We are delighted to welcome two amazing writers and their forthcoming titles into our family. We present these powerful literary fiction titles that explore the depths of human relationships, conflict, loss, love, community, family and what it means to be human.
WATER BABY by Chioma Okereke
Water Baby is an adventurous and insightful story about Makoko. Through a colourful cast of characters and her evocative portrayal of their floating environment, Chioma Okereke invites us into a dynamic and often overlooked community.
In Makoko, the floating slum off mainland Lagos, Nigeria, nineteen-year-old Baby yearns for an existence where she can escape the future her father has planned for her. With opportunities scarce, Baby jumps at the chance to join a newly launched drone-mapping project, aimed at broadening the visibility of the informal settlement and her community.
When a video of her at work goes viral, Baby finds herself with options she could never have imagined—including the possibility of leaving her birthplace to represent Makoko on the world stage. But will life beyond the lagoon be everything she’s dreamed of? Or has everything she wants been in front of her all along?
Water Baby has been critically appraised as:
“A brilliant, evocative read. In Okereke’s hands, Makoko is a world full of heart and beauty.”
—Irenosen Okojie
“This novel simmers with beauty and potential and you can’t help but root for its heroine, Baby, as she earns her wings.”
—Uju Asika
“A beautifully written novel, full of vibrant imagery and characters who leap off the page. I loved going on Baby’s journey with her.”
—Louise Hare
About the Author
Chioma Okereke was born in Benin City, Nigeria. She started her writing career as a poet and performed throughout Europe and the United States before turning her hand to fiction. Her work has been shortlisted in the Undiscovered Authors Competition 2006, run by Bookforce UK, and in the Daily Telegraph’s ‘Write a Novel in a Year’ Competition in 2007.
THE ROAD TO THE COUNTRY by Chigozie Obioma
Set in Nigeria in the late 1960s, Chigozie Obioma’s new novel is an odyssey of brotherhood, love, and unimaginable courage set during one of the most devastating conflicts in the history of Africa. Intertwining myth and realism into a thrilling, inspired, and emotionally powerful novel, The Road to the Country is Chigozie Obioma’s masterpiece.
When his younger brother disappears as the country explodes in civil war, Kunle must set out on an impossible rescue mission. Kunle’s search for his brother becomes a journey of atonement that will see him conscripted into the breakaway Biafran army and forced to fight a war he hardly understands, all while navigating the prophecies of a local Seer, he who marks Kunle as an abami eda—one who will die and return to life.
The Road to the Country has been critically appraised as:
“A spectacular blend of realism and mysticism, The Road to the Country is Chigozie Obioma at his finest. He is a novelist in a league of his own.”—Imbolo Mbue
“Chigozie Obioma is that rare thing: an original. His world is a mix of the real and the folkloric, and his writing sounds like no one else’s.”—The Wall Street Journal
About the Author
Chigozie Obioma was born in Akure, Nigeria. His two previous novels, The Fishermen and An Orchestra of Minorities, were both finalist for the Booker Prize. His novels have won the inaugural FT/OppenheimerFunds Emerging Voices Award for Fiction, the NAACP Image Award, and the Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction and have been nominated for many others. Together, they have been translated into thirty languages. He was named one of Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers. He is a professor of creative writing at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and divides his time between the United States and Nigeria.
Release dates for both titles will be announced at the end of March 2024. For more information, please contact: Theresa Ominiabohs at +234 701 838 3286, email: info@masobebooks.com, follow us @Masobebooks on Instagram and Twitter, or visit the Masobe Books website at www.masobebooks.com
