Chinelo Okparanta’s hotly-anticipated new novel, her first in more than half a decade, will be published by Mariner Books on July 12.
The novel, titled “Harry Sylvester Bird”, follows “a young white man’s education and miseducation in contemporary America” as he journeys across cities, confronting notions of race and racism and coming to terms with his own privilege.
The exciting novel has received advanced praise ahead of publication and was named one of the most anticipated reads for summer by Cosmopolitan, Book Riot, as well as been listed on Brittle Paper’s African Summer Reads.
Ahead of the book’s release, Okparanta’s team has announced three dates in July in the US, with more to come.
Born in 1981, Okparanta is a a Nigerian-American. She was born in Port Harcourt and raised there until she was 10 when she emigrated to the United States with her family.
Her debut short-story collection, “Happiness, Like Water” (Granta Books and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), was longlisted for the 2013 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, a finalist for the 2014 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and won the 2014 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. She has been nominated for a United States Artists Fellowship and was a finalist for the 2014 Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative in Literature. Other honours include the 2013 Society of Midland Authors Award (finalist), and a finalist for he 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing.
Her short story “Fairness” was 2014 included in The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, among 20 short stories of this year.[
“Happiness, Like Water” was an Editors’ Choice for The New York Times Book Review on September 20, 2013. The collection was also listed as one of The Guardian’s Best African Fiction of 2013, and in December 2014 was announced as being a finalist for the Nigerian Etisalat Prize for Literature.
Her first novel, “Under the Udala Trees”, was published in 2015. The New York Times reviewer called Okparanta “a graceful and precise writer”, and The Guardian (UK) describes the book as “a gripping novel about a young gay woman’s coming of age in Nigeria during the Nigerian civil war…” in which “…Okparanta deftly negotiates a balance between a love story and a war story.”
