Chibundu Onuzo is an award-winning author. Her first novel, The Spider King’s Daughter, won a Betty Trask Award. It was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Commonwealth Book Prize and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Etisalat Prize for Literature (now the 9mobile Prize). She is completing a Ph.D. on the West African Students’ Union at King’s College London. Her new book Sankofa will be out in 2021.

  • Welcome to Lagos

    “Storylines and twists abound. But action is secondary to atmosphere: Onuzo excels at evoking a stratified city, where society weddings feature ‘ice sculptures as cold as the unmarried belles’ and thugs write tidy receipts for kickbacks extorted from homeless travelers.” —The New Yorker

    Deep in the Niger Delta, officer Chike Ameobi deserts the army and sets out on the road to Lagos. He is soon joined by a wayward private, a naïve militant, a vulnerable young woman and a runaway middle-class wife. The shared goals of this unlikely group: freedom and new life.

    As they strive to find their places in the city, they become embroiled in a political scandal. Ahmed Bakare, editor of the failing Nigerian Journal, is determined to report the truth. Yet government minister Chief Sandayo will do anything to maintain his position. Trapped between the two, they are forced to make a life-changing decision. Full of shimmering detail, Welcome to Lagos is a stunning portrayal of an extraordinary city, and of seen lives that intersect in a breathless story of courage and survival.

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