From Bernardine Evaristo in the Guardian:
Irenosen Okojie’s debut novel, Butterfly Fish, was published last year, winning a Betty Trask award. The story moves between 1970s London and 19th-century Benin in a multigenerational tale that uncovers family secrets and reimagines Yoruba royal history. Noted for its magic realism, it is actually more indebted to the traditions of Nigerian storytelling that weave together the real, fantastical, fabular and spiritual, exemplified by Ben Okri’s 1991 novel The Famished Road.
With Speak Gigantular, her first short-story collection, Okojie continues her fictional forays into the surreal. “Animal Parts” is set in a Danish town. A single mother refuses to do anything about her small son’s growing tail; she loves him as he is. But the town turns against them, the mother’s mental health deteriorates and she carries out terrible acts of violence. Okojie shows how the pernicious pressures of community conformity can drive outsiders to despair...[more]
