International Authors Book Club

Read an author of your choosing from a predetermined country. August's nation is Nigeria. We will meet each third Thursday of the month to discuss your author, their works, and any themes they explore.

To get you started, check out our list of a few literary award-winning authors. The bolded fiction titles are available through your Santa Fe Public Library as books or ebooks (Hoopla or Overdrive/Libby).

For disability accommodations, please contact a Programs Manager for SFPL at 505-955-6786 or 505-955-2817.

Suggested authors:

Chinua Achebe, author of Arrow of God, Things Fall Apart and the award-winning children’s book How the Leopard Got His Claws

Achebe was a Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic regarded as a central figure of modern African literature. His first and most well-regarded novel, Things Fall Apart, remains the most widely studied, translated, and read African novel. In 2007, he won the Man Booker International Prize for his "overall contribution to fiction on the world stage."

Ayòbámi Adébáyò, author of A Spell of Good Things and Stay With Me

In her debut Stay With Me, Yejide and Akin fall in love and marry while in college. Though many expect Akin to take several wives, he and Yejide agree polygamy is not for them. But four years into their marriage-- after consulting fertility doctors and healers, trying strange teas and unlikely cures-- Yejide is still not pregnant. When her family arrives with a young woman they introduce as Akin's second wife, Yejide knows the only way to save her marriage is to get pregnant. She does -- but at a cost far greater than she dared imagine.

A Spell of Good Things is a story of modern Nigeria and two people caught in the riptides of wealth, power, poverty, and corruption.

Tomi Adeyemi, author of the Legacy of Orisha series

This first-generation Nigerian-American wrote the award-winning Young Adult trilogy starting with No. 1 bestsellers Children of Blood and Bone, Children of Virtue and Vengeance and Children of Anguish and Anarchy. 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Americanah, Dream Count, Half of a Yellow Sun, Purple Hibiscus, and The Thing Around Your Neck

Americanah is the story of a young Nigerian woman and her male schoolmate, who had not studied the slave trade or racism associated with being Black in the United States or class structures in the United Kingdom. It explores the central message of a "shared Black consciousness.” It won the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.

Dream Count, Adiichie’s first novel in 12 years, is a sweeping story about four women whose lives are shaped by love, longing, and pain. Adichie explores a group of disparate and fascinating women and their worlds, turning a sharp eye on contemporary society.

The award-winning Young Adult classic Half of a Yellow Sun is set in the 1960s, centering on Ugwu, who leaves his village to become a houseboy for a revolutionary professor Odenigbo. The Nigerian government is overthrown in a military coup, and the Hausas from the North accuse the Igbos from the East, resulting in genocide. The book is banned by some U.S. school districts for sexual and violent imagery. 

Her debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, explores post-colonial Nigeria during a coup and examines the cultural conflicts between Christianity and native traditions within the dynamics and generations of a family, touching on class, gender, and the Igbo genocide.

The Thing Around Your Neck is a collection of 12 stories including the tale of a medical student in hiding with a poor Muslim woman, and a woman who discovers a devastating secret about her brother's death.

Oyinkan Braithwaite, author of My Sister, the Serial Killer and The Baby is Mine

The Lagos native won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America and the LA Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller for My Sister, the Serial Killer, a darkly funny debut novel about a Nigerian woman whose younger sister has a very inconvenient habit of killing her boyfriends. 

Abi Daré, author of The Girl with the Louding Voice plus And So I Roar

Her debut novel tells the story of a young Nigerian woman trapped in a life of servitude but determined to get an education so that she can escape and choose her own future.

In the sequel, And So I Roar, the author tells the story of Tia, who overhears a whispered conversation between her terminally ill mother and her aunt. Back home in Lagos a few days later, 14-year-old Adunni, the main character of The Girl with the Louding Voice, has escaped from her rural village in a desperate bid to seek a better future. Suddenly, there's a dangerous stranger at the front gate, forcing Tia to make a choice between protecting Adunni or finally learning the truth about her mother.  

Akwaeke Emezi, author of Freshwater, PET, The Death of Vivek Oji, and Dear Senthuran

Emezi writes speculative fiction, romance, memoir, and poetry with mostly LGBT themes for young adults and adults. They are known for their novels Freshwater, PET, a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, a Walter Honor Book, and a Stonewall Honor Book; and The Death of Vivek Oji, which was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Jean Stein Award.

Flora Nwapa, author of Efuru, The Lake Goddess, Never Again and Women Are Different (all ebooks)

Originally published in London in 1966. Efuru is the first novel by a female African author published internationally and the first with the perspective of an African village woman. Efuru introduces an important feminist issue to Africa: a woman is more than a body used for reproduction; she is an asset to her community even without a surviving child.

Nnedi Okorafor, author of Binti: The Complete Trilogy, the Akata trilogy, Lagoon, Noor and Who Fears Death

The Afro-futurist first-generation Nigerian-American has made a name for herself as a fantasy/science fiction writer. Binti is the first of her people ever to be offered a place at the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But accepting the offer means giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.

The award-winning Young Adult Series — Akata Warrior, Akata Witch and Akata Woman — focuses on a teenage girl's efforts to save humanity from spiritual forces.

Who Fears Death is a coming-of-age narrative set in a post-apocalyptic Africa. It follows the journey of a young woman born from a violent act, who is prophesied to bring an end to a brutal regime. As she grows, she discovers her magical abilities and must learn to control them in order to fulfill her destiny.

Chinelo Okparanta, author of Happiness, Like Water and Under the Udala Trees

Okparanta presents a collection of short stories centering around Nigerian women as they build lives out of hope, faith, and doubt, following such characters as a woman faced with a hard decision to save her mother and a woman in love with another despite the penalties.

In Under the Udala Trees, Ijeoma, a young Nigerian girl displaced during their civil war, begins a love affair with another refugee girl from a different ethnic community. When the pair are discovered, she must learn the cost of living a lie amidst taboos and prejudices. Even as her nation recovers from war, Ijeoma seeks a glimmer of hope for a future where a woman might just be able to shape her life around truth and love.

Ben Okri, author of The Famished Road, The Freedom Artist, Songs of Enchantment, and the short-story collection A Prayer for the Living

While difficult to categorize, the 1991 Booker Prize winner (The Famished Road) is known for magical realism in his novels, garnering him comparison to Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

His short stories appear in numerous collections including The Big Book of Modern Fantasy, The Weird and Twenty Years of the Caine Prize for African Writing.

Chibundu Onuzo, author of The Spider King’s Daughter, Welcome to Lagos and Sankofa

Welcome to Lagos begins when army officer Chike Ameobi is ordered to kill innocent civilians. Instead, he deserts his post. As he travels toward Lagos, Chike becomes the leader of a new platoon, runaways who share his desire for a different kind of life.

Sankofa tells the story of a British woman who grew up in England with her white mother knowing very little about her African father. Her mother's death leads her to find her father's diaries, chronicling his involvement in radical politics in 1970s London. She discovers that he eventually became the president - some would say the dictator - of a West African country. So begins an exploration of race, identity and what we pass on to our children.

Helen Oyeyemi, author of Icarus Girl, Parasol Against the Axe, Peaces, and White is for Witching

Oyeyemi’s first few works – Boy, Snow, Bird; Gingerbread and Mr. Fox – are reimagined fairy tales. Boy, Snow, Bird uses the Snow White framework to explore discrimination against skin tone within the Black community. She won the PEN/Open Book Award in 2017 for the short-story collection What is Not Yours is Not Yours.

Lola Shoneyin, author of The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives (ebook)

The well-regarded poet makes her fiction debut with this perceptive, entertaining, and eye-opening novel of polygamy in modern-day Nigeria. The struggles, rivalries, intricate family politics, and the interplay of personalities and relationships within the complex private world of a polygamous union come to life in The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives.

Wole Soyinka, author of Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth

In this mystery set in an imaginary Nigeria, a cunning entrepreneur is selling body parts stolen from Dr. Menka's hospital for use in rituals. Dr. Menka shares the grisly news with his oldest college friend, bon viveur, star engineer, and Yoruba royal, Duyole Pitan-Payne. The life of every party, Duyole is set to assume a prestigious post at the United Nations, but it seems someone is determined that he does not make it there.

Chika Unigwe, author of Better Never than Late and The Middle Daughter

The Middle Daughter is a lush, powerful tale of family and sisterhood, perfect for fans of Bernardine Evaristo and Tayari Jones. It is a modern reimagining of the myth of Hades and Persephone within a Nigerian family.

In her short story collection, Better Never than Late, religious fervor culminates in an exorcism for one unfortunate maid. A mother abandons her child in search of personal freedom. A wife joins her husband, only to discover news that threatens their relationship. Their reality is one of dashed hopes, twisted love and the pain of homesickness, even as they fight to make their way in this new world.