Blessing and her brother Ezikiel adore their larger-than-life father, their glamorous mother and their comfortable life in Lagos. But all that changes when their father leaves them for another woman.

Their mother is fired from her job and soon they have to quit their air-conditioned apartment to go and live with their grandparents in a sprawling compound in the Niger Delta. Adapting to life with a poor countryside family is a shock: Grandfather Alhaji is a firm believer in the healing properties of Marmite, while Grandma has a secret profession. And then there’s Alhaji’s new wife, Celestine. But as Blessing settles into this new life, she realizes that things are not as idyllic as they seem. Ezikiel and Mama are being drawn into separate worlds of fear and love that threaten to tear the family apart.

Told in Blessing’s own beguiling voice, Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away shows how some families can survive almost anything. At times hilarious, occasionally tragic, always poignant, it is a story you won’t soon forget.

• Price: N1200
• ISBN:  978-978-50238-0-0
• Pages: 298

Click here to read an excerpt.

Blurbs

“Christie Watson’s debut novel, set in the troubled Niger Delta, does what fiction does best, it captures place and characters so well that you feel you are also there. It is sincere, it is powerfully written, and it deserves to be read.” — Helon Habila, winner of the Commonwealth Prize, author of Oil on Water, Waiting for an Angel and Measuring Time