Accolades
Below is a selection of accolades for her work
“A liberatingly odd, seductive and fearless talent.”
“A wonderful, richly drawn novel, cleverly juxtaposing scenes from everyday London with African folklore and mysticism.”
“Surreal, brave, ambitious, extraordinary.”
“I am reading "Speak Gigantular by Nigerian born Irenosen Okojie...it is amazing.
— Binyavanga Wainaina (@BinyavangaW) 18 March 2017
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“An original and highly unpredictable imagination. In a single sentence, Irenosen Okojie can whip the rug from under your feet. She’s that rare and admirable thing-a writer who is also a risk taker. Prepare to be startled.”
“Speak Gigantular is a work of rare confidence, luminous imagery and full of hidden sharp edges. There are few things that bring greater joy in reading than coming upon a talent so delightful, so penetrating, so scandalous. Okojie’s stories are magical in all the most interesting senses of that word: devious, enthralling, unexpected.”
“One of the most original and innovative writers to emerge in many a year.”
“Okojie has a sharp eye for the twisting stories of the city, and a turn of phrase that switches from elegance to brutality in a single line. Lovely stuff.”
“One of my favourite authors. A profoundly original, literary Olympic gymnast.”
“Okojie delves into the painful, the unsayable, the unknowable. Her prose is precise and illuminating.”
“I like her writing for the risk, for the heart, for the imagination.”
“Vivid, vital, witty, truthful.”
“Seriously unique and imaginative.”
“Okojie is a remarkable writer, she writes from multiple viewpoints with ease. Speak Gigantular is as startling and accomplished a range of narratives I have seen since David Mitchell’s ‘Ghostwritten’.”
“Creates a whole new geography of the imagination.”
“Unexpected, imaginative, literary. Not bound by any expectations of what an African author would, could or should write about.”
“Speak Gigantular is Irenosen Okojie’s glorious second book following her Betty Trask award winning debut novel, Butterfly Fish. The wonderful dedication to Speak Gigantular reads ‘To all the misfits who dare to tilt worlds.’ And there are indeed a number of affectionately drawn misfits in this brilliant collection. These are stories that dare to skew and tilt the world anew. As judges, we were bowled over by the freshness and vibrancy of the storytelling, it’s commingling of the comic and the tragic, its commitment to shining light on tales not usually heard and the exquisite inventiveness of the prose with its many fine turns of phrase. These are stories bursting at the seams. In them everything pulses with life, everything has will. There’s no such thing as inanimate objects. These are wild and tender and wholly moving stories about people falling apart, people at the cusp of personal apocalypse. But they’re also smart and wise stories about family, about sacrifices and the subtle lengths we travail for one another. And all the while, at the heart of this gorgeous and very funny collection, is an author dedicated to unpicking what it really means to be human – to unveiling the strange psychologies behind seemingly ordinary actions. Okojie is an author who beautifully captures how uncanny and how unbearably, unspeakably weird it sometimes is to be this thing that we call human. A dazzling collection. ”