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GUARDIAN MUST READ BOOKS OF 2019

‘Okojie is a dazzlingly wild, bold and imaginative writer who tells stories with captivating originality and intense drama’ Bernardine Evaristo

‘Dazzling . . . A feast for the senses’ Diana Evans

Winner of the AKO Cain Prize
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In this collection of short stories, offbeat characters are caught up in extraordinary situations that test the boundaries of reality . . .

A love-hungry goddess of the sea arrives on an island inhabited by eunuchs.

A girl from Martinique moonlights as a Grace Jones impersonator.

Dimension-hopping monks sworn to silence must face a bloody reckoning.

And a homeless man goes right back, to the very beginning, through a gap in time.

Nudibranch is a dark and seductive foray into the surreal.

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PRAISE FOR IRENOSEN OKOJIE

‘One of the most original and innovative writers to emerge in many a year’
ALEX WHEATLE MBE

‘An original and highly unpredictable imagination . . . Prepare to be startled’
RUPERT THOMSON

‘Okojie has a sharp eye for the twisting stories of the city, and a turn of phrase that switches from elegance to brutality in a single line’
STELLA DUFFY

Publisher Review

Nudibranch, is dazzling, a feast for the senses, as well as a lesson in both creative and existential bravery * Observer * An extraordinary and unforgettable collection from one of the finest literary imaginations working today There's an irresistible lure to these disparate, experimental works reminiscent of Carmen Maria Machado, Kristen Roupenian or the gothic magic of Isabel Allende. This is writing at its most vital: poignant, performative and disturbing -- Zoe Apostolides * Financial Times * Surprising, seductive and often heartfelt, this is an entertaining selection that establishes Okojie as one of the country's most impressive writers * PRIDE * Dark and lyrical * Stylist * Okojie's latest collection is perfect for those of us who love a weird, moody story that settles in the body and doesn't move on quickly. Reminiscent of Helen Oyeyemi's What is Not Yours is Not Yours, with characters ranging from sea goddesses and a time-traveling homeless man to monks that skip between dimensions and appropriately creepy children of the future, these stories are as tightly woven as that blanket you find yourself under while reading. You'll need a flashlight with long battery life, because the prose is so fierce and melodic that you'll be up all night * Literary Hub * Okojie's imagination is frequently funny, and defiantly weird. Her slippery stories are not bound by logic, time or place; both within and between tales she dives between the genres of fable, dystopia, allegory, lyrically conceived realism, and horror * The Arts Desk * A theme drifts through these strange stories like a ghost; the search, often thwarted, for a home, an identity, a place of safety . . . [Irenosen Okojie's] imagination and her lyrical writing come together [and] her fantastical, disjointed tales speak for our damaged, out-of-kilter times. They are, to borrow her phrase, full of warped, rhapsodic song * New Internationalist * Okojie writes immersive prose you can get lost in, lulling you into a false sense of security only to turn everything upside down within the space of a sentence . . . Disjointed, disorientating and unpredictable but in all the best ways, Nudibranch will leave you eager for more at every turn * The Skinny * There are few writers who possess quite the boundless daring of Irenosen Okojie, whose second collection of short stories, Nudibranch, is dazzling, a feast for the senses, as well as a lesson in both creative and existential bravery -- Diana Evans * Observer (Best Books of 2019) * Irenosen Okojie is one of our finest short story writers. Nudibranch is her second collection and in it her imagination runs riot. Linguistically inventive and always unpredictable, there is an emotional intensity and weirdness to her story telling that haunts and lingers -- Bernardine Evaristo * Observer (Best Books of 2019) * Weird and wild . . . An extraordinary collection of surreal tales * Guardian *