“Ghostroots is a thrilling work by a truly sublime and imaginative writer. 'Pemi Aguda’s stories are both absorbing and terrifying in the most delightful and addictive way, you’ll find it hard to tear yourself away from the pages. This is the beginning of an incredible writing career we are blessed to witness”
—Ore Agbaje-Williams, author of The Three of Us
“Beautifully strange and delightfully unexpected, each story is a tiny wonder. I'm desperate to read more from ‘Pemi Aguda”
—Kirsty Logan, author of The Unfamiliar
“'Pemi Aguda is an astonishing talent. She’s inventive with form and playful with sentences. In Ghostroots, the delightful speculative conceits of the stories are elegantly, even architecturally, balanced with the gorgeous fullness of human emotion, all the hunger and longing and fear and delight of being a human being in the world. A wonderful collection from a truly gifted writer.”
—Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds
“Here you'll find breathtaking stories of the familiar and the strange, full of empathy for
characters trying to bridge chasms between communities, families, generations, and their ghosts. 'Pemi Aguda builds worlds with blade-like acuity. You'll be caught in their sway and transported.”
—Diane Cook, author of The New Wilderness
“In this perceptive and astute collection, Pemi Aguda tells of the metaphysical cracks on the
surface of contemporary Nigerian society with an uncompromising humane touch.”
—Emmanuel Iduma, author of I Am Still With You
“A marvelously unsettling collection where the everyday strangeness of life and the uncanny rub up against each other to create real fire.”
—Kelly Link, author of White Cat, Black Dog
“’Pemi Aguda is spectacular. This book is a big, strong river. Once you are caught in its currents, you flow with it no matter where it runs. And it runs through gorgeous and startling places.”
—Luis Alberto Urrea, author of Good Night, Irene
“Ghostroots is the kind of collection you dream of discovering and reading—from one of my favorite living writers.”
—Jeff VanderMeer, author of Hummingbird Salamander
“’Pemi Aguda's Ghost Roots is a treasure chest of surprises sometimes scary, sometimes funny, always darkly familiar. With unadorned prose and crisp, delicious sentences, she invites us to the dark underside of everyday life and dares us to look away. The stories in this book leap off the pages to bite at you long after you drop it, if you can.”
—T.J Benson, author of The Madhouse
"Wildly inventive and odd, but written with surgeonlike precision, these stories herald the arrival of a major voice in speculative fiction."
—Gabino Iglesias, New York Times Book Review
"[A] mesmerizing and unsettling debut collection… Aguda is a precise and exciting prose stylist, and her stories offer vivid insights into tradition, family, and trauma… [A] smart, playful, and compassionate collection worthy of repeated reads."
—Isle McElroy, New York Magazine
"Aguda stirs her cauldron of social criticism, feminism, structural invention and grotesque gothic twists into a triumph of genre-bending storytelling, a kind of African uncanny all of her own."
—Christian House, Financial Times
"Spectacular…. ‘Pemi Aguda reimagines Lagos, Nigeria’s everyday rhythms with a supernatural essence, much like Bora Chung or Mariana Enríquez’ uncanny voices."
—Sam Franzini, Our Culture
"There is no right way to move in Aguda’s world. It is a world haunted, burdened—and fascinating, for anyone brave enough to dive into her evocative, eerie stories."
—Leah Rachel von Essen, Chicago Review of Books
"’Pemi Aguda plants us among the vanishing markets and shape-shifting houses of a richly imagined Lagos, Nigeria …. Its inhabitants grapple with ancestral ties that often feel too tight or too loose and weigh invitations to believe in miracles or magic. While the ground may shift beneath these stories, the roots within their narratives reach to profound depth."
—One Story
"Ghostroots is a triumph. 'Pemi Aguda’s strong storytelling skills give readers the gift of realistic characters and darkly imaginative stories that creep under your skin and stay buried there. . . . ’Pemi Aguda is now among my favorite authors."
—Tananarive Due, author of The Reformatory
"I loved everything about this book, which heralds a major and extraordinary new voice in fiction. . . . These stories consumed me. I'll be thinking about them for years to come."
—Clare Beams, author of The Garden
"[Aguda’s] thought-provoking speculative stories … lay bare the universal experience, illuminating the menace that constantly lurks just below the surface.… With a breadth similar to the critically acclaimed Jackal, Jackal by Tobi Ogundiran, this will also appeal to readers of Eugen Bacon, Lisa Tuttle, and Karen Russell."
—Library Journal
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