'Pemi Aguda

A debut collection of stories set in a hauntingly reimagined Lagos where characters vie for freedom from ancestral ties.

Stories

Ghostroots

I really enjoyed this book of speculative fiction set in Nigeria. Living in Africa is to read stories in newspapers or on your local town news of local myths, stories of women giving birth to yams, goats, people being cured of ailments by local witches. Pemi Aguda captured perfectly the quotidian life in Nigeria with the fabulation that are part of day to day gossip. I could really feel like I was in my village in Uganda. I know this book is being received as magical realism outside the continent but I can’t stress how often you hear a story like the ones in this book in the local news. These stories are part of our society as a way to maintain social cohesion as they are mostly tales of punishment after bad behaviour. Various anthropologists have argued that gossip is a form of political action to maintain order in societies as the ones in Aguda’s stories.

Pemi Aguda uses folklore and fantasy to capture a society with all its contradictions, the effects of patriarchal masculinity, neoliberalism in nigeria, inter generational trauma, traditional vs modern values. Solid debut from a new author

Marion R

I really enjoyed this book of speculative fiction set in Nigeria. Living in Africa is to read stories in newspapers or on your local town news of local myths, stories of women giving birth to yams, goats, people being cured of ailments by local witches. Pemi Aguda captured perfectly the quotidian life in Nigeria with the fabulation that are part of day to day gossip. I could really feel like I was in my village in Uganda. I know this book is being received as magical realism outside the continent but I can’t stress how often you hear a story like the ones in this book in the local news. These stories are part of our society as a way to maintain social cohesion as they are mostly tales of punishment after bad behaviour. Various anthropologists have argued that gossip is a form of political action to maintain order in societies as the ones in Aguda’s stories.

Pemi Aguda uses folklore and fantasy to capture a society with all its contradictions, the effects of patriarchal masculinity, neoliberalism in nigeria, inter generational trauma, traditional vs modern values. Solid debut from a new author



Ghostroots Stories

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