Dele Weds Destiny by Tomi Obaro, a novel about three best friends in Lagos, comes out on June 28, 2022. Knopf will publish in the US, and Hodder & Stoughton will publish in the UK in their Hodder Studios imprint.
Bookseller reports that Hodder Studios intends to make the book one of their “major” publications next year. Obaro is a brand new voices in the African literary scene. She lives in Brooklyn and works as an editor at Buzzfeed.
The novel tells the story of three best friends Enitan, Funmi and Zainab. The story spans the 1980s to 2015 and explores the lives of these women as they deal with what fate throws their way.
The book is being praised for the ways it centers the “the power and resilience of female friendship, the highs and lows of mother-daughter relationships, and explores the tough choices women make throughout their lives with depth and poignancy.” The American novelist Tayari Jones love the novel, describing it as “fast-paced, glamorous, and bursting with emotion.”
Read the full synopsis below and see below for pre-order options:
“Funmi, Enitan, and Zainab first meet at university in Nigeria and become friends for life despite their differences. Funmi is beautiful, brash, and determined; Enitan is homely and eager, seeking escape from her single mother’s smothering and needy love; Zainab is elegant and reserved, raised by her father’s first two wives after her mother’s death in childbirth. Their friendship is complicated but enduring, and over the course of the novel, the reader learns about their loves and losses…Now, some thirty years later, the three women are reunited for the first time, in Lagos. The occasion: Funmi’s daughter, Destiny, is getting married. Enitan brings her American daughter, Remi. Zainab travels by bus, nervously leaving her ailing husband in the care of their son. Funmi, hosting the weekend of elaborate festivities with her wealthy husband, wants everything to go perfectly. But as the big day approaches, it becomes clear that something is not right. As the novel builds powerfully toward the big event, the complexities of the mothers’ friendship—and the private wisdom each has earned—come to bear on a riveting, heartrending moment of decision. Dele Weds Destiny is a sensational debut from a dazzling new voice in contemporary fiction.”
Pre-order Dele Weds Destiny: Amazon | Bookshop.org
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