Blessings

A tender, yet powerful story, poetic and wise. Ibeh draws such beautiful characters, and through their eyes, teaches us that love cannot be beaten or threatened from the human heart. From the first chapter, this book won’t let you go. – AJ WestWonderful, vivid – Patrick GaleA moving debut about love and loneliness – Sunday TimesWow – what a debut! I was left feeling heartbroken yet hopeful. Chukwuebuka Ibeh is a beautiful writer. – Taylor-Dior Rumble, author of THE SITUATIONSHIPA sublime coming-of-age tale… an extraordinarily composed and deeply felt debut * Guardian *An excellent debut novel – John BoyneAs engaging as doorstoppers can be, there is an unparalleled pleasure in something short and searing. Chukwuebuka Ibeh’s debut is set in modern-day Nigeria, where the country’s criminalisation of same-sex marriage has created a hostile atmosphere for the LGBTQ+ population. After an intimate moment with the family apprentice, Obiefuna is sent to a Christian boarding school by his father. So begins a process of self-discovery. Blessings is told from Obiefuna and his mother’s perspective, a dynamic which has plenty of potential for the profound. * Esquire, The Biggest Books Landing on Your Reading List in 2024 *Stark yet tender, balancing episodes of hope with episodes of gut-plummeting sadness, this is an accomplished novel, distinguished by sensitive prose and taut scene-making * Daily Mail *A magnificent debut… Ibeh has the ability to ensure his political positions inform, rather than overwhelm, the intimate dramas at the heart of his fiction. He’s vocal about the writers he admires – among them, Buchi Emecheta, Jhumpa Lahiri, Zadie Smith and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – and clearly ambitious. With writing this good, it’s to be hoped he’ll soon find his name among their ranks * Daily Telegraph *Blessings… presents a predicament of universal moral application with a near-classical concentration that endorses the identity of its central character, Obiefuna, as a unique individual * TLS, Books of the Year 2024 *

Chukwuebuka Ibeh is a young writer from Port Harcourt, Nigeria. His writing has appeared in McSweeneys, The New England Review of Books and Lolwe, amongst others, and he is a staff writer at Brittle Paper. He was the Runner-up for the 2021 J.F Powers Prize for Fiction, a finalist for the Gerald Kraak Award and Morland Foundation Scholarship and was profiled as one of the “Most Promising New Voices of Nigerian Fiction” in Electric Literature. He has studied creative writing under Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dave Eggers and Tash Aw. He is a student on a fully funded MFA programme at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, until 2024.

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