Lola Shoneyin

Titilola Alexandrah Shoneyin

Baba Segi's fourth wife, the young, quiet and college-educated Bolanle, sends his household into turmoil causing his other three wives to become jealous, resentful and to plot her downfall in this debut novel from the Nigerian-born poet. 50,000 first printing.

A Novel

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives

Poems

Song of a Riverbird

So All the Time I was Sitting on an Egg

To the dismay of her ambitious mother, Bolanle marries into a polygamous family, where she is the fourth wife of a rich, rotund patriarch, Baba Segi. She is a graduate and therefore a great prize, but even graduates must produce children and her husband's persistent bellyache is a sign that things are not as they should be. Bolanle is too educated for the 'white garment conmen' Baba Segi would usually go to for fertility advice, so he takes her to hospital to discover the cause of her barrenness. Weaving the voices of Baba Segi and his four competing wives into a portrait of a clamorous household of twelve, Lola Shoneyin evokes an extraordinary Nigerian family in splashes of vibrant colour.

Titilola Alexandrah Shoneyin

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