THE FISHERMEN

350pp., paperback, Reprint, London, (2015) 2018

Finalist for The Man Booker Prize 2015. Winner of the inaugural FT/Oppenheimer Award for Fiction, the NAACP Image Awards for Debut Literary Work, and the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction.

A novel set in a small town in western Nigeria. Four brothers go fishing at a forbidden river where they meet a local madman who predicts that the oldest boy will be killed by one of his bothers.

"It's like being in a Zola or Theodore Dreiser novel ... The Fishermen is an elegy to lost promise ... and yet it remains hopeful about the redemptive possibilities of a new generation." Guardian

"Obioma's long-limbed and elegant writing is shot through with strikingly elevated phrasings ... rich with ancient themes of filial love, fratricide, vengeance and fate ... Its power is unmistakable." Wall Street Journal

"Chigozie Obioma truly is the heir of Chinua Achebe" New York Times Book Review

Chigozie Obioma was born in Akure, Nigeria. He 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, and the author of An Orchestra of Minorities (2019).