Borough Press to publish Adorah Nworah’s debut novel
The Borough Press has landed a “compulsive” and “creepy” literary debut from Nigerian writer and author, Adorah Nworah.
Burough Press is an imprint of the UK’s Harper Collins Publishers.
Nworah is a US-based storyteller from Anambra State, Nigeria. She works as a lawyer. Her short stories have been featured in literary magazines including AFREADA and adda, and two of them – “The Bride” and “Broken English” — were respectively shortlisted for the 2019 Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize and longlisted for 2018 Short Story Day Africa Prize.
Nworah said she was ‘extremely fortunate to have the guidance of Ore AgbajeWilliams who had acquired the UK and Commonwealth rights for her novel, House Woman.
Agbaje-Williams was recently promoted as Editor at The Borough Press. She is a
fiction and non-fiction editor.
About the book, Nworah said it contains “The most compelling horror stories hide in plain sight, and House Woman is my tribute to the art. It is boy meets girl with a twist. A portrait of two Nigerian families with a bond as deep and as twisted as their motivations.”
The book will publish in the UK in 2023 while Unnamed Press will publish in the US in 2022.
The publisher said: “House Woman tells the story of Divine, a young woman who is sent to the US from Nigeria to marry a man named Nna, and live with him and his parents. What begins as a simple transaction between families turns out to be something far more sinister; as darkness emerges between herself and her new family, Divine is forced to reckon with whether she has what it takes to free herself once and for all”.
Agbaje-Williams said: ‘‘Every time I think about House Woman, I’m reminded of what an accomplishment it is. To be humorous, insightful, and very, very creepy with such an incredible narrative voice is truly a rare thing, and Adorah is a rare writer. I cannot wait for readers to discover what a unique, compulsive and brilliant read House Woman is.”