Nigerian-British novelist and essayist in London. I write about diaspora storytelling, language, and belonging — the sentences we inherit and the ones we invent.
African writers have never won more British literary prizes. But a growing chorus warns the awards are quietly dictating what an African novel is allowed to be.
For decades, African writers in Britain glossed every foreign word for a white reader. A new generation is leaving the italics out — and letting readers do the work.
A wave of independent bookshops run by the children of African migrants is reshaping British reading — stocking the shelves their parents were never offered and their schools never taught.
When I wrote my first book, I smoothed my Nigerian father's English into something a London editor would call 'clean'. I thought I was being kind. I was betraying him.
