The first novel by Caine Prize winning author Okwiri Oduor will be published next year. The novel is titled Things They Lost and set for April 12, next year by Scribner.

This debut comes 14 years after Oduor won the Caine Prize for African Writing for her story “My Father’s Head,” which follows a young woman who struggles with picturing the face and head of her late father.

Things They Lost explores a different family dynamic—that of a mother and daughter. Readers interested in stories that blur the lines between the present world and the supernatural should definitely bookmark this release. According to the publisher’s note, the story is suffused with “mystery and magic” and takes place at “the intersection between the spirit world and the human one.”

Read the publishers description below and follow the link below to preorder.

This astonishing, devastating debut novel, riven through with mystery and magic, tells the story of a lonely girl living in a small African town and her struggle to free herself from her mercurial, charming mother.

Ayosa is a wandering spirit—joyous, exuberant, filled to the brim with longing. Her only companions in her grandmother’s crumbling house are as lonely as Ayosa herself: the ghostly Fatumas, whose eyes are the size of bay windows, who teach her to dance and wail at the death news; the Jolly-Annas, cruel birds who cover their solitude with spiteful laughter; the milkman, who never greets Ayosa and whose milk tastes of mud; and Sindano, the kind owner of a café no one ever visits.

Unexpectedly, miraculously, one day Ayosa finds a friend. Yet she is always fixed on her beautiful mama, Nabumbo Promise: a mysterious and aloof photographer, she comes and goes as she pleases, with no apology or warning. Set at the intersection of the spirit world and the human one, Things They Lost is a stunning and unforgettable novel that unfurls the dizzying dualities of love, at its most intoxicating and all-encompassing.

Author Bio: Okwiri Oduor has had fellowships at MacDowell and Art Omi and has also been a visiting writer at the Lannan Center. She has MFA in creative writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. She currently lives in Germany.

Pre-Order Things They Lost : Amazon