Masobe Books has announced the acquisition of Dear Descendant(s), the debut work of fiction from Nigerian writer Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim, alongside a striking cover reveal. Publication is set for March 18, 2027.

Dear Descendant(s) opens in 1870, with a man named Alabi writing a letter to descendants he will never live to meet, carrying one impossible request: should anyone in the future ever learn how to fold time, they must come back for him, so that together they can save the woman he loved and undo the greatest regret of his life. That letter becomes the seed of everything that follows — a collection of thirteen interconnected stories tracing Alabi’s descendants across more than two centuries of African history, moving through slavery and colonialism, faith and folklore, war and migration, oppression and resilience. Each generation inherits more than blood, the collection insists; they inherit unfinished stories, impossible choices, and the stubborn hope that tomorrow might still heal yesterday. Richly grounded in Yoruba history and mythology, the book is at once epic in scope and intimate in its telling, built around questions of ancestry, memory, and what gets left behind for those who come next.

Edited by Tahzeeb Akram, Brittle Paper Submissions Editor, the collection’s cover lists all thirteen stories that make up the book, including “A Hymen Tale,” winner of the 2026 American Literary Review Award in Short Fiction.

Ibrahim’s path to this debut runs through years of quiet, disciplined output. He traces his love of storytelling back to his grandmother’s telling of African folklore, and in 2019 left an earlier career to write full-time. Since then, his work has appeared in Transition Magazine, Shenandoah, Zone 3, Ake Review, Typehouse Magazine, Adi Magazine, JMWW, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere, and has drawn a striking run of recognition: the American Literary Review Award, the Creative Future Writers’ Award, the Quramo Writers’ Prize, and a place in the Best Small Fictions anthology, alongside finalist nods for the Faber Children’s FAB Prize, the Miles Morland Writing Scholarship, the George Garrett Fiction Prize, a Masters Review anthology prize, and two Moon City Short Fiction Award finalist selections. He’s also been longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, the CRAFT Short Story Prize, the Laura Kinsella Fellowship, and the Dzanc Diverse Voices Prize, and currently edits the Journal of African Youth Literature (JAY Lit).

With Dear Descendant(s), Masobe Books adds another ambitious, historically rooted debut to a catalogue already known for backing distinctive new African voices.