AN ORCHESTRA OF MINORITIES, a novel

448pp., hardback, d.w., New York, 2019

Finalist for the Booker Prize 2019.

A novel set on the outskirts of Umuahia, Nigeria, and narrated by a chi (guardian spirit), about a Nigerian poultry farmer who sacrifices everything in an attempt to win the woman he loves.

"Few contemporary novels achieve the seductive panache of Obioma's heightened language, with its mixture of English, Igbo and colourful African-English phrases, and the startling clarity of the dialogue. The story is extreme; yet its theme is a bid for mercy for that most fragile of creatures - a human" Eileen Battersby, The Guardian

"The chances that Chigozie Obioma's second novel would match, let alone surpass The Fishermen were slim. Happily, his follow-up, An Orchestra of Minorities, is a triumph ... In an era of copycats, An Orchestra of Minorities is an unusual and brilliantly original book" The Economist

Chigozie Obioma was born in Akure, Nigeria. His debut novel, The Fishermen, won the inaugural FT/Oppenheimer Award for Fiction, the NAACP Image Awards for Debut Literary Work, and the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction; and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize 2015. Obioma was named one of Foreign Policy's 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2015. He is Assistant Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.