By Akubuiro Henry
After registering and establishing branches in the UK, US and India, Abibiman Publishing, a highly reputed international publishing outfit founded by Nigerian writer and filmmaker, Onyeka Nwelue, has opened a branch in Nigeria.
The event, which took place at Roving Heights Bookshop, Oniru, Victoria Island, Lagos, last week, also featured the unveiling of the Nigerian edition of Harmattan, a novel written by Croatian writer, journalist and translator, Ivan Srsen.
In a hall replete with Nigerian, African and international titles and a buoyant audience dominated by youths and enthusiastic bibliophiles, the new CEO of Abibiman Publishing Nigeria, David Lanre Messan, said Abibiman Publishing was leaning on the tradition established by literary giants, like James Currey, Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, in publishing authentic African voices for a global audience, and would welcome new writers with an eye for history, creativity and competence.
On the new Heinemann African Writers Series, which Abibiman has taken over, Misan assured that the company would follow in the tradition of telling spellbinding, African stories by some of the best voices on the continent.
Again, he said, “Onyeka is someone who is so focused on preserving history, and you can feel it with the kind of stories he writes; you see it in the stories he publishes, like reawakening the legendary Flora Nwapa, the African female author, by publishing her in the new African Writers Series.
“The African Writers Series has its legacy, and it’s important for people like us to continue the legacy. We are interested in publishing new authors who are excited about history and create works of fiction around it. We are also interested in all kinds of literature,” he declared.
Messan intends to bring innovations to the promotion of literary works by getting celebrities and influencers outside the field of literature to endorse works published by Abibiman Nigeria as a means of raising the interests of people to buy and read books.
He is also thinking of maximising technology in the distribution of literary works and turning exceptional works into movies. Besides, Abibiman Nigeria, he said, would create a community around literary works through digital means.
Before reading excerpts from Harmattan, the Croatian writer, Srsen, who is married to a Nigerian woman from Benin City, said he was delighted to introduce the novel to the Nigerian audience ten years after it was first published in his native country.
He informed the lively audience that the novel was set in Germany and followed the trials of two African female migrants in a Bavarian cell.
The Croatian is also the author of the short story collection, Fairy Tales, and the mastermind of the Zagreb-based independent publishing outfit, Sandorf. He is also the editor of Zagreb Noir.