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PRAISES ABOUT THE BOOK
Akpan’s voice is a literary miracle, rendering lives of almost unimaginable deprivation and terror into stories that are nothing short of transcendent.— from the publisher
Akpan reveals Africas pain ,pity, joy, and grace, and comes closer to the truth about modern Africa than the entire outpourings of the Western mass media – GUARDIAN
Say You’re One of Them is a wholly unflinching vision of Africa through the eyes of five children in five countries.
Akpan transports the reader into gritty scenes of chaos and fear in his rich debut collection of five long stories set in war-torn Africa. Akpans prose is beautiful and his stories are insightful and revealing…
– Publishers Weekly
The humor, the endurance, the horrors and grace-Akpan has captured all of it… The Stories are not amazing and moving, and imbued with a powerful moral courage – they are also surprisingly expert… Beautifully constructed, stately in a way that offsets their impoverished scenarios. Akpan wants you to see and feel Africa, its glory and its pain. And you do, which makes this an extraordinary book.
– O Magazine
Akpans Africa is a messy violent place… and its innocent kids are what pull at our heartstrings.
– The Guardian
A startling debut collection… Akpan fuses a knowledge of African poverty and strife with a conspicuously literary approach to storytelling. Filtering tales of horror through the wide eyes of the young
– Tower Books
Uwem Akpan writes with a political fierceness and a humanity so full of compassion it might just change the world. His is a burning talent.
– Chris ABANI
An important literary debut… juxtaposed against the clarity and revelation in Akpans prose – as translucent a style as I have read in a long while – we find subjects that nearly render the mind helpless and throw the heart into a hopeless erratic rhythm out of fear, out of pity, out of the shame of being only a few degrees of separation removed from these monstrous modern circumstances… The reader discovers that no hiding place is good enough with these stories battering at your mind and heart.
– Chicago Tribune
Left me gasping! – Opray Winfrey
ABOUT THE AUTHOR.
Fr. Uwem was born on Ikot Akpan Eda, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. After attending Queen of Apostles Minor Seminary, Afaha Obong, he studied at Creighon and Gonzaga universities, USA, and at Hekima College, Kenya. Ordained in 2003, he received his MFA in creative writing from the Univeristy of Michigan in 2006. Published in 2008, Say You are One of Them, his first book, has won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, Africa Region; PEN/ Beyond Margins Award and the Hurston/ Wright Legacy Award. It was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Dayton Literacy Peace Prize. Fr. Uwem was also nominated for the (UK) Guardian First Book Award and for the Caine Prize for African. He is the first Nigerian writer to win the Prestigious Oprah Winfrey Bookclub endorsement. Fr. Uwem lives in Nigeria.
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