The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney
Trade Paperback
THE PRIVATE JOYS OF NNENNA MALONEY is a comic novel about Nnenna, a half-Nigerian teenager living in modern-day Manchester with her mother Joanie.
As Nnenna approaches womanhood she starts trying to connect with her Igbo-Nigerian culture. Her once close and tender relationship with her mother becomes strained as she asks probing questions about her father who she's never met and whom her mother who refuses to discuss. Each chapter begins with a biblical quote which harks back to the beginning of Maurice and Joanie's relationship - meeting in a church group are in a cafe in Cambridge - but is really Nnenna's diary headings which she is trying to hide from her mother's prying eyes. Nnenna is asking big questions of how to 'be' when she doesn't know who she is as Joanie wonders, how to truly love when she has never been loved? Okechukwu Nzelu brings us a novel about two women, big questions and lots of laughter in a unique and distinctive new voice.Buy now!
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- ISBN: 9780349701042
- Author: Okechukwu Nzelu
- Pub date: 09.10.19
- RRP: $34.99
- Format: Paperback / softback
Author
Okechukwu Nzelu
Okechukwu Nzelu is a Manchester-based writer. In 2015 he was the recipient of a Northern Writers' Award from New Writing North. His debut novel, The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney (Dialogue Books), won a Betty Trask Award; it was also shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Polari First Book Prize, and longlisted for the Portico Prize. In 2021, it was selected for the Kingston University Big Read. He is a regular contributor to Kinfolk magazine, and a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Lancaster University.
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