Unique to the region around Sierra Leone, sowei masks are worn by senior members of the all-female Sande Society during rite-of-passage ceremonies that signify a girl's transition to adulthood. Each mask has an individual personality and is given a name which is revealed in a dream. For many years the name of this mask was lost. However, in a special ceremony in January 2013 members of the Sierra Leonean diaspora community in London gave the mask a new name: Gbavo, meaning ‘crowd-puller’ or ‘to attract people’s attention’. The newly-named mask was then formally re-presented to the British Museum.
What does it take to say a word of love? How long and how much strength does it take for the heart to speak? How many streets at night? How fast? How many faces in how many bars? What tenderness? What pain? What music? What images in the mind? And where does it come from? Is it in the darkness of a closed park at night? In the back room of a Chinese bar? In the bottom of a beer? In a collective dance? In a sister's laughter? When does it finally happen? For the soul to let go.
After his six-year-old daughter is abducted, a desperate father takes justice into his own hands when he loses faith in the detective leading the investigation, setting both men on a collision course as the search descends into obsession and moral compromise.
A young boy learns that he has extraordinary powers and is not of this earth. As a young man, he journeys to discover where he came from and what he was sent here to do.
Hamdan is a former Palestinian leader who spent 15 years locked up in the old Israeli prisons. In 1973, while living in Syria, he was given a mission to smuggle explosives across the border and train a person he trusted.
Life for former United Nations investigator Gerry Lane and his family seems content. Suddenly, the world is plagued by a mysterious infection turning whole human populations into rampaging mindless zombies.
