A MOONLESS, STARLESS SKY, ordinary women and men fighting extremism in Africa

236pp., paperback, London, 2017

Winner of the 2018 PEN Open Book Award 

"Finally, finally, finally - a humane, skillful storyteller with sound reporting instincts has dug into the middle of the stories we think we've already heard out of Africa. Alexis Okeowo can write prose as arresting as Ryszard Kapuscinski's, she's got Katherine Boo's big heart, but she has her own fresh way of approaching the work, one that is terribly overdue. Absolutely essential reading, period." Alexandra Fuller, author of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and Quiet Until the Thaw

"From an abolitionist who once owned a slave to women basketball players in a war zone, Alexis Okeowo has an alert and thoughtful eye for the unexpected. The portraits and voices she brings us from Africa are so vivid that the reader can easily forget the determination and bravery it must have taken to gather them in these unhappy corners of the continent." Adam Hochschild, New York Times bestselling author of King Leopold's Ghost

Alexis Okeowo is a staff writer for the New Yorker and a fellow at New America. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Financial Times, Time, and Fortune, among other publications. The daughter of immigrant parents, Okeowo grew up in Alabama. She was based in Lagos, Nigeria, from 2012 to 2015, and currently lives in Brooklyn.