.::Song Of The Little Road::.: The Abyssinian Boy

Quotes From Here And There

Albert Einstein: Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.
Dylan Thomas: I fell in love – that is the only expression I can think of – at once, and am still at the mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behavior very well, I think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and then, which they appear to enjoy.
Eddie Cantor: It takes twenty years to become an overnight success.
Edward Abbey: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
e e cummings: To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
Eyler Coates: We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually produce a masterpiece. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.
Friedrich Nietzsche: Without music, life would be a mistake.
Gustave Flaubert: The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.; Going to the Opera is like making love; we get bored but we come back.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: If I love you, what business is it of yours?
John Steinbeck: Only through imitation do we develop toward originality.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind.
Leonard Cohen: Ring the bells that still can ring;
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything;
That's how the light gets in.
Montaigne: The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
Paul Sweeney: You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.
Peter Altenberg: I never dreamed of being Shakespeare or Goethe, and I never expected to hold the great mirror of truth up before the world; I dreamed only of being a little pocket mirror, the sort that a woman can carry in her purse; one that reflects small blemishes, and some great beauties, when held close enough to the heart.
Robert Frost: In three words, I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.; There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money.
Satchel Paige: Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching.
Thomas Mann: A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
V S Naipaul: The writer has only to listen very carefully and with a clear heart to what people say to him, and ask the next question, and the next.

The Abyssinian Boy - Onyeka Nwelue

Thursday, December 11, 2008 by Abhinav Maurya

My friend Onyeka Nwelue has had a wonderful thing happen to him. Read the following press release to find out:-

Onyeka Nwelue

DADA Books, an imprint of Design and Dream Arts Agency, have signed a book deal with 20 year-old University of Nigeria sophomore, Onyeka Nwelue, to publish his novel, The Abyssinian Boy by December.

Onyeka Nwelue was born in Nigeria in 1988. After graduating from High School at 17, he travelled to South Asia, particularly to India, where he wrote the first draft of his novel in three months. He has been published in the Guardian, The Sun, Eclectica, Nigeria Village Square, Kafla InterContinental and Wild Goose Poetry Review. He has received a grant from the Institute for Research on African Women, Children and Culture (IRAWCC) and is currently working on his second novel.

Set in India and Nigeria (and scattered locations of the world), The Abyssinian Boy is about a family whose nine year-old child gets haunted by an albino dwarf ghost.

Ayodele Arigbabu, publisher of DADA Books, refusing to comment on the terms of the deal, rather said: ‘The Abyssinian Boy lays bare the many paradoxes of culture clash with thought provoking and often amusing ironies’. Chika Unigwe, Nigerian-Belgian author of The Phoenix describes it as ‘an ambitious novel’.

DADA Books was established earlier this year and has already published Jumoke Verissimo’s I am Memory.

Sources close to the publishers say the author has been paid an advance of N 2.5 million.

For enquiries, contact: DADA Books, 1^st Floor, 95 Bode Thomas Street, Surulere, Lagos; Tel: +234-01-7451990. E.mail: dreamarts.designagency@gmail.com

Posted in: Book, India, Novel, Press Release, Reports | | |

14 Comments:

On December 11, 2008 at 4:59 PM fleuve-souterrain said...

Wow, all the best to your friend Abhi! WOnderful news for such a young writer. Does he have work online and is he on facebook?

On December 11, 2008 at 4:59 PM fleuve-souterrain said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

On December 11, 2008 at 5:05 PM Abhinav Maurya said...

Such precocity! What can one say?

And yes Nabs, he's on Facebook. In fact, the hyperlink on his name in the post leads to his Facebook profile.

On December 11, 2008 at 11:03 PM Princess said...

Wow. So young!
Will look for the book.

On December 12, 2008 at 12:20 PM Abhinav Maurya said...

So young and so successful! I wish I had the same grit and discipline. More power to his pen.

On December 25, 2008 at 1:31 AM Ishtaar said...

Yayy for your friend!
And I see you haven't been blogging too regularly either :P

On January 8, 2009 at 11:19 PM Anonymous said...