From the 2014 Caine Prize winner comes an astonishing new novel, riven through with mystery and magic, about a daughter’s quest to save her mother
'Magical, beguiling... Carries echoes of Toni Morrison's Beloved' Guardian
A Vulture 'Book We Can't Wait to Read in 2022'
They had not lost anyone that year, or the ones they had lost were not worth remembering...
Set in the fictional Kenyan town of Mapeli, Things They Lost tells the story of four generations of women, each haunted by the mysterious curse that hangs over the Brown family. At the heart of the novel is Ayosa Ataraxis Brown, twelve years old and the loneliest girl in the world.
Okwiri Oduor's stunningly original debut novel sings with Kenyan folklore and myth as it traces Ayosa's fragile, toxic relationship with Nabumbo Promise, her mysterious and beguiling mother who comes and goes like tumbleweed: lost, but not quite gone.
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'A tale steeped in the acrid surrealism of childhood, populated by wicked wraiths and held together by the vicious spell mothers can cast on their daughters.'
" - Leila Aboulela, author of Bird Summons
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'An original and dazzling debut novel … A haunting, magical union of Kenyan folklore and the sometimes fragile union between mother and daughter.’
" - New African
