Speak Gigantular Irenosen Okojie 9781909762299

Shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, the Saboteur Awards, the Shirley Jackson Award and the Jhalak Prize. A startling debut short story collection from the award-winning author of Butterfly Fish. Okojie's collection of stories are captivating, erotic, enigmatic and disturbing. Irenosen Okojie's gift is in her understated humour, her light touch, her razor-sharp assessment of the best and worst of humankind, and her unflinching gaze into the darkest corners of the human experience. Okojie has created a world with errant Londoners caught between here and the hereafter, where insensitive men cheat on their mistresses and can only muster enough interest to fall for one- dimensional poster girls and where brave young women attempt to be erotically empowered at their own peril. Sexy, serious and at times downright disturbing, this brilliant debut collection sizzles with originality.

About the Author

Irenosen Okojie MBE is a British-Nigerian writer and Arts Project Manager. Her debut novel Butterfly Fish won the 2016 Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for an Edinburgh International First Book Award. Her short story collection Speak Gigantular was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award and the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Her novel Nudibranch was featured in Vanity Fair, and was championed by Margaret Atwood as a wild, recommended read and selected as one of the best books of the year in the Guardian and Observer Review by Bernardine Evaristo and Diana Evans.

Irenosen has been a judge for The Society of Authors, The London Short Story Prize, The Royal Society Of Literature, the Berlin Writing Prize, Henley Literary Festival and Mslexia Short Story Competition. She was a judge for the 2020 BBC National Short Story Award and the 2021 Gordon Burn Prize. She is currently a judge for the Women's Prize 2022 Discoveries development programme, the International Dylan Thomas Prize and The British Book Awards. She has moderated panels for The Testaments tour, the Southbank Centre, Africa Writes, English PEN, Birmingham Literature Festival, Writing on The Wall Festival in conversation with Marlon James and others. She was the first Writer in Residence for Words of Colour, and was awarded an MBE for Services to Literature in 2021.

Reviews
Each story featured is original, dark and with a witty but dark humour which disturbs and forces the reader to question exactly what a social norm is. This is fiction at its best, enacting change, driving the reader to act and it is spectacular. * The Reading Passport *
Speak Gigantular is a work of rare confidence, luminous imagery and full of hidden sharp edges. There are few things that bring greater joy in reading than coming upon a talent so delightful, so penetrating, so scandalous. Okojie's stories are magical in all the most interesting senses of that word: devious, enthralling, unexpected. * Nina Allan, winner of the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire *
A beautiful, sombre collection with deep shadows and dazzling highlights. * Mslexia *
Okojie delves into the painful, the unsayable, the unknowable. Her prose is precise and illuminating: love and loneliness are recurrent themes. * Bernardine Evaristo, The Guardian *
A liberatingly odd, seductive and fearless talent. * Laline Paull, author of The Bees, shortlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction *


Awards
Short-listed for Edge Hill Prize for the Short Story 2017 (UK) and Jhalak Prize 2017 (UK) and Shirley Jackson Award 2017 (UK) and Saboteur Awards 2017 (UK).



Book Information
ISBN 9781909762299
Author Irenosen Okojie
Format Paperback
Page Count 216
Imprint Jacaranda Books Art Music Ltd
Publisher Jacaranda Books Art Music Ltd
Weight(grams) 220g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 128mm * 22mm