Join MoAD and Litquake for a conversation with Nigerian author Samuel Kọláwọlé as he discusses his debut novel, The Road to the Salt Sea, a searing exploration of the global migration crisis that moves from Nigeria to Libya to Italy, from an exciting new literary voice. This program is presented as part of MoAD's African Book Club series, dedicated to reading and promoting 21st century literature by and about Africans. Author Samuel Kọláwọlé  will be in conversation with author, professor, host and co-founder of African Book Club, Faith Adiele.

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About the Book

Able God works for low pay at a four-star hotel where he must flash his “toothpaste-white smile” for wealthy guests. When not tending to the hotel’s overprivileged clientele, he muses over self-help books and draws life lessons from the game of chess.

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But Able’s ordinary life is upended when an early morning room service order leads him to interfere with Akudo, a sex worker involved with a powerful but dangerous hotel guest. Suddenly caught in a web of violence, guilt, and fear, Able must run to save himself—a journey that leads him into the desert with a group of drug-addled migrants, headed by a charismatic religious leader calling himself Ben Ten. The travelers’ dream of reaching Europe and a new life in a better place is shattered when they fall prey to human traffickers, suffer starvation, and find themselves on the precipice of death, fighting for their lives and their freedom.

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As Able God moves into the treacherous unknown, his consciousness becomes focused on survival and the foundations of his beliefs—his ideas about betterment and salvation—are forever altered. Suspenseful, incisive, and illuminating, The Road to the Salt Sea is a story of family, fate, religion, survival, the failures of the Nigerian class system, and what often happens to those who seek their fortunes elsewhere.

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About African Book Club

Hosted and curated by writer and professor Faith Adiele, African Book Club is dedicated to reading and promoting 21st-century literature by and about Africans. MoAD has partnered with the African Book Club since fall 2019, though the book club first began in 2016. Though the majority of the selections have been written in English, the African Book Club champions Africa’s diversity by seeking out female and LGBTQIA+ voices, newer literary genres like Afro-Futurism, Young Adult, and Mystery, and representation from all regions, including translations from the Arabic, French and Portuguese. In 2022, MoAD launched its first-ever African Literary Award selected from African Book Club titles, recognizing an author who produced a work of literary excellence and demonstrated leadership in promoting writing and literacy in their local community.

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‍Samuel Kọláwọlé (@samkolawole) was born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria. His work has appeared in AGNI, Georgia Review, The Hopkins Review, Gulf Coast, Washington Square Review, Harvard Review, Image Journal, and other literary publications. He has received numerous residencies and fellowships, and has been a finalist for the Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize, shortlisted for UK’s The First Novel Prize, and won an Editor-Writer Mentorship from the Word. He studied at the University of Ibadan and holds a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing with distinction from Rhodes University, South Africa; is graduate of the MFA in Writing and Publishing at Vermont College of Fine Arts; and earned his PhD in English and Creative Writing from Georgia State University. He has taught creative writing in Africa, Sweden, and the United States, and currently teaches fiction writing as an Assistant Professor of English and African Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He lives in State College, Pennsylvania.

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‍Faith Adiele (@meetingfaith) co-founded and hosts MoAD’s African Book Club, and her monthly column for Detour: Best Stories in Black Travel is syndicated in The Miami Herald. An award-winning memoirist, she contributes to the CALM app, HBO-Max, Alta Magazine, Hyperallergic and others, and her recent work has received Emmy and SoCal Journalism Award nominations. Faith graduated from Harvard College and the University of Iowa’s Writing Workshop and Nonfiction Writing programs. She has a set of hybrid chapbooks about her Nigerian-Nordic-American family forthcoming from Texas Review Press and a travel writing craft guide from Columbia University Press. She lives in Oakland and chairs the Writing & Literature program at California College for the Arts.

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This program is co-presented with Litquake, San Francisco’s Literary Festival. In celebration of 25 years, their 2024 Festival runs from 10/10 - 10/26 with 140+ events taking place all over the Bay Area and featuring 500+ authors and performers. The full schedule is available on at litquake.org.