Nigerian Caine Prize Finalist Arinze Ifeakandu’s stunning short story collection God’s Children Are Little Broken Things will be published June 2022 by A Public Space Books.

Arinze is no stranger to Brittle Paper, his work has appeared in our submissions as well as in our news and interview posts. We celebrated his nomination as a Caine Prize Finalist in 2017 for his short story of the same name “God’s Children Are Little Broken Things.” Now, we are ecstatic to support and share the news of his debut short story collection.

The collection will feature nine short stories that center “queer male intimacy brim with simmering secrecy, ecstasy, loneliness, and love in their depictions of what it means to be gay in contemporary Nigeria.” Some early versions of the collection have been released and have received praise and applause, like from Adam Haslett, author of Imagine Me Gone:

These are brilliant stories: heartbroken but pulsing with life, wise but never cynical, and soaked in an atmosphere so convincing it’s like being inside a great album. The prose alone is worth the price of the ticket, as lush as it is exact, but through it comes whole worlds of longing and travail, youth and aging, queer love expressed in so many of its facets. Arinze Ifeakandu is a major talent, and God’s Children Are Little Broken Things is a seriously good book.

Arinze Ifeakandu is originally from Kano, Nigeria. He was a Caine Prize finalist in 2017 and also Public Space Writing Fellow. He graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is currently pursuing his PhD at Florida State University.

Congratulations to Arinze Ifeakandu!