A NEW NEW ME

239pp., paperback, Faber & Faber, London, 2025

ISBN: 9780571387533

Kinga is a woman who is just trying to make it through the week. There's a Kinga for every day and Kingas A-G, perhaps unsurprisingly, live a varied life. But when Kinga A discovers a man tied up in their apartment, the Kingas have to reckon with the possibility that one of them might be planning to destroy them all.

"Always very funny ... A comedy about the masks we wear, if you will, as well as an existential mystery ... The denouement, when it finally comes, is so gloriously absurd, you can't help but salute Oyeyemi's knack for artful nonsense. She is a gleefully unapologetic trickster." Guardian, 'Book of the Day'

"Much of the novel's pleasure comes from its intramural politics. The Kingas squabble, kibbitz and conspire ... A New New Me pushes the logic of perpetual upgrades to the point that self-help is indistinguishable from self-erasure." New York Times

Helen Oyeyemi was born in Nigeria and raised in London. She is the author of the story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours (PEN Open Book Award) and the novels Parasol Against the Axe, The Icarus Girl, Peaces, Mr Fox, Boy, Snow, Bird, Gingerbread and White is for Witching (Somerset Maugham Award).