Under the Udala Trees

"Okparanta is major new voice not only because of her mesmerizing storytelling, but for her bravery and originality. She is a truth teller and soothsayer... Under the Udala Trees is breathtaking, rich with history and heart" - Tayari JonesOne day in 1968, at the height of the Biafran civil war, Ijeoma's father is killed and her world is transformed forever. Separated from her grief-stricken mother, she meets another young lost girl, Amina, and the two become inseparable. Theirs is a relationship that will shake the foundations of Ijeoma's faith, test her resolve and flood her heart.In this masterful novel of faith, love and redemption, Okparanta takes us from Ijeoma's childhood in war-torn Biafra, through the perils and pleasures of her blossoming sexuality, her wrong turns, and into the everyday sorrows and joys of marriage and motherhood. As we journey with Ijeoma we are drawn to the question: what is the value of love and what is the cost?

Under the Udala Trees [recalls] the work of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in its powerful interweaving of the personal and the political. Okparanta's simple, direct prose is interspersed with... allegory and folklore and... the dizzying scope of her storytelling keeps you gripped, A brave novel seeking to challenge prejudice... Okparanta describes with clarity and seeming simplicity states that are not simple at all, A harrowing coming-of-age tale that, with elegant prose, captures the conflict of the time while illustrating how it resounds today. Okparanta shines a light on the plight of the gay community in Nigeria, where its condemnation is tragically not consigned to the history books, A culture of sexual and gender oppression is vividly examined by the Nigerian author who has won the O. Henry Prize and Lambda Award for her short stories. [It] offers a memorable, evocative account of a woman's fight to assert her identity in a country that scorns her, [A] remarkable and exquisite first novel about wars - both external and internal - endurance, survival, and love. A coming of age story that demands not just to be not just read, but felt, [it] wraps us in the spell of an exceptionally talented writer and storyteller

CHINELO OKPARANTA was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria and moved with her family to the US at the age of ten. She received her BSc from Pennsylvania State University, her MA from Rutgers University and her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her stories have been featured in the New Yorker and Granta. In 2013 she was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing. She is a winner of a 2014 Lambda Literary Award, a 2016 Lambda Literary Award, the 2016 Jessie Redmon Fauset Book Award in Fiction, and of a 2014 O. Henry Prize.