Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
October 2015
On Sale: September 22, 2015
336 pages ISBN: 0544003446 EAN: 9780544003446 Kindle: B00QPI1O2E Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
Inspired by Nigeriaβs folktales and its war, Under the Udala TreesΒ is aΒ deeply searching, powerful debut about the dangers of living and loving openly.
Ijeoma comes of age as her nation does; born before independence, she is eleven when civil war breaks out in the young republic of Nigeria. Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child and they, star-crossed, fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are also both girls.Β
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When their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself. But there is a cost to living inside a lie. Β Β Β Β
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As Edwidge Danticat has made personal the legacy of Haitiβs political coming of age, OkparantaβsΒ Under the Udala TreesΒ uses one womanβs lifetime to examine the ways in which Nigerians continue to struggle toward selfhood. Even as their nation contends with and recovers from the effects of war and division, Nigerian lives are also wrecked and lost from taboo and prejudice. This story offers a glimmer of hope β a future where a woman might just be able to shape her life around truth and love.Β
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Acclaimed byΒ Vogue, theΒ Financial Times,Β and many others, Chinelo Okparanta continues to distill βexperience into something crystalline, stark but lustrousβ (New York Times Book Review).Β Under the Udala TreesΒ marks the further rise of a star whose βtales will break your heart openβ (New York Daily News).
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