Fiction

When his girlfriend throws him out during the pandemic, Bambi has to go to his Uncle’s house in lock-down Lagos. He arrives during a blackout, and is surprised to find his Aunty Bidemi sitting in a candlelit room with another woman. They both claim to be the mother of the baby boy, fast asleep in his crib.

At night Bambi is kept awake by the baby’s cries, and during the day he is disturbed by a cockerel that stalks the garden. There is sand in the rice. A blood stain appears on the wall. Someone scores tribal markings into the baby’s cheeks. Who is lying and who is telling the truth?

The man in the SUV fired the rocket directly at their van and the explosion lit up the park. Then the SUV made a 180-degree turn and took off. Patrick emptied his gun clip and shattered the rear windshield, but the car didn’t slow down and was soon out of sight. He flung his gun in the direction the car went and screamed.

DCT agent Patrick Emenalo returns to work on the same day there is a bombing at a popular fast food joint in Lagos. Dark Cell, a terrorist group, claims responsibility and demands the release of Red Baron, arms smuggler and crime boss.

Patrick, caught in a game whose rules are set by shadowy crime syndicate, The Orchid, must race against time to stop the terrorists before they strike again.

Face-paced and seamlessly written, Onyekwena’s debut takes bold steps into the widely uncharted world of organised crime in Lagos.

In “A Private Experience”, a medical student hides from a violent riot with a poor Muslim woman whose dignity and faith force her to confront the realities and fears she’s been pushing away. In “Tomorrow is Too Far”, a woman unlocks the devastating secret that surrounds her brother’s death. The young mother at the centre of “Imitation” finds her comfortable life threatened when she learns that her husband is back in Lagos and has moved his mistress into their home. And the title story depicts the choking loneliness of a Nigerian girl who moves to an America that turns out to be nothing like the country she expected; though falling in love brings her desires nearly within reach, a death in her homeland forces her to re-examine them. Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow and longing, this collection is a resounding confirmation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s prodigious storytelling powers.