Chinelo Okparanta Book order

Chinelo Okparanta explores the complexities of identity and culture with a piercing sensitivity. Her prose, often rooted in the Nigerian experience, delves into themes of alienation, longing, and the search for belonging. Okparanta navigates profound human emotions with confidence, revealing the subtle nuances of relationships and societal pressures. Her masterful storytelling draws readers into worlds rich with compelling characters and challenging ideas.

2022
Harry Sylvester Bird
3.3(478)Add rating
"Disarmingly funny." - The New York Times From the award-winning author of Under the Udala Trees and Happiness, Like Water comes a brilliant, provocative, up-to-the-minute satirical novel about a young white man's education and miseducation in contemporary America. Harry Sylvester Bird grows up in Edward, Pennsylvania, with his parents, Wayne and Chevy, whom he greatly dislikes. They're racist, xenophobic, financially incompetent, and they have quite a few secrets of their own. To Harry, they represent everything wrong with this country. And his small town isn't any better. He witnesses racial profiling, graffitied swastikas, and White Power signs on his walk home from school. He can't wait until he's old enough to leave. When he finally is, he moves straight to New York City, where he feels he can finally live out his true inner self. In the city, he meets and falls in love with Maryam, a young Nigerian woman. But when Maryam begins to pull away, Harry is forced to confront his identity as he never has before--if he can. Brilliant, funny, original, and unflinching, Harry Sylvester Bird is a satire that speaks to all the most pressing tensions and anxieties of our time--and of the history that has shaped us and might continue to do so.
2016
Under the Udala Trees
336 pages
12 hours of reading
4.0(583)Add rating
A triumphant love story that follows the life of one woman from the chaos of Nigeria's 1968 civil war through forbidden first love, loss, marriage and motherhood.
2014
Happiness, Like Water
208 pages
8 hours of reading
3.9(24)Add rating
In this debut collection, Chinelo Okparanta introduces us to families burdened equally by the past and the future. Here, we meet a childless couple with very different desires; a college professor comforting a troubled student; a mother seeking refuge from an abusive husband; an embittered spinster recalling the loss of a dear childhood friend; and a young woman waiting to join her lover abroad. High expectations - whether of success in Nigeria, or the dream of opportunity and accomplishment in America - consume them...In language that is both raw and elegant, 'Happiness, Like Water' heralds the arrival of a fearless and sensitive literary voice.

Harry Sylvester Bird

Under the Udala Trees

Happiness, Like Water