Dhabya is a 17-year-old Emirati girl who started writing poetry when she realized the importance of being in touch with your thoughts, no matter how positive or negative they are. And that will be very vivid throughout the book, as her poems are arranged from “Nightmares” to “Dreams.”

Winner of the Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding 2019

Shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize and the Pius Adesanmi Memorial Award

An Observer and Wall Street Journal Book of the Year 2019

‘Astonishing, staggering’ Ben Okri, Daily Telegraph

A groundbreaking new history that will transform our view of West Africa

By the time of the ‘Scramble for Africa’ in the late nineteenth century, Africa had already been globally connected for many centuries. Its gold had fuelled the economies of Europe and Islamic world since around 1000, and its sophisticated kingdoms had traded with Europeans along the coasts from Senegal down to Angola since the fifteenth century. Until at least 1650, this was a trade of equals, using a variety of currencies – most importantly shells: the cowrie shells imported from the Maldives, and the nzimbu shells imported from Brazil.

The case is closed. Five years ago, schoolgirl Andie Bell was murdered by Sal Singh. The police know he did it. Everyone in town knows he did it.

But having grown up in the same small town that was consumed by the murder, Pippa Fitz-Amobi isn’t so sure. When she chooses the case as the topic for her final year project, she starts to uncover secrets that someone in town desperately wants to stay hidden. And if the real killer is still out there, how far will they go to keep Pip from the truth? The