A sweeping heart-racing mystical novel about a university student in Lagos trying to save his
brother and himself amid the chaos of Nigeria’s civil war—a story of love friendship and
personal triumph by the two-time Booker Prize finalist and “the heir to Chinua Achebe” ( New
York Times ) “A wondrous novel.” —Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah author of Chain-Gang All Stars
finalist for the National Book Award “Chigozie Obioma is that rare thing: an original. His
world is a mix of the real and the folkloric and his writing sounds like no one else’s.” —The
Wall Street Journal Longlisted for the New American Voices Award • A Kirkus Reviews Best
Book of the Year The first images of the vision are grainy—like something seen through wet
glass. But slowly it clears and there appears the figure of a man. Set in Nigeria in the
late 1960s The Road to the Country is the epic story of a shy bookish student haunted by
long-held guilt who must go to war to free himself. When his younger brother disappears as the
country explodes in civil war Kunle must set out on an impossible rescue mission. Kunle’s
search for his brother becomes a journey of atonement that will see him conscripted into the
breakaway Biafran army and forced to fight a war he hardly understands all while navigating
the prophecies of a local Seer he who marks Kunle as an abami eda—one who will die and return
to life. The story of a young man seeking redemption in a country on fire Chigozie Obioma’s
novel is an odyssey of brotherhood love and unimaginable courage set during one of the most
devastating conflicts in the history of Africa. Intertwining myth and realism into a thrilling
inspired and emotionally powerful novel The Road to the Country is the masterpiece of
Chigozie Obioma a writer Salman Rushdie calls “a major voice” in literature.
