"The kind of collection you dream of discovering and reading—from one of my favorite living writers."— Jeff VanderMeer
"Ghostroots is a triumph."— Tananarive Due, author of The Reformatory
"A wonderful collection from a truly gifted writer."— Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds
"Aguda is a precise and exciting prose stylist, and her stories offer vivid insights into tradition, family, and trauma. Throughout [Ghostroots], the past invades the present, in the form of unwanted lineages and regretted decisions.… The horror in Aguda’s stories are borne out of a sense of inevitability. Her characters, unable to change the past, are forced to confront futures they find terrifying and dangerous. This is a smart, playful, and compassionate collection worthy of repeated reads."— Isle McElroy Vulture
"Inventive, cunning, original, and all conveyed with impeccable prose."— Lesley Nneka Arimah, author of What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky
"Ghostroots is a gorgeous inflection point in fabulism. Set in Lagos, at the confluence of tradition and wonder, the speculative currents of these stories pull you beneath the surface of contemporary Nigerian society, carrying you to a deeper place where the laws of literary physics no longer apply. ’Pemi Aguda’s razor-sharp collection will haunt you and leaving you feeling unmoored."— National Book Awards Judges Citation
"These tales, set in an alternate version of Lagos, Nigeria, in which supernatural phenomena make the impossible commonplace, unflinchingly explore complicated human emotions. Wildly inventive and odd, but written with surgeonlike precision, these stories herald the arrival of a major voice in speculative fiction."— Gabino Iglesias New York Times Book Review
"Thrilling and disturbing.… Aguda stirs her cauldron of social criticism, feminism, structural invention and grotesque gothic twists into a triumph of genre-bending storytelling, a kind of African uncanny all of her own."— Christian House Financial Times
"Ghostroots is a haunting, dream-like triumph.… This book was absolutely deserving of its status as an NBA fiction finalist."— Lauren Puckett-Pope Elle
"The 12 gothic tales spotlight characters, often mothers and daughters, who are haunted by the ghosts of their ancestors.… Adding to the tension is the question of whether the ghosts tormenting these characters are in fact real or the result of a mental illness. Aguda chooses not to tip her hand—an adept choice that makes Ghostroots all the more terrifying."— Shannon Carlin Time
"An instant classic. These 12 stories feature hauntings, reincarnations, invisible markets, dancing masquerades, shapeshifting houses, miracles, and magical transformations. Even the stories that aren’t overtly speculative possess a speculative, surreal sensibility. But regardless of the degree of imaginative calisthenics employed, the roots of every narrative in this collection [run] deep, touching something profound, something fundamentally human—a constant questioning and yearning to situate ourselves as individuals within the world.… Ghostroots is an elegantly constructed, breathtakingly beautiful, numinous collection of stories that present emotional blueprints of the Lagosian soul as a way of investigating the larger human condition."— Wole Talabi Locus
"Haunted and blazingly original."— Poets & Writers
"There is no right way to move in Aguda’s world. It is a world haunted, burdened—and fascinating, for anyone brave enough to dive into her evocative, eerie stories."— Leah Rachel Von Essen Chicago Review of Books
"Spectacular and often haunting.… ’Pemi Aguda reimagines Lagos, Nigeria’s everyday rhythms with a supernatural essence, much like Bora Chung or Mariana Enríquez’ uncanny voices."— Sam Franzini Our Culture
"The eerie and the everyday are perfectly aligned in these 12 stories set in the hustle and bustle of modern-day Lagos, as Aguda delights in transforming the domestic into something altogether more sinister."— Eithne Farry Daily Mail
"’Pemi Aguda plants us among the vanishing markets and shape-shifting houses of a richly imagined Lagos, Nigeria.… While the ground may shift beneath these stories, the roots within their narratives reach to profound depth."— Kimberly Huebner One Story
"[Aguda’s] thought-provoking speculative stories…lay bare the universal experience, illuminating the menace that constantly lurks just below the surface.… With a breadth similar to the critically acclaimed Jackal, Jackal by Tobi Ogundiran, this will also appeal to readers of Eugen Bacon, Lisa Tuttle, and Karen Russell."— Library Journal
"Here you’ll find breathtaking stories of the familiar and the strange, full of empathy for characters trying to bridge chasms between communities, families, generations, and their ghosts. ’Pemi Aguda builds worlds with blade-like acuity."— Diane Cook, author of The New Wilderness
"Ghostroots is a big, strong river. Once you are caught in its currents, you flow with it no matter where it runs. And it runs through gorgeous and startling places."— Luis Alberto Urrea, author of Good Night, Irene
"’Pemi Aguda tells of the metaphysical cracks on the surface of contemporary Nigerian society with an uncompromising, humane touch."— Emmanuel Iduma, author of I Am Still With You
"These stories consumed me. I’ll be thinking about them for years to come."— Clare Beams, author of The Garden
2024-03-23
Ghosts appear in many unexpected forms in the supernatural landscape of Lagos.
Nigerian writer Aguda opens her debut collection with “Manifest,” the tale of a relationship that becomes contentious when a woman recognizes her own mother in her daughter’s face. Many of the book’s ghosts are passed down through maternal lineages, and it seems that hauntings are reserved mostly for women. In “Breastmilk,” Aduke is more haunted by her mother’s fighting legacy—one she has betrayed by forgiving her husband Timi’s infidelity so easily—than she is by Timi’s betrayal. “Imagine Me Carrying You” follows another mother-daughter pair; the mother, haunted by a tragic car accident, becomes a listless and aggressive shell of a person her daughter must pause her own life to attend to. In “Girlie,” a daughter whose mother has sent her away to work must confront the ghost of her mother’s love after being kidnapped by the woman she buys tomatoes from at the market, while “The Wonders of the World” finds young Abisola on an extended school trip, where the intervention of her strange classmate Zeme finally helps her feel sure of her parents’ love. The stories that center the cowardice of male characters produce some of the book’s most delightful twists and strongest narrative structures. In one of the most notable stories, “The Hollow,” an architect named Arit visits the home of Madam Oni, a client, to find it constantly transformed by the abusive spirits of Madam’s son, husband, and father-in-law. In “Things Boys Do,” the lives of three different men converge when they discover they are connected through a tragic childhood incident. The collection builds slowly, finding its emotional stride in the second half, when the characters’ interiorities are more developed and complex. The setting of mythical Lagos also shimmers more energetically in the collection’s later stories.
A satisfying slow build featuring haunted family relationships.
2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, Short-listed
2025 NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award, Short-listed
2024 National Book Award, Short-listed
2024 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Short-listed
