A mighty fry-up of pop culture, fable and verbal invention

New Statesman

A striking, controlled and masterfully taut debut...The tale has a timeless quality that renders it almost allegorical and it is the more powerful for it

FT

Full of deceptive simplicity, lyrical language and playful Igbo mythology and humour...an impressive and beautifully imagined work

Economist

Equal parts supernatural fable, rip-roaring schoolboy adventure and period re-enactment

Observer, Paperback of the Week

There is much to recommend in this debut, not least the insights into Nigerian culture and history...The novel excels in its depiction of the tribal landscape and the townspeople

Irish Times

Suffused with an air of legend and the supernatural...The Fishermen establishes Obioma as a writer to be taken seriously...ingenious, subtle, ambitious and intriguing

TLS

Reveals Nigeria's historical, political and cultural complexity

Big Issue

A debut that is packed with power and tragedy

Shortlist

A novel with an intimate canvas but also an undercurrent of something larger, more primal

We Love This Book

Terrific

Irish Examiner

A startling debut...auspicious...leaps off the pages

- Mariella Frostrup, Open Book

Nowhere is the mythic quality of The Fishermen felt more than in its...vivid images, often drawn from the natural world, through which its narrator recalls his childhood

- Lorien Kite, Financial Times

Mythic... a truly magnificent debut

- Eleanor Catton, author of 'The Luminaries',

Hardly anyone writing today is delivering this level of intricacy, lyricism and control... it just doesn't get better than this

- Alexandra Fuller, author of 'Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight',

An exciting new voice in African literary fiction...astonishingly vivid...beautifully written...read it slowly, savour the writing, enjoy

Bookbag

Skilfully building the atmosphere from light and innocent to ominous and mysterious, gradually becoming claustrophobic and ultimately tragic...engrossing

Curious Animal Magazine, Book of the Month

[A] strange, imaginative debut...A convincing modern narrative and... a majestic reimagining of timeless folklore

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

[A] lively, energetic debut novel...the talented Obioma exhibits a richly nuanced understanding of culture and character. A powerful, haunting tale of grief, healing, and sibling loyalty

Kirkus

[An] elegantly near-mythic debut novel..a deeply personal story that mirrors the larger social and political tensions in Africa... All fiction readers will enjoy

Library Journal

This book is astonishing...The writing is perfectly tuned, lyrical in places and bracing in others

BookRiot

An entrancing modern-day legend... Mr. Obioma's long-limbed and elegant writing is shot through with strikingly elevated phrasings... rich with ancient themes of filial love, fratricide, vengeance and fate... its power is unmistakable

Wall Street Journal

Storytelling at its most captivating...The Fishermen is a must-read

Brittle Paper

Chigozie Obioma truly is the heir to Chinua Achebe

The New York Times

Darkly mythic...a kind of African Cormac McCarthy, committed to a stark vision of life in which our pretensions to civilisation are forever held up and exposed as skin deep

USA Today

[A] confident début novel... frank and lyrical

New Yorker

Obioma brings terrific authorial dexterity to the family's story and its small place in Nigeria, and evokes a worldview which brings with it a terrible tragedy. This is the best novel I have read so far this year, and that, I can assure you, is saying plenty.

- Kathrine A. Powers, Christian Science Monitor

Outstanding... sits finely balanced on the cusp between myth and reality

Intelligent Life

The Fishermen is compelling stuff, acute and remorseless

Literary Review

Lyrical... a writer to watch

- Books of the Year, Economist

The best debut of the year by some distance

- Alex Preston, Observer

In contemporary Nigerian literature, muscular heroes of postcolonial independence have lost their swagger... Chigozie Obioma's debut novel, The Fishermen, recuperates this toothless archetype with superb grace

Guardian

Astonishing... The writing is so crisp, the story so unusual, that I couldn't put the book down even though it disturbed me. It was written to disturb. Four brothers, conceived by their parents to become happy and successful men, become instead harbingers of immense torment and grief. Someone must have observed that it is our children who can break us, when all other systems of oppression have failed. That is part of the tidings of this remarkable, mythic, book

Alice Walker, author of 'The Color Purple'

Darkly beautiful and strikingly original

The Lady

Steeped in African culture [The Fishermen] takes you on a journey that is simultaneously heart-warming and heart-wrenching

Cub Magazine