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Reviews
Haunted and blazingly original
The 12 thought-provoking speculative stories, featuring mostly women protagonists, a strong narrative voice, and a focus on the unsettling results of generational divides, lay bare the universal human experience, illuminating the menace that constantly lurks just below the surface ... Aguda's excellent story collection deserves a wide audience
An instant classic. Ghostroots is an elegantly constructed, breathtakingly beautiful, numinous collection of stories that present emotional blueprints of the Lagosian soul as a way of investigating the larger human condition
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
Mesmerizing and unsettling ... a smart, playful, and compassionate collection worthy of repeated reads
Wildly inventive and odd, but written with surgeonlike precision, these stories herald the arrival of a major voice in speculative fiction
'Pemi Aguda is an astonishing talent. She's inventive with form and playful with sentences. 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 the kind of collection you dream of discovering and reading - from one of my favorite living writers
Where to even start? This is one of the finest collections I have read. Inventive, cunning, original, and all conveyed with impeccable prose. And what a voice, what a unique vision. These stories read like only 'Pemi Aguda could have written them, with her distinct style and an unshakable sensibility evident in every sly turn of story, taking the narrative in perfect, unpredictable directions. Nothing short of phenomenal
A thrilling work by a truly sublime and imaginative writer. 'Pemi Aguda's stories are both absorbing and terrifying in the most delightful and addictive way ... you'll find it hard to tear yourself away from the pages
Magic and mayhem on the streets of Lagos ... 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 ... thrilling and disturbing
I loved everything about this book, which heralds a major and extraordinary new voice in fiction. 'Pemi Aguda knows where the real magic is, and she gives it all its gorgeousness, all its teeth. These stories consumed me. I'll be thinking about them for years to come
A marvellously unsettling collection where the everyday strangeness of life and the uncanny rub up against each other to create real fire
The eerie and the everyday are perfectly aligned in these twelve stories set in the hustle and bustle of Lagos in Nigeria ... excellently uncanny
Ghostroots is a triumph! The author's strong storytelling skills give readers the gift of realistic characters and darkly imaginative stories that creep under your skin and stay buried there. Disturbing, enthralling and unforgettable. 'Pemi Aguda is now among my favourites.
Beautifully strange and delightfully unexpected, each story is a tiny wonder. I'm desperate to read more from 'Pemi Aguda
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.
'Pemi Aguda is spectacular. This book 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