Harmattan Season
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected May 27, 2025
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Award-winning author Tochi Onyebuchi’s new standalone novel is hard-boiled fantasy noir: Raymond Chandler meets P. Djèlí Clark in a postcolonial West Africa
Fortune always left whatever room I walked into, which is why I don’t leave my place much these days...
Veteran and private eye Boubacar doesn’t need much—least of all trouble—but trouble always seems to find him. Work has dried up, and he’d rather be left alone to deal with his bills as the Harmattan rolls in to coat the city in dust, but Bouba is a down on his luck deux fois, suspended between two cultures and two worlds.
When a bleeding woman stumbles onto his doorway, only to vanish just as quickly, Bouba reluctantly finds himself enmeshed in the secrets of a city boiling on the brink of violence. The French occupiers are keen to keep the peace at any cost, and the indigenous dugulen have long been shattered into restless factions vying for a chance to reclaim their lost heritage and abilities. As each hard-won clue reveals horrifying new truths, Bouba may have to carve out parts of himself he’s long kept hidden, and decide what he’s willing to offer next.
From the visionary author of Riot Baby and Goliath, Harmattan Season is a gripping fantasy noir in the tradition of Chandler, Hammond, and Christie that will have you by the throat—both dryly funny and unforgettably evocative.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The melancholy antihero of this searing indictment of colonialism from World Fantasy Award winner Onyebuchi (Goliath) walks the mean streets of an unnamed West African city that's trembling on the verge of an election between a charismatic indigenous rebel leader and a corrupt puppet of the French occupation. As the annual Harmattan dust storms gather strength, a girl bleeding from an abdominal wound stumbles into the squalid flat of clientless private investigator Boubacar, a half-French, half-native "chercher" (finder of lost persons) who fought for the French in a past war. Their encounter is brief before the girl mysteriously disappears without a trace, sending Boubacar on an odyssey of political and personal discoveries, and forcing him to face his actions in the war. The Harmattan winds both hurt and help along the way. Blending elements of classic noir fiction (including a Chandleresque narrative voice) and fantastic acts of terroristic martyrdom, Onyebuchi crafts an equally heady and page-turning narrative. This is an unforgettable portrait of a place and a person trapped between two worlds and two cultures.
