Speak Gigantular
Edge Hill Prize for the Short Story, 2017
Shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, the Saboteur Awards, the Shirley Jackson Award and the Jhalak Prize. A startling debut short story collection from the award-winning author of Butterfly Fish. Okojie’s collection of stories are captivating, erotic, enigmatic and disturbing. Irenosen Okojie’s gift is in her understated humour, her light touch, her razor-sharp assessment of the best and worst of humankind, and her unflinching gaze into the darkest corners of the human experience. Okojie has created a world with errant Londoners caught between here and the hereafter, where insensitive men cheat on their mistresses and can only muster enough interest to fall for one- dimensional poster girls and where brave young women attempt to be erotically empowered at their own peril. Sexy, serious and at times downright disturbing, this brilliant debut collection sizzles with originality.
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Reviews
A liberatingly odd, seductive and fearless talent.
Each story featured is original, dark and with a witty but dark humour which disturbs and forces the reader to question exactly what a social norm is. This is fiction at its best, enacting change, driving the reader to act and it is spectacular.
Speak Gigantular is a work of rare confidence, luminous imagery and full of hidden sharp edges. There are few things that bring greater joy in reading than coming upon a talent so delightful, so penetrating, so scandalous. Okojie's stories are magical in all the most interesting senses of that word: devious, enthralling, unexpected.
A beautiful, sombre collection with deep shadows and dazzling highlights.
Okojie delves into the painful, the unsayable, the unknowable. Her prose is precise and illuminating: love and loneliness are recurrent themes.