girl tries to find the perfect name, but with help from Gogo, her grandmother, Kantiga learns about her identity and where she is from.

Sadiq's third grade class decides that they want a classroom pet, and their teacher, Ms. Battersby, is okay with the idea, so the students form a club to decide what kind of pet to get, and to research how to take care of it.

Eight-year-old Sadiq wants to try out for the youth football team like his friends, but his parents feel he is too young, and instead suggest that he take up running and join the track club--Sadiq feels that running is wimpy, but the coach convinces him that running races can be fun as well.

"Fleeing her moribund marriage in Cape Town, Beth accepts a diplomatic posting to Shanghai. In this anonymous city she hopes to lose herself in books, wine, and solitude, and to dodge whatever pangs of conscience she feels for her fealty to a South African regime that, by the 21st century, has betrayed its early promises. At night, she hears the sound of typing, and then late one evening Zhao arrives at her door. They explore hidden Shanghai and discover...