Jagua Nana

Nigerian writer Cyprian Ekwensi’s 1961 novel is a terrifically entertaining, funny and moving novel about an ageing beauty in 1960s Lagos.

Jagua Nana – brash, generous, no longer young but still irresistible to every man she meets – lives a life of hedonism in Lagos, filled with parties, fights, scandal, drama and wild nights at the Tropicana club. Determined to help her young boyfriend Freddie pay for his education, she uses all her resources to get what she wants, until tragedy breaks the spell of the city for her. In this fast-paced, raucous depiction of 1960s Nigeria, everyone is on the make, and Jagua must make her own luck.