As soon as she stepped into the room, all the white men followed her with their eyes. Being a village boy, I had never liked city girls. Besides, my mother had warned me against them: white girls and city girls are not good for a village boy, she said...

My older brother, Oyaw, lives in New York. In the summer of 2005 he went home to Naija to get married, dragging me along with him. His American girl friend was not told. My brother is educated but stupid...

If the hunted animal runs in an unexpected manner, an Igbo proverb goes, the hunter should shoot it in an equally unexpected manner. The problem here, however, was that the manner in which this animal had bolted was not only unexpected but unimaginable...

The young men used to call her Itiri, a local word for darkness. They called her Itiri because her skin was unusually dark, surpassing the blackness of a moonless night. Being darker than midnight, her figure remained outlined in a visible silhouette long after everyone else's had blended with the West African nightfall…