Cover image for After a Dance

After a Dance by Bridget O’Connor: Dark, funny and occasionally surreal

I’d not come across Bridget O’Connor’s writing until I was sent a nice little package of links to various spring titles by her publisher just before Christmas. An acclaimed short story writer and playwright, O’Connor died in 2010, aged only forty-nine. After a Dance is a collection of fifteen of her stories all but one

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Cover image for Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh

Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh: ‘I’ve been imprisoned all my life, daddy.’

It was that cover that snagged my attention when I was pitched Chukwuebuka Ibeh’s Blessings. With its image of a strikingly handsome but melancholy young man, it fits the novel well. Spanning a decade in Nigeria beginning in 2006, Ibeh’s debut is a poignant coming-of-age story in which a boy struggles to keep his sexuality

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Cover image for Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi

Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi: ‘How come every time I look at this book it’s become another book?!’  

I knew I wouldn’t be in for a straightforward piece of linear narrative when I was pitched Helen Oyeyemi’s Parasol Against the Axe but I hadn’t realised that her adopted home city is Prague, the narrator of her new novel which sees a hen party descend on the city. Hardly an unusual event except that

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