Ghostroots: Stories

In this beguiling collection of twelve imaginative stories set in Lagos, Nigeria, ’Pemi Aguda dramatizes the tension between our yearning to be individuals and the ways we are haunted by what came before. In “Manifest,” a woman sees the ghost of her abusive mother in her daughter’s face. Shortly after, the daughter is overtaken by wicked and destructive impulses. In “Breastmilk,” a wife forgives her husband for his infidelity. Months later, when she is unable to produce milk for her newborn, she blames herself for failing to uphold her mother’s feminist values and doubts her fitness for motherhood. In “Things Boys Do,” a trio of fathers finds something unnatural and unnerving about their infant sons. As their lives rapidly fall to pieces, they begin to fear that their sons are the cause of their troubles. And in “24, Alhaji Williams Street,” a teenage boy lives in the shadow of a mysterious disease that’s killing the boys on his street. These and other stories in Ghostroots map emotional and physical worlds that lay bare the forces of family, myth, tradition, gender, and modernity in Nigerian society. Powered by a deep empathy and glinting with humor, they announce a major new literary talent.

’Pemi Aguda is an MFA graduate from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. Her writing has been published in Granta, Ploughshares, Zoetrope, and other publications, and has been awarded the O. Henry Prize for short fiction. She is from Lagos, Nigeria, and is currently living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

ISBN: 9781324065852
Format: Hardback
Pages: 224
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: May 07, 2024

"Wildly inventive and odd, but written with surgeonlike precision, these stories herald the arrival of a major voice in speculative fiction.""[A] mesmerizing and unsettling debut collection… Aguda is a precise and exciting prose stylist, and her stories offer vivid insights into tradition, family, and trauma… [A] smart, playful, and compassionate collection worthy of repeated reads.""Aguda stirs her cauldron of social criticism, feminism, structural invention and grotesque gothic twists into a triumph of genre-bending storytelling, a kind of African uncanny all of her own.""Spectacular…. ‘Pemi Aguda reimagines Lagos, Nigeria’s everyday rhythms with a supernatural essence, much like Bora Chung or Mariana Enríquez’ uncanny voices.""There is no right way to move in Aguda’s world. It is a world haunted, burdened—and fascinating, for anyone brave enough to dive into her evocative, eerie stories.""’Pemi Aguda plants us among the vanishing markets and shape-shifting houses of a richly imagined Lagos, Nigeria …. Its inhabitants grapple with ancestral ties that often feel too tight or too loose and weigh invitations to believe in miracles or magic. While the ground may shift beneath these stories, the roots within their narratives reach to profound depth.""'In Ghostroots, the delightful speculative conceits of the stories are elegantly, even architecturally, balanced with the gorgeous fullness of human emotion, all the hunger and longing and fear and delight of being a human being in the world. A wonderful collection from a truly gifted writer.""Ghostroots is a triumph. 'Pemi Aguda’s strong storytelling skills give readers the gift of realistic characters and darkly imaginative stories that creep under your skin and stay buried there. . . . ’Pemi Aguda is now among my favorite authors.""A marvelously unsettling collection where the everyday strangeness of life and the uncanny rub up against each other.""Ghostroots is a big, strong river. Once you are caught in its currents, you flow with it no matter where it runs. And it runs through gorgeous and startling places.""I loved everything about this book, which heralds a major and extraordinary new voice in fiction. . . . These stories consumed me. I'll be thinking about them for years to come.""Ghostroots is the kind of collection you dream of discovering and reading—from one of my favorite living writers.""In this perceptive and astute collection, ‘Pemi Aguda tells of the metaphysical cracks on the surface of contemporary Nigerian society with an uncompromising, humane touch.""Here you’ll find breathtaking stories of the familiar and the strange, full of empathy for characters trying to bridge chasms between communities, families, generations, and their ghosts. 'Pemi Aguda builds worlds with blade-like acuity. You’ll be caught in their sway and transported.""[Aguda’s] thought-provoking speculative stories … lay bare the universal experience, illuminating the menace that constantly lurks just below the surface.… With a breadth similar to the critically acclaimed Jackal, Jackal by Tobi Ogundiran, this will also appeal to readers of Eugen Bacon, Lisa Tuttle, and Karen Russell."