The Returnees

'[An] evocative tale of identity, friendship and unexpected love' Mail on Sunday 'Marks Okoh as an exciting new voice in contemporary fiction.' AnOther magazine 'A brilliant read' Closer After a bad break up, 25-year-old Osayuki Isahosa leaves behind everything she holds dear in London to return to Lagos, Nigeria: a country she hasn't set foot in for many years. Drawn by the transformations happening in the fashion industry in the city, she accepts a job at House of Martha as their Head of PR. While waiting at Milan airport for her connecting flight to Lagos she meets Cynthia Okoye and Kian Bajo. Cynthia Okoye is a 21-year-old recent graduate whose laissez-faire attitude to life has become her undoing. Unsure of how else to help put her life back on track, her father banishes her to live with his brother in the capital city where she's required to attend the National Youth Service Corps. Kian Bajo is a wannabe Afrobeat star whose left everything he knows in London to make it big in Lagos., Enthralled by the international success of young artists from his motherland, he will go to any lengths to conquer the Lagos music scene. After the plane lands at the Lagos airport, they all go their separate ways but their lives will intertwine again and change the course of their lives forever.

Everyone has gone away... We too should no longer be here. Luanda, 1975. The Angolan War of Independence has been raging for at least a decade, but with the collapse of the Salazar dictatorship, defeat for the Portuguese is now in sight. Thousands of settlers are fleeing back to Portugal to escape the brutality of the Angolan rebels. Rui is fifteen years old. He has lived in Luanda all his life and has never even visited the far-away homeland - although he has heard many stories. But now his family are finally accepting that they too must return, and Rui is filled with a mixture of excitement and dread at the prospect. But just as they are leaving for the airport, his father is taken away by the rebels, and the family must leave without him. Not knowing if the father is alive or dead - or if they will ever find out what has become of him, Rui, his mother and sister try to rebuild their lives in their new home. This turns out to be a five star hotel in a quiet, seaside suburb of Lisbon, where returnee families are crammed into luxurious rooms by the dozen. These palatial surroundings are a cruel contrast with the reality of returnee life. The hotel becomes a curious form of purgatory as the families wait to discover what will become of them - ever conscious of the fact that they are hardly welcome back in their homeland. Rui has his own personal struggle with his new life: growing up, dropping out of school, facing discrimination, and the ever-present worry over his mother's deteriorating health and his father's fate. And then one night Rui's father returns from the dead. Translated from the Portuguese by Ángel Gurría-Quintana

The theology of Isaiah 40-55 has two seemingly contradictory aspects: the tension between the consolatory message of deliverance, and the harsh tone of accusation and the call to repentance. This study argues that such tension does not necessarily disclose a different authorship, but that it expresses the basic nature of the relationship between YHWH and the Israelites, in which the actions of YHWH and the actions of the people stand in a relationship of interdependence. Such interdependence is essential for the re-establishment and the continued existence of the relationship between YHWH and his people, as well as for shaping the identity of both the exiled and the non-exiled Israelite communities in the latter part of the sixth century B.C.E.

This volume is the result of an international research project that drew together perspectives from three countries in Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe: Croatia, Lithuania, and Poland. It explores the under-researched phenomenon of immaterial values and resources that returning migrants bring with them, as they have the potential to contribute to economic development, together with the social, political, and cultural change in their countries of origin. The authors explore the mechanisms, challenges, and successes of the process of social remitting by returnees to these countries.