Book Cover Image of In Dependence by Sarah Ladipo Manyika

In Dependence
by Sarah Ladipo Manyika

    Publication Date: Oct 01, 2019
    List Price: $15.95
    Format: Paperback, 288 pages
    Classification: Nonfiction
    ISBN13: 9781911115779
    Imprint: Cassava Republic Press
    Publisher: Cassava Republic Press
    Parent Company: Cassava Republic Press

    Paperback Description:

    • Over 3 million copies sold
    • Spanning four decades, the novel covers the upheavals of the era, from independence in Nigeria, to the Civil Rights movement in the US and the cultural and sexual revolutions all over the world.
    • Sarah has been shortlisted for the Goldsmith’s Prize and the California Book Awards for her novel Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun

    It is the early 1960s when a young Tayo Ajayi sails to England from Nigeria to take up a scholarship at Oxford University. In the city of dreaming spires, he finds himself among a generation high on visions of a new and better world. The whole world seems ablaze with change: independence at home, the first tremors of cultural and sexual revolutions. It is then that Tayo meets Vanessa Richardson, the beautiful daughter of an ex-colonial officer. In Dependence is Tayo and Vanessa’s story of a brave but bittersweet love affair. It is the story of two people struggling to find themselves and each other, a story of passion and idealism, courage and betrayal, and the universal desire to fall, madly, deeply, in love.

    In Dependence Book Cover 2011First published in Nigeria in 2009 where In Dependence has sold over 3 million copies, it is now assigned reading in territories including the US and Zimbabwe. Ladipo Manyika wrote this in the absence of finding a satisfactory love story in the canon of African classics: “When I cannot find stories that I’d like to read, I try writing them for myself.”

    Ten years later, this is a book for right now, relevant not simply as it relates to mixed race couples and race relations in general; it also speaks to the broader global preoccupations and concerns around migration. In today’s world with increasing mistrust of “the other” — be it across national borders or within nations where racial, social and ethnic tensions continue to divide, In Dependence remains timely and uplifting.

    Advance Praise for In Dependence

    “Sarah Ladipo Manyika tells a riveting story that challenges centuries of stereotypes of what an African story can be—one that weaves love, history and race across decades and continents. It also reminds us of how Africa has always been embedded in the world and the world in Africa. The novel is a graceful and astonishing achievement.” –Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

    In Dependence, the title being a play on Independence, is a riveting love story across the challenges of race, geography and scars of colonial history. It has all the national, continental and international politics that impact the post-colony. And, along the way, it introduces the reader to African and Diasporic African writing, music and art.” –Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o