An Orchestra of Minorities: Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2019

Chigozie Obioma

Jan 2019 · Hachette UK

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019

From the author of the Booker-shortlisted novel, The Fishermen

FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOKS OF 2019

'Obioma is truly the heir to Chinua Achebe' New York Times

'A major new African writer' Salman Rushdie

'A profoundly humane epic love story' Booker Prize Judges 2019

A young farmer named Chinonso prevents a woman from falling to her death. Bonded by this strange night on the bridge, he and Ndali fall in love, but it is a mismatch according to her family who reject him because of his lowly status. Is it love or madness that makes Chinonso think he can change his destiny?

Set across Nigeria and Cyprus, An Orchestra of Minorities, written in the mythic style of the Igbo tradition, weaves a heart-wrenching tale about fate versus free will.
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'A spectacular artistic leap' Guardian

'Brilliantly original' The Economist

'A remarkable talent' Independent

'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, Guardian

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Chigozie Obioma was born in 1986 in Akure, Nigeria, and currently lives in the United States. He graduated from the University of Michigan with an MFA in Creative Writing and was a recipient of a Hopwood Award in fiction and poetry. He is now an assistant professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His debut novel, The Fishermen, is 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 (Los Angeles Times Book Prizes); and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize 2015, as well as for several other prizes in the US and UK. Obioma was named one of Foreign Policy's 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2015.