November couldn’t come sooner for fans of Nigerian author Uwem Akpan. His first book since 2008 will be published by W. W. Norton & Company on November 2, 2021. New York, My Village is a novel about a Nigerian editor and his travails in the cut-throat, exclusivist world of high profile New York city publishing scene.

A breakout star of the late 2000s, Akpan is known for his debut book, Say You Are One of Them, a collection of short stories that took the literary world by storm. The book received numerous award recognitions, including being an Oprah Book Club pick. With New York, My Village, Akpan returns with a novel that blends key African literary motifs in a searing critique of American racial politics.

Synopsis: Ekong Udousoro is a Nigerian editor undertaking a reckoning with the brutal recent history of his homeland by curating a collection of stories about the Biafran War. He is thrilled when a publishing fellowship gives him the opportunity to continue his work in Manhattan while learning the ins and outs of publishing. But while his sophisticated colleagues meet him with kindness and hospitality, he is soon exposed to the industry’s colder, ruthlessly commercial underbelly, boorish and hostile neighbors, and―beneath a superficial cosmopolitanism―a bedrock of white cultural superiority and racist assumptions about Africa, its peoples, and worst of all, its food. Haunted by the devastating darkness of civil war and searingly observant about the myriad ways that tribalism defines life everywhere from the villages of Africa to the villages within New York City, New York, My Village is nevertheless full of heart, hilarity, and hope.  Via Goodreads

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