Synopses & Reviews
I like the idea of a god who knows what it's like to be a twin. To have no memory of ever being alone.
Twin sisters Bibike and Ariyike are enjoying a relatively comfortable life in Lagos in 1996. Then their mother loses her job due to political strife, and the family, facing poverty, becomes drawn into the New Church, an institution led by a charismatic pastor who is not shy about worshipping earthly wealth.
Soon Bibike and Ariyike's father wagers the family home on a "sure bet" that evaporates like smoke. As their parents' marriage collapses in the aftermath of this gamble, the twin sisters and their two younger siblings, Andrew and Peter, are thrust into the reluctant care of their traditional Yoruba grandmother. Inseparable while they had their parents to care for them, the twins' paths diverge once the household shatters. Each girl is left to locate, guard, and hone her own fragile source of power.
Written with astonishing intimacy and wry attention to the fickleness of fate, Tola Rotimi Abraham's Black Sunday takes us into the chaotic heart of family life, tracing a line from the euphoria of kinship to the devastation of estrangement. In the process, it joyfully tells a tale of grace and connection in the midst of daily oppression and the constant incursions of an unremitting patriarchy. This is a novel about two young women slowly finding, over twenty years, in a place rife with hypocrisy but also endless life and love, their own distinct methods of resistance and paths to independence.
Review
"[A] piercing, supple debut....Abraham stuffs her novel past brimming, but its sophisticated
structure and propulsive narration allow her to tuck in a biting
critique of corrupt colonial religion and universally exploitative men." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
Review
"Abraham mightily
captures a sense of the stresses of daily life in a family, city, and
culture that always seems on the edge of self-destruction." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Tola Rotimi Abraham's Black Sunday
will destroy you. It won't be an explosion or any other ultraviolent
thing. Instead, the novel will inflict a thousand tiny cuts on you, and
your soul will slowly pour from them....Abraham creates believable
characters whose stories could easily have come from real life [that]
makes them simultaneously unique and universal, and it makes it easy to
understand the way they see the world, even if their lens is ugly....Black Sunday
is a literary wound that bleeds pain for a while, but you should stay
the course, because that's followed by lots of love, beauty, and hope." Gabino Iglesias, NPR
About the Author
Tola Rotimi Abraham is a writer from Lagos, Nigeria. She lives in Iowa City and is currently pursuing a graduate degree in journalism. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she has taught writing at the University of Iowa. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Catapult, The Des Moines Register, The Nigerian Literary Magazine, and other places.