Literary Fiction

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Say You're One of Them

Say You're One of Them

Say You’re One of Them is a collection of five interconnected-in-spirit stories set in different African countries, exploring the lives of children caught in circumstances far beyond their control. Through the eyes of young narrators, Uwem Akpan portrays the devastating effects of poverty, religious conflict, human trafficking, and political violence on families and communities. Written with emotional intensity and compassion, the collection challenges readers to look beyond headlines and statistics to recognise the individual lives behind Africa’s social and political crises. Rather than reducing its characters to victims, Akpan gives them distinctive voices, relationships, and hopes, creating a powerful portrait of childhood under extreme circumstances.

Benin Ethiopia Kenya Nigeria Rwanda 2009

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives

Set in contemporary Ibadan, Nigeria, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives explores the complicated dynamics of a polygamous household where jealousy, ambition, and long-buried secrets threaten to destroy the family’s carefully maintained balance. Bolanle, a young university graduate, becomes the fourth wife of Baba Segi, a wealthy businessman whose large family is a source of pride and proof of his masculinity. Hoping to find security and acceptance, she enters a household already governed by three wives, each with her own personality, ambitions, and strategies for survival. However, Bolanle’s education and independence make her a source of suspicion and resentment, particularly when she offers to teach the other wives to read. When Bolanle struggles to conceive, Baba Segi takes her to the hospital to discover the reason for her childlessness. The investigation threatens to expose a secret that the other wives have carefully protected for years. As the truth begins to emerge, the family must confront the consequences of deception and the fragile foundations upon which their relationships have been built. Told through the perspectives of Baba Segi and his wives, Shoneyin’s novel combines dark humour with an incisive examination of marriage, motherhood, female rivalry, and patriarchal expectations. Beneath its entertaining portrayal of domestic life lies a deeper exploration of the ways women navigate restrictive social structures, compete for security, and find agency within a system that often measures their worth by their ability to bear children.

Americanah

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Americanah follows Ifemelu and Obinze, two young Nigerians whose love story unfolds across continents as they navigate migration, race, and the search for belonging. As a university student, Ifemelu moves to the United States, where she confronts the realities of being Black in a society that forces her to reconsider her identity. Through her experiences with relationships, work, and cultural differences, she develops a popular blog examining race and everyday life in America. Meanwhile, Obinze hopes to build a future in Britain but encounters a very different set of obstacles as an undocumented immigrant. Years later, Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, bringing with her a transformed understanding of home and the person she has become. As the two reconnect, they must confront the ways their experiences have changed them and consider whether their relationship can survive the passage of time. Blending romance with sharp social commentary, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explores race, immigration, class, cultural identity, and the complex meaning of home in an interconnected world.

The Fishermen

Chigozie Obioma

In 1990s Nigeria, four brothers— Ikenna, Boja, Obembe, and Benjamin—enjoy a close bond until their father leaves their hometown of Akure for work. Taking advantage of his absence, the boys skip school to fish at a forbidden river. There, they encounter Abulu, a local man believed to be mad, who delivers a terrifying prophecy: the eldest brother, Ikenna, will be killed by one of his own siblings. The prediction plants a seed of suspicion that gradually poisons the brothers’ relationship. As Ikenna becomes increasingly consumed by fear and paranoia, the family struggles to understand the forces tearing them apart. Narrated by nine-year-old Benjamin, the novel follows the devastating consequences of a single prophecy, exploring how belief, fear, and resentment can transform love into violence. Blending Nigerian folklore, biblical allusions, and the structure of Greek tragedy, The Fishermen is both an intimate portrait of a family in crisis and a broader meditation on fate, brotherhood, and the fragility of human relationships.

Stay with Me

Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀

Set in Nigeria during the 1980s and 1990s, Stay with Me tells the story of Yejide and Akin, a young couple whose passionate love is gradually tested by family expectations, infertility, and devastating secrets. Having met and fallen in love at university, Yejide and Akin agree that polygamy has no place in their marriage. But after four years together without a child, pressure from Akin’s family becomes unbearable. His relatives eventually arrange for him to take a second wife, believing that another woman might succeed where Yejide has not. Humiliated and desperate to save her marriage, Yejide becomes increasingly determined to conceive. As the couple struggle with fertility treatments, traditional remedies, and the demands of their families, their relationship begins to unravel. Decisions made out of fear and desperation lead to betrayal, grief, and consequences neither could have imagined. Meanwhile, political unrest and military upheaval provide a backdrop to their deeply personal struggles. Told through the alternating perspectives of Yejide and Akin, the novel explores the painful intersection of love, marriage, and cultural expectations. Adebayo examines how the pressure to become parents can shape a person’s identity, how secrets can destroy even the closest relationships, and how grief changes the meaning of family. Ultimately, Stay with Me is a moving story about the sacrifices people make for love and the complicated ways they attempt to protect one another from heartbreak.

The Girl with the Louding Voice

The Girl with the Louding Voice

Fourteen-year-old Adunni dreams of receiving an education, becoming a teacher, and giving her family a better life. Growing up in a poor rural village in Nigeria, she believes that education will give her the power to speak for herself and choose her own future. Her mother calls this her louding voice—the ability to make herself heard in a world that expects girls to remain silent. When Adunni’s father marries her off to a much older man in exchange for a bride price, her dreams of going to school are shattered. After a devastating tragedy, she escapes to Lagos, hoping to find freedom and a new beginning. Instead, she becomes a domestic servant in the household of a wealthy, controlling woman known as Big Madam. There, Adunni encounters exploitation, abuse, and the harsh realities faced by girls whose poverty leaves them vulnerable to others’ power. Despite repeated setbacks, Adunni refuses to abandon her ambition. As she uncovers the truth about another young domestic worker who disappeared before her arrival, she begins to understand that finding her voice means more than fighting for herself—it also means speaking up for girls whose suffering has been ignored. Told in Adunni’s distinctive, expressive voice, the novel combines humour, heartbreak, and hope to examine child marriage, gender inequality, poverty, and the transformative power of education. It is a moving story about a young woman’s determination to reclaim her future and challenge the social structures that seek to silence her.

Transcendent Kingdom

Transcendent Kingdom

Gifty, a Ghanaian American neuroscience PhD student at Stanford, searches for answers in the science of addiction while struggling to understand the tragedies that have shaped her family. Her brother Nana, once a promising athlete, died after developing an addiction to opioids, and her deeply religious mother has fallen into a debilitating depression. Torn between the evangelical faith of her childhood and the scientific world she inhabits, Gifty investigates the mechanisms of reward and suffering, hoping to uncover why people hurt themselves and those they love. Intimate and quietly devastating, Transcendent Kingdom explores grief, addiction, faith, and the limits of what science can explain about the human heart.

Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions

Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions

Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi

Spanning more than 150 years, from 1897 to an imagined 2050, Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions follows generations of Nigerian women as they navigate friendship, family, ambition, and the struggle to determine their own futures. Moving between Nigeria and the United States, the interconnected stories explore how personal choices and historical events shape women’s lives across generations. At the heart of the collection are Nonso, Remi, Aisha, and Solape, four girls who form a powerful bond while attending an all-girls boarding school in Nigeria during the 1980s. Their friendship is tested when they participate in a rebellion against their school’s principal, an event whose consequences continue to affect them long after they leave adolescence behind. As the women grow older, their lives take different directions. Nonso moves to the United States and falls in love with an African American man, discovering new possibilities alongside the challenges of building a life between cultures. Remi confronts painful family experiences while navigating love and relationships, while Aisha struggles with guilt over the events of their schooldays. Their stories extend into the lives of their relatives and descendants, revealing how the past continues to shape the present. Through its shifting perspectives and leaps across time, Ogunyemi’s debut explores the complicated relationships between women, the consequences of silence, and the meaning of belonging. It offers a nuanced portrait of Nigerian women’s experiences, examining how friendship, family loyalty, and the pursuit of independence can become sources of both strength and conflict.

Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?

Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?

Lizzie Damilola Blackburn

Yinka Oladeji is a thirty-one-year-old, Oxford-educated British Nigerian woman with a good job, close friends, and a loving—but rather intrusive—family. There is just one thing everyone seems to think is missing from her life: a husband. Her Nigerian mother and aunties constantly question her relationship status, while her friends believe she needs to move on from her ex and reconsider her traditional views on love. Although Yinka has always believed that love will arrive when the time is right, her cousin Rachel’s engagement prompts her to take matters into her own hands. Determined to find a date for Rachel’s wedding, she launches Operation Find a Date, complete with spreadsheets, carefully calculated strategies, and the help of her best friend. But as she navigates the dating scene, Yinka begins to question whether changing herself to meet other people’s expectations will really bring her happiness. Through Yinka’s romantic misadventures, Blackburn explores the pressures placed on unmarried women, the complexities of navigating British and Nigerian cultural expectations, and the influence of colourism on self-esteem and relationships. With humour and warmth, the novel examines the tension between family loyalty and personal independence, ultimately asking whether finding love begins with finding someone else—or learning to accept yourself.

Hafsatu Bebi

Twenty-two-year-old Hafsatu Gaya seems to have everything in place: a promising career running a fashion label in Abuja, a loving family, and a relationship with one of the city’s most eligible bachelors. But when an impulsive decision brings long-buried family secrets to the surface, Hafsatu’s carefully constructed world begins to unravel. She must confront painful truths about her family’s past and question how well she really knows the people closest to her. Running alongside Hafsatu’s story is the heartbreaking love story of Zuwaira, an orphan whose hopes for a better life are repeatedly thwarted by social expectations and circumstances beyond her control. Although the two women belong to different generations and occupy very different positions in society, their lives are connected by secrets that will eventually reshape both their futures. Set in Northern Nigeria, Hafsatu Bebi explores love, betrayal, faith, family obligations, and the tension between personal choice and destiny. It asks whether people can truly understand themselves when so much of their identity has been built on truths others have chosen to conceal.

Rose and the Burma Sky

Rose and the Burma Sky

In 1939, in a village in southeastern Nigeria, young Obi dreams of building a better life for himself and his family. When a colonial army jeep passes through his village, the prospect of a uniform and a steady wage appeals to him—not least because he hopes to impress Rose, the woman he loves. But when Rose becomes pregnant by another man, Obi’s world collapses. Haunted by unanswered questions about her lover, he joins the British colonial army and is sent to fight in the brutal Burma Campaign of the Second World War. As Obi confronts the horrors of war, his heartbreak becomes entangled with a mystery that will have devastating consequences. Through his journey from rural Nigeria to the battlefields of Southeast Asia, Rosanna Amaka brings attention to the often-overlooked experiences of African soldiers who fought for a colonial power. Blending an intimate story of unrequited love with the wider injustices of empire, Rose and the Burma Sky explores sacrifice, racial inequality, and the lasting consequences of choices made in moments of despair.

Nigeria Myanmar 2023

A Broken People's Playlist

A Broken People's Playlist

Chimeka Garricks

Set primarily in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, A Broken People’s Playlist is a collection of twelve interconnected short stories about love, loss, family, betrayal, and the possibility of redemption. Each story takes its title from a song, using music as an emotional thread that connects the characters and their experiences. Together, the stories form a portrait of a city and its people, revealing the beauty and brokenness of everyday life. The collection introduces a diverse cast of characters navigating personal crises and complicated relationships. A teenage boy dreams of becoming a DJ while his family falls apart, only to reappear years later as a troubled middle-aged man. Elsewhere, a dying man attempts to organise his own funeral while he is still alive, and a husband struggles to cope with the aftermath of his wife’s miscarriage. Other stories explore infidelity, friendship, grief, and the consequences of choices that cannot easily be undone. Through its music-inspired structure and interconnected narratives, the collection explores how people endure heartbreak, make mistakes, and search for meaning amid life’s disappointments. It is ultimately a reflection on human imperfection and the possibility of finding connection and hope even when life feels irreparably broken.