Vitabu Books

N o doubt about it the book's title is a great hook. The Fate of the Foetus draws in the reader with its striking, blood -red cover.  But it's not till you get to the chapter with the same headline as the title that the novel really begins to find its focus. Mohamed Gibril Sesay's new novel was published early in 2017. First impressions are always in the eye of the beholder, but I found the book cover quite similar to a National Geographic Channel photo, published by The Guardian in the review of Ian McEwan's new book . McEwan's “Nutshell” is described as an adaptation of  Shakespeare's Hamlet from the perspective of a fetus. In Sesay's comparably-sized novel, however,  the fetus isn't the narrator at all. The spirit talking to us in first-person halfway through Sesay's new book is roaming the universe looking for birth as a human. I dubbed the unidentified spirit a lifetron, a word reportedly coined by Hindu yogi Paramahansa Yogananda t

Shek Gibril Kamara's landmark book “Kinship Bonds” is an all West African story. Compressed into about 180 pages, the book's storyteller frames the empires of the past against Bamako, Mali. No doubt, the narrator is teaching history. Told for you, me, and West Africa's population today of over 335 million people. Kamara's narrative voice and griot in “Kinship Bonds” is omniscient; an interpreter/superlative source of information. One problem though is the book's confusing estimation of time; although we get copious examples of location. Iconic villages such as Kindiaso, Sokudala, Kurudala, and bigger towns like Makeni drive or influence the nostalgic theme of the book. Compared to similar literature in Sierra Leonean Writers Series, “Kinship Bonds” informs about rural life in the Mano River basin and the empires of medieval West Africa. Of note, Kamara's previous work, The Spirit of Badenia, is a university textbook on African Studies and Cultura