First published 2015
Nine-year-old Benjamin and his three older brothers live in the small Nigerian town of Akure in the mid-1990s. When their strict father travels to a distant city for work, the boys skip school and venture to a forbidden river to fish. There they encounter a local madman who delivers a chilling prophecy to the eldest brother: one of his siblings will kill him. This mystic prediction shatters the bonds between the close-knit brothers and sets in motion a chain of events that will devastate their family. Benjamin watches as suspicion and fear replace the love that once united them. The prophecy becomes a self-fulfilling curse that transforms their childhood innocence into something darker. What unfolds is a story of brotherhood destroyed by belief, told through the eyes of the youngest witness to his family's unraveling.
Genres: literary-fiction, african-literature, mystery, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: brothers, self-fulfilling-prophecy
Setting: Akure, Nigeria
Period: 1990s
Audio CD · Little Brown and Company
Content warnings: death, mental-illness