An Orchestra of Minorities: Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2019

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019 From the Author of the Booker-shortlisted novel, THE FISHERMEN 'Obioma is truly the heir to Chinua Achebe' New York Times 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. ________________________________________________________________________________ '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

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.

Obioma's frenetically assured second novel is a spectacular artistic leap forwards . . . [it is] a linguistically flamboyant, fast-moving, fatalistic saga of one man's personal disaster . . . 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 - Guardian Almost every page [of An Orchestra of Minorities] trumpets the gifts of a writer who can make his language soar, wheel and pounce - Spectator An acute, tender, painful and sometimes darkly funny story . . . about love, aspiration, betrayal, greed, dishonesty and the tribulations that the innocent and trusting may suffer - The Scotsman An Orchestra of Minorities is a triumph: a wholly unsentimental epic that unspools smoothly over nearly a decade, it is set with equal success across two continents, employing myth and spirituality to create a vibrant new world . . . an unusual and brilliantly original book - The Economist Every so often - but not often enough - a book comes around to blow away the cobwebs and forget what it means to read a truly immersive story. Chigozie Obioma's An Orchestra Of Minorities is just that - The Pool There's no sign of difficult second novel syndrome here: this is a continent-spanning magical-realist tale of star-crossed love . . . intoxicating - Daily Mail