OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# The Whale Caller

The Whale Caller (Published in 2005 ) is a novel by Zakes Mda a South African novelist and playwright.and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize. The Whale Caller is his fifth novel. He is currently a professor at Ohio University, It is a novel about a man in South Africa named Whale Caller. The Whale Caller first appears to be sexually attracted to whales; especially a whale he named Sharisha.

## Quotes

* they rig Sharisha with dynamite. [...] the emergency workers place more than five hundred kilograms of dynamite in all the strategie places, especially close to Sharisha's head.
Like a high priest in a ritual sacrifice a man stands over a contraption that is connected to the whale with a long red cable. With all due solemnity he triggers the explosives. Sharisha goes up in a gigantic baU of smoke and flame. [...] [The Whale Caller] is looking intently at the red, yellow and white flames as Sharisha rises in the sky. It is like Guy Fawkes fireworks
** Page 205.
* Yet there is nothing that rises, phoenix-like, out of the ashes. All the Whale Caller can do at the scene of the explosion is sit "silent and still as blubber rains on him. Until he is completely larded with it"
** 205•
* Lunga Tubu's voice coming from the waves, singing a Pavarotti song," he muses wistfully that "maybe one day Pavarotti will adopt him"
** 210.
* Conversely, Noria’s memory of the village is the pale herd boys, with mucus hang- ing from the nostrils, looking after cattle whose ribs you could count, on barren hills with sparse grass and shrups. The lean cattle and barren hills are partly result of overgrazing, which is in turn due to shortage of land for black people.
** page 23.
* The boats are now restored to their former glory as a reminder of a bygone era and bygone manual practices so that present and future generations can see how fishermen of the old endured the stormy seas in small open boats powered by their own muscles.
** Page 2.
* He has neither touched a whale nor even Sharisha, except with his spirit - with his horn. He knows absolutely that this boat-based whale watching will be abused
** Pages 118-19.
* For instance, when the Whale Caller wants to consummate relationship with his wife, images of whale interfere at the moment of ex- citement and he goes limp
* They do not like to be called squatters. How can we be squatters on our land, in our own country? Squatters are those who came from across the sea to steal our land
** Page 42.
# This Mournable Body

This Mournable Body (2018) is a novel by Tsitsi Dangarembga which continues the narrative of Tambudzia, the protagonist from her critically acclaimed novel, Nervous Conditions. This Mournable Body engages strongly with Zimbabwe's politics, economics and culture in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries while highlighting the lives and trials of its women.
"Forgetting is harder than you think," says Nyasha. "Especially when something can be done. And ought to be. It's a question of choices.”
# Skin of the Sea

Skin of the Sea is a 2021 young adult fantasy novel by Nigerian Welsh writer Natasha Bowen.Bowen's debut novel follows Simi, a mami wata who travels across sea and land in search of the Supreme Creator after breaking a law that threatens the existence of all mami wata.

## Quotes

* Mo gbà yín. Ní àpéjọ, àpéjọ yóò rí ìbùkún àpéjẹ̀ẹ Ìyá Yemoja tí yóo ṣe àpéjọ̀rùn ìrìn àjò àpéjẹ. Kí Olodumare mú ọ dé ilé ní àìléwu àti àláfíà,’ I say, and then repeat the prayer that will glean the woman’s soul. ‘I welcome you. Gathered, you will be blessed by Mother Yemoja, who will ease your journey. May Olodumare take you home to safety and peace. Come forth.’”
* (Chapter 1, Page 4)
* “‘It’s just…’ But the words won’t come and instead I find myself saying nothing, trying to keep my lips from trembling. The sapphire is cool in my grip as I look down at it, remembering the woman.
Folasade floats nearer as my hair waves in front of us. ‘May I?’ she asks.
Nodding, I let Folasade sweep my curls away so that we can see each other’s faces clearly. Her eyes are almost black in the water, but they shine with a reverence I know is missing from mine.”
* (Chapter 1, Page 6)
# Midaq Alley

Midaq Alley is a novel by Naguib Mahfouz. The novel was written in 1947 and first published in English in 1966. The story is about Midaq Alley in Khan el-Khalili, a teeming back street in Cairo which is presented as a microcosm of the world.

## Quotes

* Abbas now marveled at the strength of love, its power and its strange magic. He thought it right that God had created mankind capable of love and then left the task of developing life to the fertility of love.
** Page 37
* He [Kirsha] was a narcotics peddler and accustomed to doing his business under a veil of darkness. Normal life had eluded him and he had become a prey to perversions.
** Page 45
* He was, in fact, a veritable crouching tiger, willing to cringe and fawn until he mastered his adversary, and woe to anyone he did master! Experience had taught him that this gentleman and others like him were enemies with whom must be friendly. They were, as he put it, useful devils.
** Page 66
* Satan finds the doors of youth an easy entrance and he slips in both secretly and openly to spread his havoc. We should do all we can do to prevent the doors of youth opening to him and keep them tightly closed. Just think of elderly men to whom age has given the keys of respectability. What would be the situation if we were to see them deliberately opening these doors and calling out in invitation to the devil?
** Page 94
* It's fantastic the way these young men act. Why, they scarcely have a penny to their names, yet they see no reason why they shouldn't get married and populate the whole alley with children who get their food from garbage carts.
** Page 139
* The barber is young and Mr. Alwan is old; the barber is of the same class as Hamida and Mr. Alwan is not. The marriage of a man like Alwan to a girl like your daughter is bound to bring problems which will make her unhappy.
** Page 149
* If money is the aim and object of those who squabble for power, then there is clearly no harm in money being the objective of the poor voters.
** Page 151
* Kirsha thought of Hitler as the world's greatest bully; indeed his admiration for him stemmed from what he heard of his cruelty and barbarity. He wished him success, viewing him like those mythical bravados of literature Antar and Abu Zaid.
** Page 152
* What hopeless wretches we are. Our country is pitiful and so are the people. Why is it that the only time we find a little happiness is when the world is involved in a bloody war? Surely it's only the devil who has pity on us in this world.
** Page 247
# Zahrah the Windseeker

Zahrah the Windseeker (2005) is a young adult fantasy novel and the debut novel of Nigerian American writer by Nnedi Okorafor. It incorporates Nigerian myths, folklore, and culture. It is the winner of the 2008 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa.
# The Covenant

The Covenant is a historical novel by American author James A. Michener published in 1980.

## Quotes

* Until you've seen Zimbabwe, you live in darkness."
* (Chp 2, Pg 59)
* When you seek, you find things you did not anticipate."
* (Chp 2, Pg 62)
* We guard them. We punish them if we recover them. We chain them. And still they seek their freedom."
* (Chp 3 Pg 184)
* Always remember, your uncle was a thief. He stole what was rightfully yours." ,
* (Chp 4 pg 267)
# Woman at Point Zero

Woman at Point Zero (1975) is a novel written by Nawal El Saadawi and published in Arabic in 1977. The novel is based on Saadawi's meeting with a female prisoner in Qanatir Prison and is the first-person account of Firdaus, a murderess who has agreed to tell her life story before her execution. The novel explores the themes of women and their place within a patriarchal society.
# My Life in Crime

My Life in Crime (1984) is a novel by Kenyan author John Kiriamiti. It is a fictionalized account of Kiriamiti's criminality in Kenya during the 1960s and 1970s. The novel details Kiriamiti's crimes under the alias Jack Zollo that led to his imprisonment. It is the first novel in Kiriamiti's My Life... trilogy, which is currently being made into a film.
# A Border Passage

A Border Passage is a non-fiction novel by Leila Ahmed, an Egyptian-American Scholar of Islam. The novel captures the reflections of an Egyptian woman on her childhood growing up in a rich tradition of Islamic women and describes how she eventually came to terms with her identity as a feminist living in America.

## Quotes

* Egyptians, for instance, might, with equal accuracy, define themselves as African, Nilotic, Mediterranean, Islamic, or Coptic. Or as all, or any combination of, the above. Or, of course, as Egyptian: pertaining to the land of Egypt.
** Ahmed pinpoints a problem of identity that is uniquely Egyptian and anticipates the challenges of identification that arise for any minority group. Chapter 1
* [W]e all automatically assume that those who write and who put their knowledge down in texts have something more valuable to offer than those who simply live their knowledge and use it to inform their lives.
** Ahmed explores the inherent conflict between “written Islam” and “living Islam”. Chapter 5
* [T]he devastation unloosed on Muslim societies in our day by fundamentalism . . . seems to be not merely the erasure of the living, oral, ethical, and human traditions of Islam but the literal destruction of and annihilation of the Muslims who are the bearers of those traditions. In Algeria, Iran, Afghanistan, and, alas, in Egypt, this narrow, violent variant of Islam is ravaging its way through the land.
** Ahmed further explores the conflict between the way religious ethics are lived and the way they are taught. Chapter 5
* We lived in fact, throughout our childhoods, easily and unthinkingly crossing thresholds between one place and another—Ain Shams, Zatoun, our school—places that formed their own particular and different worlds with their own particular and different underlying beliefs, ideals, assumptions.
** Ahmed finds herself at the crossroads of influences and culture that will so often haunt her sense of identity. Chapter 6
* “One is not born but rather becomes a woman,” goes Simone de Beauvoir’s famous dictum. I obviously was not born but became black when I went to England. Similarly, of course, I was not born but became a woman of color when I went to America.
** Ahmed explores a feeling of cultural displacement that comes through being viewed as “other” by the dominant class in whatever culture she finds herself. Chapter 10

## External Links

* Spark notes
* Amazon
* Goodreads
# A Meeting in the Dark

A Meeting in the Dark (1974) by Ngugi wa Thiong’oThe play is centered on John and his academical pursuit, John's dream is to further his education outside the country to overwhelmed by a challenge, his lover Wamuhu is pregnant for him. Out of his anxiety to further his education, he strangles his lover to death

## Quotes

* Really, women could never understand. Women were women, whether saved or not. Their son had to be protected against all evil influences. He must be made to grow in the footsteps of the Lord. He looked at her, frowning a little. She had made him sin but that had been a long time ago. And he had been saved. John must not tread the same road.
** Narrator, page 57
* As he watched her disappear, he felt proud that they should think well of him. He felt proud that he had a place in their esteem. And then came the pang. Father will know. They will know. He did not know what he feared most; the action his father would take when he found out, or the loss of the little faith the simple villagers had placed in him, when they knew. He feared to lose everything.
** Narrator, page 59
* Then the white men had come, preaching a strange religion, strange ways, which all men followed. The tribe's code of behaviour was broken.
** Narrator, page 62
* Why not marry her? She is beautiful! Why not marry? Do I love her or don't I?
** Narrator, page 64
* Soon everyone will know that he has created and then killed.
** Narrator, page 70
* Well – yes – no. I mean, nowhere in particular.
** Page. 169
* Look, Sister,You know I want the boy to grow in the Lord.
** Page. 172
* Stay well, Son. Go well and in peace, Mother.
** Page. 174
* Different! Different! Puu! They are all alike. Those coated with the white clay of the white man’s ways are the worst. They have nothing inside.
** Page. 178

## External links

* A Meeting in the Dark
* gradesaver
* Prezi
# Waiting for an Angel

Waiting for an angel is a fictional novel by Helon Habila, a Nigerian writer. The novel was published in 2002 and follows the story of a young journalist, Lomba, living under military rule in Lagos, Nigeria regarded as the most dangerous city in the world.

## Quotes

* A mob wielding cudgels and cutlasses is hot on the heels of a youthwho desperately crosses to the other side of the road, narrowlymissing the fender of a truck. The mob follows growing bigger asit goes. The youth, looking over his shoulder as he runs, crashesinto a light pole and falls senseless to the ground. Before he canregain a second wind the mob is on him. I watch the cudgels riseand fall; I hear his wailing ululating screams finally turn into awhimper. They poured petrol on him and set him ablaze
** Page 35-36
* Look, we are living under siege. Their very presence on our streetsand in the government house instead of the barrack where theybelong is an act of aggression. They hold us cowed with guns sothat they will steal our money—they will continue subjugating uskilling all dissenters one by one, sending them to exile till there isno competitor left to oppose them.
** Page 122-123
* More than once ourtaxi was forced to hug the kerb as siren blaring military jeepspassed at top speed...”
** Page 43
* There had been an accident. Bola’s family-father, mother, and twosisters had been in a car crash. It was late in the evening...theywere on their way to Ibadan for a visit...The father driving hadfailed to see the truck laying on its side in the middle of the road.It was a military truck carrying the furniture of an officer ontransfer from Lagos to Ibadan. The father and mother, who were in front, had died instantly; Peju, the elder sister, died on the way to the hospital; the other sister, Lola, sustained minor injuries
** Page 45
* The students, who should have been busy taking theirbaths and getting set for lectures, sat idly...discussing the boycottof lectures
** Page 39-40
* Look out there, see the long queue of cars waiting for fuel. Someof them have been there for three days...And we are a majorproducer of oil
** Page 84
* Hagar takes to prostitution whenrejection and hunger look her straight in the face
** Page 114
* The houses were old and craggy and lichened. The place had theunfinished, abandoned appearance of an under waterscape.Crouching under the bigger or in their own clusters were hastilybuilt wood and zinc structures that housed an incredibly largenumber of families: the fathers were mostly out-of-work drivers,laborers, fugitives convalescing between prison terms
** Page 97
* we donfinally reach the end of the road. We don dey together since I wasborn, but now time don come wey me and you must part. Bye-bye.Goodnight. Ka chi foo. Oda ro. Sai gobe
** Psalms 97-98
* We came to tell you sir, that our clinic is run-down and abandoned.We came to tell you that we don’t have a single borehole onMorgan street... we are here to protest against this neglect--- weare dying from diseases. We are dying from a lack of hope. Andthat is why we are here today to protest. And this is the way wefeel we ought to express our displeasure
** Page 131- 132
# Eyes of the Slain Woman

Eyes of the slain woman is a novel by Benjamin Kwakye, a Ghanian novelist and lawyer. It is a collection of three novellas that each explore grief and the tenacity of human spirit. It explores every angle one of the most important faculties of mankind – the heart – often putting this special faculty to test and the result thereof: emanating from the choice(s) we make in life.

## Quotes

* Life was more fully present there and perhaps, on account of that, death would retreat
** Solo speaking on finding the village as the best place to set out his ambition. Page 15
* How could he save the life of a man who’d murdered his in laws and then attempted to murder him?
** Solo's revelation about Appiah. Page 26
* Agents of destruction
** Solo's name tag for what he must encounter to counquer death. Page 9
* conquer[ing] death
** Solo's speaking on challenge that will put his profession to test. Page 9
* And never in Solo’s life did he want to heal anyone as strongly as he wanted to heal the man lying in front of him
** Page 79
* burden of production
** Page 87
* catharsis, sating of the primordial love for bloodletting
** Page 84
* Solo stands on trial for the murder of his wife.
** Page 84
* manslaughter rather than murder, jail sentence rather than death
** Page 88
* time will never come when the word [Last Next] would be yelled out announcing his own arrived death’
** Page 97
* In the beginning her eyes were eyes and she could see clearly. And then they turned into two massive loaves of bread upon which many gathered to feast – a kind of grand banquet in which she only participated as an observer.
** Page 161
* but neither sages nor pastors offered satisfying counsel
** Page 161

## External Links

* Geosireads
* Amazon
* Goodreads
# The beautyful ones are not yet born

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born'' (1968), the debut novel by Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah, tells the story of an unnamed man who struggles to reconcile himself with the reality of post-independence Ghana.

## Quote

* I know people who won more than Five hundred cedis last year they still haven't got their money. I hope some officials at the lottery place will take some of my hundred cedis as a bribe and allow me to have the rest.
** Page 19
* Take that one for yourself and give the other one to your friend.
** Page 30
* Have you ever seen a big man without girls
** Page 37
* Mmmm life has treated her well
** Page 42
* These men who were to lead us out of our despair,they came like man already grown fat and cynical with the eating of centuries of power they had never struggled for old before they had even been borninto power,and ready only for the grave.
** Page 81
* Alone I can nothing,I have nothing.we have power but we will never see it work,unless we choose to come together to make it work let us come together
** Page 87
* Vagina sweet, money sweet pass all, who born fool socialism chop make chop country broke you broken not so? Pray for detention jail man chop free
** Page 106

## External links

* — The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
* wikipedia
* goodreads
* enotes
* Pinterest
# A soldier's Embrace

A Soldier's Embrace (1980) by Nadine Gordimer is a collection of short stories.

## Quotes

* Brilliant. Their jaws dropped. Brilliant. They've never heard anything on that level: precise, reasoned-none of them would ever have believed it possible, out of the bush. You should have seen de Poorteer's face. He'd like to be able to get up and open his mouth like that. And be listened to likethat.The governor's handicap did not even bring the sympathy accorded to a stammer: he paused and gulped between words. The blacks had always used a portmanteau name for him that meant "The-crane-who-i!?-trying-to-swallowthe-bullfrog.
Page 44
* You should have been there-should have seen him, up there in the official party. I
told you-reaHy-you ought to have come to town with me this morning."
** Page 44-45
* Oh, I gave the salute in return, chaps in the street saluted me ... everybody was doing it.It was marvelous. And the police standing by;just to think, last month-only
last weckyou'd have been arrested.
** Page 45
* Their three heads collided gaily; musk of
sweat and tang of strong sweet soap clapped a mask to her nose and month. They all gasped with deliciousvshock.
** Page 49
* Makes no difference
to me who you are so long as you're honest.
** Page 48
* in the inevitable echelon of colonial society,
** Page 49
* There's
obviously some sort of big struggle going on, he's fighting for his political life there in the Quarter." "
** Page 51
* For heaven's sake, he could use methylated for that! Any kind of alcohol will do! Why don't you get him some?
** Page 52
* It was necessary to be ready to reverse direetion, quickly turning down a side street if one encountered disturbances while driving around town. There were bodies sometimes
** Page 57
* Rushing in here, after nearly a year! 1 said,but we haven't seen you, all this time he took no notice. Suddenly he starts pressing me to take the university job, raising all sorts of objections, why not this that. And then he really wept, for a moment.
** Page 57

## External links

* tell you why
* Goodreads
* harpers
# Nearly all men in lagos are mad

Nearly all men in Lagos are mad is a novel by Damilare kuku. It is a short story collection written by Nigerian author and actress Damilare Kuku. It was first published by Masobe Books in 2021. The twelve short stories describe various women and their experiences with men and relationships. The stories in this book are set in Lagos, Nigeria.

## Quotes

* Lukumon, please tell your family why you made me sleep with another man for money, but treated me like a leper when I returned. Explain why you refused to take the job the man offered you, but you insisted that I took the money, rent this house, and buy you that stupid watch.
* But I should have known that any man who could keep a clean white shirt at the end of a Lagos work day would be dangerous.
* Maybe it’s fast because I have been waiting so long for something good to happen to me.
* But you didn’t say you cried mostly because, after considering the darkness of your Allen Avenue days and the deep dissatisfaction of your marriage, sometimes you were overwhelmed with gratitude that you were the lucky mother to two beautifully perfect boys. They were the best and purest things in your life, a nod to God and his mysterious ways.
* thirty-three when you had your first orgasm. It wasn’t from Idris. But, call it serendipity, it was Idris who introduced you to him. He was a beautiful man. Dimpled
* Misery loves company, dear.” She was also fond of asking rhetorically, “Why spend your money when you can spend his?”
* You liked me so much I had no choice but to start liking myself, to start acting respectable, like someone who had something special waiting for them back home
* He was amazingly different from Lukumon—savvier, kinkier, unselfish.
* You liked me so much I had no choice but to start liking myself, to start acting respectable, like someone who had something special waiting for them back home.

## External links

Goodreads
Amazon]
# In a Strange Room

In a Strange Room is a 2010 novel by South African writer Damon Galgut. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2010, as well as for the Ondaatje Prize.

## Quotes

* He knows that he is beautiful and somehow this makes him ugly."
* (Part One, p. 21).
* All the images and impressions and countries and continents he'd vised had been erased. What you don't remember never happened."
* (Part One, p. 29).
* And maybe that is the true reason for this journey, by shedding all the ballast of the familiar life they are each trying to recapture a sensation of weightlessness they remember but perhaps never lived, in memory more than anywhere else traveling is like free-fall, or flight."
* (Part One, p. 40).
* In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were."
* (Part One, p. 62).