Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree
    Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree
    Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree
    Audiobook5 hours

    Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree

    Written by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani and Viviana Mazza

    Narrated by Robin Miles

    4.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Based on interviews with young women who were kidnapped by Boko Haram, this poignant novel by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani tells the timely story of one girl who was taken from her home in Nigeria and her harrowing fight for survival. Includes an afterword by award-winning journalist Viviana Mazza.

    A new pair of shoes, a university degree, a husband—these are the things that a girl dreams of in a Nigerian village. And with a government scholarship right around the corner, everyone can see that these dreams aren’t too far out of reach.

    But the girl’s dreams turn to nightmares when her village is attacked by Boko Haram, a terrorist group, in the middle of the night. Kidnapped, she is taken with other girls and women into the forest where she is forced to follow her captors’ radical beliefs and watch as her best friend slowly accepts everything she’s been told.

    Still, the girl defends her existence. As impossible as escape may seem, her life—her future—is hers to fight for.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKatherine Tegen Books
    Release dateSep 4, 2018
    ISBN9780062890207
    Author

    Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

    Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani is a Nigerian writer and journalist. The author of the award-winning novel I Do Not Come to You by Chance, Adaobi has had her writing featured in the New York Times, the Guardian, and the New Yorker. You can find her at www.adaobitricia.com.

    Related to Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree

    Related audiobooks

    Young Adult For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Animal In The Yard

      Aug 17, 2017

      The Animal In The Yard
      17 min read

    • Article

      Frog

      Jan 16, 2022

      Frog
      3 min read

    • Article

      Carrot Legs

      Sep 12, 2019

      Carrot Legs
      20 min read

    • Article

      Mother Tongue

      Feb 24, 2021

      Mother Tongue
      12 min read

    • Article

      Certification of Righteousness

      Sep 14, 2020

      Certification of Righteousness
      14 min read

    • Article

      Cherry Season

      Sep 3, 2020

      1. My mother’s mother kept a set of painted wooden nesting dolls on top of her television. When I was small and went to her house, I would take the set apart and line up the five dolls on her living room floor, side by side, from biggest to smallest.

      16 min read

    • Article

      Hauntings

      Jul 5, 2023

      Hauntings
      11 min read

    • Article

      Who Was My Mother?

      Sep 12, 2019

      Who Was My Mother?
      7 min read

    • Article

      Lagos Nigeria

      Oct 6, 2020

      Lagos Nigeria
      2 min read

    • Article

      Sideways Infinity

      Jan 1, 2024

      Sideways Infinity
      4 min read

    • Article

      In the Grass

      Jun 3, 2019

      In the Grass
      23 min read

    • Article

      Count Your Chickens

      Mar 5, 2018

      Count Your Chickens
      5 min read

    • Article

      Why My Nana Buried Her Sofa

      Feb 6, 2019

      I had my story ready for when Mommy picked me up tomorrow from my Nana’s house: Two hours of Maths revision, an afternoon nap, then two hours studying history. But Nana hadn’t got the memo. Or she had but didn’t care. We were standing in the sunshine

      7 min read

    • Article

      Musings On My Father

      Aug 8, 2022

      Musings On My Father
      5 min read

    • Article

      Giving Up Paradise: Lies, high heels, and piety.

      Jun 13, 2013

      For millions of refugees, life is nothing if not uncertain. They come to a new world with two purposes: escaping one set of realities, and building a new set. This story is about a family who fled Somalia during the Civil War of the 1990s. They settl

      13 min read

    • Article

      Princess Bari

      Apr 15, 2019

      Princess Bari
      6 min read

    • Article

      Dear DOCTOR

      Feb 3, 2021

      Chris Young works as a children’s specialist for Golden Hare Books, an independent bookshop based in Edinburgh – this involves trying out all sorts of ways to get kids into reading. She also works as a part-time librarian, doing a similar job! She ha

      3 min read

    • Article

      Hecho en El Salvador

      Aug 7, 2023

      Hecho en El Salvador
      5 min read

    • Article

      What the Tornado Gave Us

      May 1, 2022

      OF ALL THAT I lost when we moved to America, my personality is what I missed most. Not lost in a forever kind of way, perhaps just misplaced, because after I had a friend, it began to show up again. In Mexico, I knew the language well enough to easil

      3 min read

    • Article

      Foxes

      Jun 15, 2019

      What’s worth happening happens in deep woods. Or so my daughter tells me. Her plotlines: In the deep woods someone is chasing, someone else is getting hacked. Hatchets are lifted, brought downdowndown. Men stutter blood onto snow. A cast of animals—s

      17 min read

    • Article

      Food For The Soul

      Jun 5, 2020

      Food For The Soul
      3 min read

    • Article

      THE greatest LOVE

      Oct 21, 2021

      THE greatest LOVE
      10 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree

    4.5/5

    61 ratings8 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      I just can’t express how I feel. What an experience!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      It was a very heartbreaking book. I can't believe this is a reality for women, I can't believe this still happens

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This was a great read. Having to understand what the chibok girls went through and seeing things from their point of view. Tho the narrator didn’t get most Nigerian pronunciations right. It was still ok

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      A very straightforward read, with impeccable writing. Immersing us in the story of Boko Haram and the Chibok girls. I especially loved the detailed narration that followed the fiction.

      What's even more saddening is that in 2024, we still do not know the whereabouts of most of the kidnapped girls, we still do not know the state they're in—alive or dead? In 2024, we are still trying to combat Boko Haram! It's not a good look for the country at all.
    • 5/5
      A very informative read. The story gave an understanding to the emotions felt and the pain had
    • 5/5
      Mhen! This book is so sad. Truly, you are a product of your environment and the people around you. It's not surprising why some of the girls may be reluctant to return home. 2 years? 3 years? That's a whole lot of time. A whole lot of time to be brain washed, rethink your life and get used to the "new normal". But why did it take so long? Why did it take so long for the Nigerian government to act on the Boko Haram insurgency? So many dreams shattered, so many lives lost. It is painful. And the crazy thing? Several years later, the same thing is still happening. It's like a movie replayed over again with a plot twist each time. When do we get better as a country? When do we as individuals, as humans do better to other humans? May their souls rest in peace.
    • 5/5
      I am grateful for the authors who are willing to tackle horrifying subjects and yet do it with a deft hand. This book is intensely readable, appropriate for a teen audience, thoughtful about what Islam means to many people, even while exploring Boko Haram and the devastation they are causing. How do you do that with mass murder? With abduction and forced marriage? With the sudden blight on everyday life that may seem restricted in the West, but is supportive and loving? I don't know how she pulls all that off, but she does. Extraordinary.
    • 5/5
      This young-adult novel tells the story of the “stolen girls” of northern Nigeria, where the militant terrorist group Boko Haram has been burning villages, kidnapping the young girls, and slaughtering the rest of the residents. The author gives the reader a vivid picture of life in a small Nigerian village. The unnamed narrator is a young girl who excels at school, and dreams of new shoes, going to university, marrying a good husband – the kinds of things most girls dream of. She helps her mother keep the house, chatters with her best friend, and joins in village celebrations centered around the church. Christians and Muslims co-exist and work together for the good of the village and one another. But when Boko Haram attacks the village and she is kidnapped, taken deep into the jungle to the militant group’s camp, it seems her dreams are shattered. Forced to adopt a new name, to study to become “a good Muslim woman”, she learns to keep her thoughts to herself. Worried about her family and her friends, she must rely on herself – her intelligence, her prior education, her powers of observation – to survive with the hope of rescue or escape. How difficult to choose between escape and fear for your friends and family. How terrifying to witness your friend beheaded on the spot for refusing to swear allegiance to your captor’s beliefs. How easy it feels to succumb to the promise of better food and better housing that comes with adopting the “proper” demeanor and marrying a fighter. How impossible it is to maintain hope in these circumstances. Nwaubani’s writing is poetic and lyrical, with vivid descriptions and heart-wrenching scenarios. This is the first of her books that I have read; it will not be the last. The afterword is written by Viviana Mazza, an Italian journalist who has worked in several countries including Syria and Nigeria. The 2014 Boko Haram raid on a private school in Chibok where 276 girls were kidnapped captured world-wide attention – for a time. Since then most of the world has forgotten, if they ever knew, the names of these women (and many others taken in less widely reported raids). Mazza wanted to report on the continuing war, to document the real stories of women/girls who have been kidnapped by and rescued from Boko Haram. Her writing is more journalistic and suffers in comparison to the raw emotion of Nwaubani’s novel. However, it serves to educate the reader about the real atrocities being committed, the real challenges faced by those who escape Boko Haram. I applaud the courage of these girls and women who have come forward to tell their stories.