Dazzling
A bewitching tale of magic steeped in Nigerian mythology
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- 3,99 €
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- 3,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
'I am truly dazzled' TRACY CHEVALIER
'A rich tapestry of African mythology and magic' CHERIE JONES
'Bursting with magic, bright and visceral' JENNIFER SAINT
'A feast of shimmering, beautiful prose' CHIKA UNIGWE
Soon you will become the thing all other beasts fear.
Treasure and her mother lost everything when Treasure's daddy died. Haggling for scraps in the market, Treasure meets a spirit who promises to bring her father back - but she has to complete a monstrous task for him first.
Ozoemena has an itch in the middle of her back that can't be scratched. An itch that tells of her great and terrible destiny, passed down through generations, to defend her people by becoming a leopard. Her father impressed upon her what an honour this was before he vanished, but it's one she couldn't want less.
But as the two girls reckon with their burgeoning wildness and the legacy of their fathers' decisions, Ozoemena's fellow students at her new boarding school start to vanish. Treasure and Ozoemena will face frightening choices as they are drawn into battle with sinister forces - and it's a fight they can't both survive.
'Deftly conjured' GUARDIAN
'Erudite, original and beautifully written' CHRISTIE WATSON
'Unexpected, explosive and deeply satisfying' MELISSA FU
'A masterful storm' DOREEN CUNNINGHAM
'Uncanny and affecting in equal measure' T. L. HUCHU
'One hell of a book' MEG CLOTHIER
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Emelumadu debuts with an entrancing tale of two Nigerian girls whose fates are intertwined in Igbo myth and magic. While preteen Ozoemena is at her uncle's funeral, a mysterious boy touches her back, causing a burning sensation and leaving a welt. Her paternal grandmother tells her she was touched by the ghost of her dead uncle, who was able to change into a leopard when he was alive, and that he's chosen Ozoemena to carry on the family's tradition of becoming the leopard to fight injustice. Her mother, however, believes the myth is a sign of madness, and sends Ozoemena to a boarding school to protect her from her grandmother's influence. A parallel narrative follows Treasure, who's grieving the death of her father and is haunted by a spirit who wants to make her his wife. Treasure resists, although she agrees to procure three other girls to marry the spirit's dead friends in exchange for freeing her father from someone called the "Bone Woman." When Ozoemena learns from her sojourns in the spirit world that the girls were taken from her school, she has an opportunity to use her power as the leopard. Emelumadu's account of boarding school life feels a bit rote, with pages dedicated to the minutiae of students' social alliances, but she makes up for it with exhilarating depictions of the spirits. Emelumadu delivers the goods with her satisfying coming-of-age story.
