Thara Popoola Wins Modern Stories 2026
The screenwriter and Sex Education writer won the romance writing prize for her debut novel-in-progress, Right Person, Wrong Timeline. J. D. Malle and Violet E. Scott were named runners-up.
Books
Introducing Critical Registrar’s expanded books coverage: essays, criticism, fiction, poetry, and recommendations from our writers and editors.
Tolu Oloruntoba, Othuke Umukoro and Lorna Goodison named Derek Walcott Prize finalists
Two Nigerian poets and Jamaican writer Lorna Goodison are among 15 finalists for the 2026 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry.
Nineteen Women, Five Countries: Gathered Seams Brings Southern African Voices Together
The new anthology from Modjaji Books brings together poets from Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Malawi and South Africa, creating a cross-border conversation about women’s lives and the region’s changing literary landscape.
Eze, Ifowodo and Oburumu Reach Final Stage of $100,000 Nigeria Prize for Literature
James Ngwu Eze, Ogaga Ifowodo and Tares Oburumu are the finalists for the 2026 prize, which is dedicated to poetry.
Season of the Serpent: The World Does Not Need Saving
Suyi Davies Okungbowa closes The Nameless Republic trilogy with a question sharper than who wins the war: what happens when the people who broke a world are the ones left to rebuild it.
More from Books
The Aquatics by Osvalde Lewat and the Cost of Staying Comfortable
Osvalde Lewat's prize-winning novel is about friendship, political violence and complicity. More interestingly, it is about the comfortable lies people tell themselves when somebody else is paying the price.
In One Leg on Earth, Lagos Is Haunted by Its Own Future
Pemi Aguda’s debut novel turns Lagos’s transformation into a source of supernatural dread, bringing together motherhood, urban development and folklore. Its atmosphere is often striking, but its ambitious ideas are not always matched by equally developed characters or a satisfying resolution.
Chibundu Onuzo Takes Mayowa to Nigeria in New Children's Adventure
In Mayowa and the Fire of Speech, the second book in her imaginative trilogy, an eleven-year-old Mayowa travels to Nigeria and discovers an ancient Yoruba art in which spoken words can shape reality.
Chika Unigwe’s Grace Asks What Motherhood Costs Women
In her new novel, Chika Unigwe places a woman who once gave up her baby at the centre of a wider examination of motherhood, shame, poverty and the choices women are forced to make when society offers them no good options.
Obinna Udenwe’s Years of Shame Needs a Steadier Hand
Obinna Udenwe sets out to bring Abakaliki history, culture and tradition into Nigerian fiction. Years of Shame has a compelling subject, but its rushed plot, thin characterisation and loose editing often get in the way of the story he wants to tell.
In Cursed Daughters, Oyinkan Braithwaite Turns a Family Curse Into a Question of Inheritance
Oyinkan Braithwaite’s latest novel uses a supernatural inheritance to examine marriage, female desire, family trauma and the stories women inherit about themselves.
Between Two Homes, Belonging Is Never Simple
Nikki May’s This Motherless Land moves between Nigeria and England to examine family, race, privilege and the difficult work of making a home when neither place fully feels like your own.