- Published: 03/09/2015
- ISBN: 9781847088376
- Granta Books
- 336 pages
Under the Udala Trees
Chinelo Okparanta
One day in 1968, at the height of the Biafran civil war, Ijeoma’s father is killed and her world is transformed forever. Separated from her grief-stricken mother, she meets another young lost girl, Amina, and the two become inseparable. Theirs is a relationship that will shake the foundations of Ijeoma’s faith, test her resolve and flood her heart.
In this masterful novel of faith, love and redemption, Okparanta takes us from Ijeoma’s childhood in war-torn Biafra, through the perils and pleasures of her blossoming sexuality, her wrong turns, and into the everyday sorrows and joys of marriage and motherhood. As we journey with Ijeoma we are drawn to the question: what is the value of love and what is the cost?
£8.99
Under the Udala Trees [recalls] the work of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in its powerful interweaving of the personal and the political. Okparanta's simple, direct prose is interspersed with... allegory and folklore and... the dizzying scope of her storytelling keeps you gripped
Lucy Popescu, Financial Times
A brave novel seeking to challenge prejudice... Okparanta describes with clarity and seeming simplicity states that are not simple at all
Aida Edemariam, Guardian
A harrowing coming-of-age tale that, with elegant prose, captures the conflict of the time while illustrating how it resounds today. Okparanta shines a light on the plight of the gay community in Nigeria, where its condemnation is tragically not consigned to the history books
Antonia Charlesworth, Big Issue in the North
From the Same Author
Happiness, Like Water
Chinelo Okparanta
In this debut collection, Chinelo Okparanta introduces us to families burdened equally by the past and the future. Here, we meet a childless couple with very different desires; a college professor comforting a troubled student; a mother seeking refuge from an abusive husband; an embittered spinster recalling the loss of a dear childhood friend; and a young woman waiting to join her lover abroad. High expectations – whether of success in Nigeria, or the dream of opportunity and accomplishment in America – consume them.
In language that is both raw and elegant, Happiness, Like Water heralds the arrival of a fearless and sensitive literary voice.
£9.99
Chinelo Okparanta on Granta.com
In Conversation | The Online Edition
Chinelo Okparanta | Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists
Chinelo Okparanta & Luke Neima
‘As a person in the diaspora sometimes you ask yourself, well who will claim you? And then it really is up to you to claim a place for yourself.’
Fiction
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Granta 139
All the Caged Things
Chinelo Okparanta
‘All that thought of home gave the girl a sickly feeling, the longing of something so out of reach, something she wasn’t even sure she could any longer truly remember.’
Essays & Memoir | Granta 139
Notes from Uzbekistan
Chinelo Okparanta
‘The cultural presentations of the students – that juxtaposition of old and new world, of tradition and modernity.’
