Free Ebook Love Is Power, or Something Like That: Stories, by A. Igoni Barrett
To obtain this book Love Is Power, Or Something Like That: Stories, By A. Igoni Barrett, you may not be so confused. This is on-line book Love Is Power, Or Something Like That: Stories, By A. Igoni Barrett that can be taken its soft file. It is different with the on the internet book Love Is Power, Or Something Like That: Stories, By A. Igoni Barrett where you can buy a book and afterwards the vendor will certainly send out the published book for you. This is the location where you can get this Love Is Power, Or Something Like That: Stories, By A. Igoni Barrett by online and after having handle buying, you can download and install Love Is Power, Or Something Like That: Stories, By A. Igoni Barrett on your own.
Love Is Power, or Something Like That: Stories, by A. Igoni Barrett
Free Ebook Love Is Power, or Something Like That: Stories, by A. Igoni Barrett
Love Is Power, Or Something Like That: Stories, By A. Igoni Barrett Just how a simple suggestion by reading can enhance you to be an effective individual? Reading Love Is Power, Or Something Like That: Stories, By A. Igoni Barrett is a quite easy activity. Yet, exactly how can many people be so careless to review? They will certainly like to spend their leisure time to talking or socializing. When in fact, reading Love Is Power, Or Something Like That: Stories, By A. Igoni Barrett will give you much more possibilities to be effective completed with the hard works.
The benefits to consider reading the publications Love Is Power, Or Something Like That: Stories, By A. Igoni Barrett are coming to boost your life top quality. The life top quality will not simply concerning the amount of knowledge you will obtain. Also you read the enjoyable or entertaining books, it will certainly help you to have improving life quality. Feeling fun will certainly lead you to do something perfectly. Furthermore, the e-book Love Is Power, Or Something Like That: Stories, By A. Igoni Barrett will certainly provide you the session to take as a good factor to do something. You might not be pointless when reading this publication Love Is Power, Or Something Like That: Stories, By A. Igoni Barrett
Don't bother if you do not have enough time to head to the publication store as well as hunt for the favourite publication to read. Nowadays, the online publication Love Is Power, Or Something Like That: Stories, By A. Igoni Barrett is involving give convenience of reviewing routine. You could not should go outdoors to look the book Love Is Power, Or Something Like That: Stories, By A. Igoni Barrett Searching as well as downloading and install guide qualify Love Is Power, Or Something Like That: Stories, By A. Igoni Barrett in this short article will offer you better remedy. Yeah, online publication Love Is Power, Or Something Like That: Stories, By A. Igoni Barrett is a kind of electronic e-book that you can enter the web link download offered.
Why ought to be this on the internet publication Love Is Power, Or Something Like That: Stories, By A. Igoni Barrett You could not have to go someplace to review the e-books. You can read this e-book Love Is Power, Or Something Like That: Stories, By A. Igoni Barrett each time and also every where you desire. Also it is in our downtime or feeling bored of the jobs in the workplace, this is right for you. Get this Love Is Power, Or Something Like That: Stories, By A. Igoni Barrett right now as well as be the quickest individual which completes reading this publication Love Is Power, Or Something Like That: Stories, By A. Igoni Barrett
Vivid, powerful stories of contemporary Nigeria, from a talented young author
* An NPR, Flavorwire, and Largehearted Boy Best Book of the Year * One of the Millions's Most Anticipated Books of 2013 *
When it comes to love, things are not always what they seem. In contemporary Lagos, a young boy may pose as a woman online, and a maid may be suspected of sleeping with her employer and yet still become a young wife's confidante. Men and women can be objects of fantasy, the subject of beery soliloquies. They can be trophies or status symbols. Or they can be overwhelming in their need.
In the wide-ranging stories in Love Is Power, or Something Like That, A. Igoni Barrett roams the streets with people from all stations of life. A man with acute halitosis navigates the chaos of the Lagos bus system. A minor policeman, full of the authority and corruption of his uniform, beats his wife. A family's fortunes fall from love and wealth to infidelity and poverty as poor choices unfurl over three generations. With humor and tenderness, Barrett introduces us to an utterly modern Nigeria, where desire is a means to an end, and love is a power as real as money.
- Sales Rank: #398139 in Books
- Published on: 2013-05-07
- Released on: 2013-05-07
- Ingredients: Example Ingredients
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.21" h x .62" w x 5.73" l, .62 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 176 pages
From Booklist
Barrett’s confident debut short story collection offers vibrant tales of modern-day Nigeria. In Dream Chaser, a bright 15-year-old skips school to pursue his fortunes and schemes at a cyber caf�, where, posing as a twentysomething Liberian woman, he strings along an elderly American. The wry My Smelling Mouth Problem follows a young man whose halitosis indirectly reveals the paradox of Lagos’ public transportation. In the title story, a corrupt policeman is both compelled and appalled by his intuitive and stubborn desire for power as he blurs the lines between his compulsions toward work and family. The affecting Godspeed and Perpetua follows the rocky marriage of a bureaucrat and his wife. Though the two marry as strangers, their love slowly grows until the birth of their daughter, Daujo. As Daujo grows up, she favors Godspeed over Perpetua, leading to a chaotic relationship that ebbs and flows along with the conflicts of their country. Barrett’s varied characters provide nuanced perspectives on love and kinship amid the chaos and reality of everyday life. --Leah Strauss
Review
“[Love Is Power, or Something Like That] is so much more than its lyrical language, delicious detail and author's love of English. . . . His prose may shock and startle; but with anguish, violence and cruelty comes compassion. Barrett artfully captures humanity in these nine tales. . . . A scrumptious read.” ―NPR, "Best Books of 2013"
“Thoroughly lively. . . . Barrett's stories don't deliver pretty truths. The contemporary globalized culture of every day Africa he gives us . . . [is] utterly convincing.” ―Alan Cheuse, NPR, All Things Considered
“[Love Is Power, or Something Like That] pulses with an indomitable life force that is, by turns, tender and fierce. . . . [Barrett] captures lives full of yearning, striving, setbacks, and moments of joy. He's a compassionate if unflinching writer.” ―Jan Gardner, The Boston Globe
“A nervy and engrossing collection. . . . Barrett has a distinctive voice and vividly captures the restless energy of Lagos, one of the world�s fastest-growing cities.” ―Chicago Tribune
“The violent, furtive and tender lives Barrett follows in this story collection provide moments of empathy amid wrenching drama and subtle comedy. . . . The resulting collection satisfies on numerous levels.” ―Time Out New York
“Barrett's powerful collection brings you tumbling around contemporary Nigeria and the minds of the many characters within. Chaotic and compassionate without being sentimental, Barrett's stories cut deep, and then linger there chatting.” ―Flavorwire, "10 New Must Reads for May"
“The nine short stories in A. Igoni Barrett's important Love Is Power, or Something Like That are excellent. . . . [Barrett] has a way of transforming suffering, and its handmaiden abjection, into a thorny kind of power.” ―Bookslut
“Love, life, revenge, survival, and compassion all figure in this bighearted, daring collection of stories from a gifted Nigerian writer. . . . Barrett shares as much with Raymond Carver or Amy Hempel as Chinua Achebe. . . . Electrifying tales of vibrant urban nights and acrid, desperate days.” ―Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“While most of the nine stories in [Love Is Power, or Something Like That] have Nigeria as their backdrop, the emotional turbulence they capture should strike any reader as universal.” ―Publishers Weekly
“Barrett's confident debut . . . offers vibrant tales of modern-day Nigeria. . . . [His] varied characters provide nuanced perspectives on love and kinship amid the chaos and reality of everyday life.” ―Booklist
“Love Is Power, or Something Like That crackles with the chaotic energy of modern Nigeria.” ―Roxane Gay, The Outlet: the Blog of Electric Literature
“Barrett's artful, unsparing, and unsentimental stories confirm the arrival of a major talent. The reader is plunged right into the dangerous and exciting heart of contemporary Nigerian life, and would rather be nowhere else.” ―Teju Cole, author of Open City
“Brilliant, unforgettable, violent, compassionate. The range of people Barrett makes us care about takes the breath away: wife-beaters, rapists, drop-drunk mothers, yearning evangelicals, coddled international businessmen, depressed policemen wielding cow-legs against the innocent. Whole lives contain less relentless, exquisite detail than this.” ―Carolyn Cooke, author of Daughters of the Revolution
“A beautiful writer. In this collection A. Igoni Barrett captures both the quotidian and the elevated with a gaze that is as relentless as it is sympathetic. Here's a writer to watch.” ―Helon Habila, author of Oil on Water
“Here is a singular voice in African writing: urbane, unapologetic, as harsh as the truth, as tender as love, an old subject that A. Igoni Barrett refreshes by beaming the searing and precise light of his language into the darkest corners of its territory. A masterful accomplishment.” ―Doreen Baingana, author of Tropical Fish
“A. Igoni Barrett has a big heart. His portrait of modern-day Nigeria, like the country itself, is a bewitching juxtaposition of the grotesque and uplifting, rotten and humane. He makes us wince in sympathy for his characters, struggling to give their lives meaning in the toughest of cities, even while--in many of these stories--we fervently hope never to cross paths with them.” ―Michela Wrong, author of It's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower
“Love Is Power, or Something Like That left me in tears. A. Igoni Barrett is the most exciting writer producing right now. He has an incredible range, a unique voice, and has the power, the move.” ―Binyavanga Wainaina, author of One Day I Will Write About This Place
About the Author
A. Igoni Barrett is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short-story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. He lives in Nigeria.
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Life in Lagos is not for the weak of stomach
By Patrican
These nine stories are first-class straight-up storytelling, without any of the precious contrivances (metafictional doppelgangers, advertisements for myself) that pass for stories in recent fiction. And what stories these are! Barrett uses different voices, different perspectives, and very different social settings; each story is distinctly its own. In so many collections today the stories all sound repetitiously similar, but not here. Each of Barrett's stories is a tight, complete whole, and works on several levels simultaneously. Not one of these stories sags or drags in the middle. Each one flooded my imagination, to the extent that I could not just continue on reading the next story, as I usually do with story collections. This is an amazing book.
All except one of the stories are set in Nigeria's urban centers, Lagos mostly. (The last story, a first-person fantasy romp set in Nairobi, is jarringly out of joint with the first eight. It's disappointing, more suitable for a barbershop magazine than for this collection.) Barrett develops both character and incident. He is adept at presenting dialogue in the dialect of Nigerian English: it adds flavor and reinforces the very particular place and culture, without being too difficult to comprehend.
Unlike many authors, Barrett does not insert scenes of violence just to spice up his narrative. But, urban life in Nigeria seems to have a casual savage brutality stitched throughout its social fabric. Some of it is driven by tribal divisions, but overall it seems to be widely generalized. Society's protectors, the police and the army, regularly practice the same lawless brutality, often just for personal profit and entertainment. Although several of Barrett's stories do include scenes of rape and violence, they seem wholly consistent with today's ongoing news reports of butchery and rape in Nigeria. Barrett does not dwell on these scenes, or exploit them, but they are there, just part of everyday life.
While violence is stitched throughout the social fabric, the warp and woof of the fabric are the bonds within the extended family and the marriage bonds between families. These bonds are tender, fragile, and sprout in unexpected places and ways. In a couple of stories, older solitary women, grandmothers, provide what help and sanctuary they can. In one story a child continues to do what he can for his mother, despite her degradation. In another, a married couple discovers that they are vitally important to one another. These are not sappy stories. The bonds that hold things together are quietly under the surface, almost unnoticed. In subtle ways Barrett's stories tell the strengths and weaknesses of the vying forces, the violent ones tearing society apart and the quiet ones holding it together. His title qualifier, "Or Something Like That," may be a cautious hope that the family bonds will be resilient and strong enough to outlast, overcome, the current condition of life in Hobbes' Nigeria: nasty, brutish, and short.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Short Stories That Set A Tingle Down My Spine
By Jill I. Shtulman
Love is Power, or Something Like That hopefully heralds what I hope will be the breakthrough of a very talented writer. I read each of the nine stories with mounting excitement. There is not one false note or one less-than-sterling story in the bunch.
The theme is loosely about love ("Love means you make me happy until you don't) but nothing even close to romance drives the stories. Rather, each is a furtive look into the flawed lives of damaged characters living in modern-day Nigeria...and focuses on the sometimes tragic, sometimes comedic, sometimes poignant, and sometimes misguided condition of the human heart.
In the eponymous story, a seething policeman - overinflated with a love of authority - becomes a tyrant when he dons his uniform, even to his wife. Yet Mr. Barrett does not indulge in one-dimensional characterizations: Eghobamien Adrawus is not only an abusive, ethically-compromised tyrant, he is also a loving father who craves the nurturing that his wife provides.
In another, Godspeed and Perpetua, Mr. Barrett autopsies the painfully slow unraveling of an arranged marriage between a Nigerian civil servant and his much younger and beautiful trophy wife. Mr. Barrett meticulously delineates the shifts between husband and wife and the power plays created by the unequal love of their daughter.
The Shape of a Full Circle, one of my favorites, introduces young teenager Dimi Abrakasa, who loses the family money that is meant to go towards food. The love/hate relationship he has with his alcoholic mother is beautifully rendered; when his mother has what she needs, she strikes out at him. Take these lines: "Her gaze was reptilian in its steadiness, and his eyes, luminous from despair, were the shape of a full circle. When Daoju Anabraba, s smile playing on her chapped lips, uttered the words, "I hate your eyes, my son," he slapped her."
Filled with betrayal, dejection and hope and cackling with energy and confidence, this wonderful collection renews my faith in the future of short stories. Ignoni Barrett can proudly take his place next to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and other celebrated contemporary Nigerian writers through his skillful renderings.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
hope, struggle, strength, power, life and love...
By Acacia Croft
An amazing read! The literary elements of this book cross cultures, challenge gender roles, explore inter and intra africaness, and prove that love is power. The reader is transported to Nigeria over approximately 50 year period. As an african-american who recently came to live in Nigeria, I began to question why I was ever labeled an " African" american. This book brings comfort to a sometimes uncomfortable circumstance. Reflects historical roots in contemporary context, and surpasses every negative notion about Nigeria. It is reality. The Nigerian culture is authentic and captivating. You will not be able to put this book down and you will not be disappointed. Having the chance to meet the author you can see that he is as authentic as his work. If you embrace an africanness in you, this is a must read. If you are interested in Nigerian cultural, society, norms and customs this is an adequate reflection of who the people are and how they live. Buy one to keep and one to give away! You will laugh, cry, and sometimes sigh.
See all 10 customer reviews...
Love Is Power, or Something Like That: Stories, by A. Igoni Barrett PDF
Love Is Power, or Something Like That: Stories, by A. Igoni Barrett EPub
Love Is Power, or Something Like That: Stories, by A. Igoni Barrett Doc
Love Is Power, or Something Like That: Stories, by A. Igoni Barrett iBooks
Love Is Power, or Something Like That: Stories, by A. Igoni Barrett rtf
Love Is Power, or Something Like That: Stories, by A. Igoni Barrett Mobipocket
Love Is Power, or Something Like That: Stories, by A. Igoni Barrett Kindle
Love Is Power, or Something Like That: Stories, by A. Igoni Barrett PDF
Love Is Power, or Something Like That: Stories, by A. Igoni Barrett PDF
Love Is Power, or Something Like That: Stories, by A. Igoni Barrett PDF
Love Is Power, or Something Like That: Stories, by A. Igoni Barrett PDF
