Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

'Astonishing... remarkable, mythic'
Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple

'Impressive and beautifully imagined' Economist

In a small town in western Nigeria, four young brothers take advantage of their strict father's absence from home to go fishing at a forbidden local river. They encounter a dangerous local madman who predicts that the oldest boy will be killed by one of his brothers. This prophecy unleashes a tragic chain of events of almost mythic proportions.