paperback, 386 pages
Published by HarperVoyager.
Born into post-apocalyptic Africa to a mother who was raped after the slaughter of her entire tribe, Onyesonwu is tutored by a shaman and discovers that her magical destiny is to end the genocide of her people.
Loved this! It got more and more like The Palm Wine Drunkard writing as it went on and transformed into a book that was like those psychedelic adventures.
I finished this some time ago, but I still can't really do it justice in a review. Some of the themes and world-building (and even one of the characters!) is shared with the later novel Noor, but this novel is somehow more elemental. For me the two most powerful themes were the codification of hatred as religion and how sex and reproductive biology inform politics (in the small).
Content warnings: pervasive misogyny, sexual violence, and racism play important roles in the plot.
This book is what we could call in German, strong tobacco. The book already starts with very difficult topics and wishes to be treated with the accompanying respect.
While the book and me did not really become friends in the first half, the second one gripped and convinced me.
