One of the most restlessly genre-defying writers of their generation has just announced the book they say they have been waiting their entire career to write. Akwaeke Emezi’s Eclipse & the Wolf is expected February 2, 2027, published by Harper Voyager US.

Announcing the news on Instagram, Emezi wrote: “I have been waiting my entire career to publish full on fantasy, and my bet? You’ve never read anything like this.” We believe them. The novel is described as a dark epic fantasy following the heirs to a magical city’s rival clans through shifting alliances, devastating betrayals, and brutal power struggles that give way to a new order, and perhaps blood-soaked redemption.

Born in Umuahia and raised in Aba, Nigeria, Emezi is the author of Freshwater, Pet, and the New York Times bestselling The Death of Vivek Oji. They won the 2017 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Africa, have been selected as a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, and their work has been selected and edited by Chimamanda Adichie. Eclipse & the Wolf will be their tenth book, following Somadina and Son of the Morning, both published in 2025, a pace of output that continues to astonish.

Emezi finally stepping fully into fantasy, after years of bending and blending genres across literary fiction, YA, romance, and romantasy feels like a natural arrival point for a writer whose entire career has been about refusing the boundaries others set. Winter 2027 cannot come soon enough.

Read the synopsis below:

Ten years ago, Eclipse Orinabe and her aunt, Silver, were the sole survivors of a massacre that nearly wiped out their clan.

Then the Orinabe unleash their revenge: the annihilation of the clans who betrayed them, and the release of rapture, a drug so potent that the clan—once peaceful pharmaceutical makers—soon have St. Paradise in a chokehold.

Disturbed by the Orinabe’s bloody rise, the surviving clan leaders nonetheless make nice with Silver, known as the Butcher, and accept Eclipse—a weapon disguised as a glamorous clan princess—into society.

With the foundations of St. Paradise trembling, one spark will set the city aflame. And embers are everywhere: Wolf, Heir to the Goldshot clan, is on the run from his own people, armed with holy golden bullets. He claims sanctuary with Clan Heron, spies so secretive that no one knows their true Heir.

Noah, Heir to the psychic Solarin clan, is pushed into a consuming relationship with Eclipse by his clan leaders. But neither Heir is what the other thinks—and the secret Noah is keeping is powerful enough to blink out St. Paradise’s entire existence in an instant.

An ancient magic ties these clans together and a brutal reckoning will come as the Heirs collide and claim their fraught inheritance.

Emotionally rich, explosively thrilling, and finely wrought as all of Emezi’s work, their new standalone novel is perfect for fans of the author or Fonda Lee, R.F. Kuang, and V.E. Schwab.