SWALLOW

195pp., paperback, Johannesburg & Northhampton, 2011

First published in the USA. 

A novel set in Lagos in the 1980s, about a bank secretary who is persuaded by her roommate to consider drug trafficking as a way to make a living.

"In this unique novel, outstanding new literary talent Sefi Atta takes great strides in style and form, to bring wit and passion to the heartbreaking story of Tolani and Rose, two young women struggling, not always successfully, to make an honest living in contemporary Nigeria ... Atta tells in an eminently readable voice the irreconcilable nature of the two friends' fates." Tsitsi Dangarembga, author of Nervous Conditions

No contemporary Nigerian writer is better than Sefi Atta at evoking the smells, sounds and the sheer madness of this sprawling cosmopolitan city of Lagos." Toni Kan Onwordi, author of Nights of the Creaking Bed

Nigerian Sefi Atta was awarded the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa for her novel, Everything Good Will Come, and the Noma Award for her short story collection, News From Home.