Farafina Books is one of Nigeria’s foremost publishing houses with several titles on its list including the work of renowned author Chimamanda Adichie. Founded in 2004, Farafina Books was founded on the premise of “Telling Our Own Stories,” to Africans and the rest of the world and disrupting the Nigerian publishing landscape.
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The founder Muhtar Bakare has been described by author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as “a humanist, who is widely read, a pan-African, who is thoughtful and has an instinctive understanding of the nuances of Nigerian society, and a capitalist eager to prove that publishing can be a viable business.” Bakare founded Farafina Books because there were hardly any publishing houses paying attention to works of fiction.
“No one wanted to touch fiction, and for very good business reasons, too,” says Bakare.
According to him, most Nigeria fiction writers were either publishing abroad or publishing out of sheer necessity. He set up the publishing house to solve this problem and boost the commercial viability and exportability of quality literary fiction.
Since inception, Farafina Books has been the platform credited with publishing books by renowned authors such as Everything Good Will Come by Seffi Atta, Purple Hibiscus and Half of A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, A Life Elsewhere and Goodbye Lucille by Segun Afolabi, the 2005 winner of Caine Prize for African Writing.
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Before Farafina Books entered the picture, Nigerian publishers were mostly limited to publishing educational books. Today, it has provided an outlet for contemporary Nigerian literary fiction. The platform aims to publish only the best of contemporary African fiction.
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