AN ORCHESTRA OF MINORITIES

A modern love story that examines what a person might do for love—and whether fate can render those efforts moot.

In his follow-up to The Fishermen (2015), which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Obioma has written a romance with a Nigerian ethos, reinvigorating age-old questions of love and destiny. When Chinonso Solomon Olisa, a lonely poultry farmer, intervenes in the suicide attempt of Ndali, a young woman, his quiet life is disrupted and the two begin an intense and complicated affair of nearly mythic proportions. The story of their relationship is told by Chinonso’s chi, or his life force, who has come to testify before the almighty creator on his host’s behalf because Chinonso may have killed a woman. The book operates on both physical and spiritual levels, presenting thought-provoking and sage observations about the nature of loneliness (“the violent dog that barks interminably through the long night of grief”) and jealousy (“the spirit that stands at the threshold of love and madness”), among other things. Indeed, though the love story that moors the book is dramatic and lends itself to comparisons with similarly epic romances such as The Odyssey—a point not lost on Chinonso’s chi—the book tells a distinctly Nigerian story that considers the gambits people are willing to make in an effort to rise above their lot.

A deeply original book that will have readers laughing at, angry with, and feeling compassion for a determined hero who endeavors to create his own destiny.