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This debut novel from the author of the powerful, universally acclaimed Foreign Gods, Inc. looks at a woman's drowning and the ensuing investigation in an emerging African nation.In the country of Madia (based in part on Ndibe's native Nigeria) a young prostitute runs into the sea and drowns. The last man who spoke to her, the "madman" Bukuru, is asked to account for her last moments. When his testimony implicates the Madian armed forces, Bukuru is arrested and charged with her death. At the first day of trial, Bukuru, acting as his own attorney, counters these charges with allegations of his own, speaking not only of government complicity in a series of violent assaults and killings, but telling the court that the president of Madia himself is guilty of rape and murder.



About the Author

Okey Ndibe

Okey Ndibe (first name is produced as "Okay") is the author of two novels, "Foreign Gods, Inc." (named one of the best books of 2014 by, among others, Janet Maslin of the New York Times, National Public Radio, Philadelphia Inquirer, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and Mosaic magazine) , and "Arrows of Rain" as well as the memoir, "Never Look an American in the Eye: Flying Turtles, Colonial Ghosts and the Making of a Nigerian American" (winner of the 2017 Connecticut Book Award for non-fiction) . He is also a co-editor (with Zimbabwean writer, Chenjerai Hove) of "Writers Writing on Conflicts and Wars in Africa." His career as an author began after he responded in the affirmative when African American writer John Edgar Wideman asked, "You're working on a novel, right? " Ndibe was a 2015-2016 Shearing Fellow at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. He earned MFA and PhD degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and has taught at St. Lawrence University, Brown University, Trinity College, Simon's Rock College, Connecticut College, and the University of Lagos (as a Fulbright scholar) . He served as the founding editor of African Commentary, a US-based international magazine published by the late novelist, Chinua Achebe. He was a member of the editorial board of Hartford Courant, the oldest continuously published newspaper in the US, where his journalism won national and state awards. Ndibe's essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, BBC online, Financial Times, The Guardian, Al Jazeera online, The Mail & Guardian (South Africa) , Fabian Society Journal, www.saharareporters.com, and www.thisisafrica.me. For more than fifteen years he wrote a widely syndicated weekly column on Nigerian politics and culture. He is currently working on a novel titled "Native Tongues".



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