An Orchestra of Minorities: Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2019 - Tapa dura

Brilliantly intertwining the human and spirit worlds. A major new African writer (Salman Rushdie (Amazon Book Review))

A crucial journey into a heartache that is both mythical and real (Booker Prize Judges 2019)

[An] impressive, epic second novel . . . Timely, portentous and powerful, [An Orchestra of Minorities] confirms Chigozie Obioma's remarkable talent (Lucy Scholes iNews)

Told in the wise and watchful, sometimes mischievous voice of the 'chi' or Igbo spirit guardian of Chinonso, a poor poultry farmer, this is a profoundly humane epic love story. Loosely based on the Odyssey, the trials and joys of Chinonso's journey exert a powerful hold on the reader's imagination, head and heart. A magnificent, original and revelatory novel (Booker Prize Judges 2019)

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 (Eileen Battersby Guardian)

Rich and vivid . . . Obioma's absorbing tragicomedy painfully probes the perils of victimhood (Anthony Cummins Observer (New Review))

Obioma fashions an allegory of post-independence Nigeria and the cruelties of the contemporary world . . . West Africa, with its pantheon of animist divinities and juju lore, is unforgettably evoked. You can almost smell the hot strong breath of the land in this brave gallimaufry of Greek myth and pre-colonial Igbo cosmology (Evening Standard)

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 (Allan Massie The Scotsman)

Almost every page [of An Orchestra of Minorities] trumpets the gifts of a writer who can make his language soar, wheel and pounce (Spectator)

Obioma has a masterful way with words (The Herald)