Booker Prize 2019 finalist

The story of Chinonso, a young poultry farmer whose soul is ignited when he sees a woman, Ndali,  attempting to jump from a highway bridge.  Chinonso and Ndali fall in love, but she is from a wealthy family and struggles to imagine a future near a chicken coop. When her family objects to the union because he is uneducated, Chinonso sells most of his possessions to attend a college in Cyprus.

But when he arrives he discovers there is no place at the school for him, and that he has been duped by the man who made the arrangements. Penniless, homeless, and furious at a world which continues to relegate him to the sidelines, Chinonso gets further away from his dream, from Ndali and the farm he called home.

Spanning continents, traversing the earth and cosmic spaces, and told by a narrator who has lived for hundreds of years, the novel is a contemporary twist of Homer's Odyssey. Written in the mythic style of the Igbo literary tradition, Chigozie Obioma weaves a heart-wrenching epic about destiny and determination.