Ghostroots was a finalist for the National Book Awards, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, a World Fantasy Award and the Young Lions Fiction Award at the New York Public Library. One of TIME’s Top 10 Fiction Books of 2024, and NYT’s 100 Notable Books of 2024 and a 2024 favourite for Apple Books, Library Journal, Vulture, and one of Electric Literature‘s best story collections of the year!

Nice things said about Ghostroots:

“Wildly inventive and odd, but written with surgeonlike precision, these stories herald the arrival of a major voice in speculative fiction.” Gabino Iglesias, New York Times Book Review

“Aguda stirs her cauldron of social criticism, feminism, structural invention and grotesque gothic twists into a triumph of genre-bending storytelling, a kind of African uncanny all of her own.” Christian House, Financial Times

“Aguda’s rich, uncanny tales continue to send us around these knotted loops. There is no right way to move in Aguda’s world. It is a world haunted, burdened—and fascinating, for anyone brave enough to dive into her evocative, eerie stories.” Leah Rachel von Essen, Chicago Review of Books

“Ghostroots is an elegantly constructed, breathtakingly beautiful, numinous collection of stories that present emo­tional blueprints of the Lagosian soul as a way of investigating the larger human condition.” Wole Talabi, Locus Mag

“Aguda’s excellent story collection deserves a wide audience.” Library Journal

“In her spectacular and often haunting collection, ‘Pemi Aguda reimagines Lagos, Nigeria’s everyday rhythms with a supernatural essence, much like Bora Chung or Mariana Enríquez’ uncanny voices. The surreal and bizarre swirl around diseases, mothers and children with melodic prose, uncovering the annals of the human condition in Aguda’s arresting debut.” Our Culture Magazine

“[Aguda’s] debut collection takes readers into a surreal series of lives in the city of Lagos, creating a heightened reality where these conflicts play out.” Brooklyn, Vol. 1

“Aguda spins a dozen sumptuous yarns depicting life in Lagos—with a twist. From a young woman possessed by a grandmother she never knew and a group of lenders who borrow against some very unique collateral to a house with all the wrong angles, Aguda explores the people and places of her home in ways that expanded our empathy and our imagination… With its lush blend of the mundane and the supernatural, Ghostroots creates a landscape where karma, faith, and the human condition all intersect in the most powerful ways.” Apple Books, included as one of their “Best Books of May”

“Where to even start? This is one of the finest collections I have read. Inventive, cunning, original, and all conveyed with impeccable prose. And what a voice, what a unique vision. These stories read like only ‘Pemi Aguda could have written them, with her distinct style and an unshakable sensibility evident in every sly turn of story, taking the narrative in perfect, unpredictable directions. Nothing short of phenomenal.” Lesley Nneka Arimah, author of What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky

“’Pemi Aguda is an astonishing talent. She’s inventive with form and playful with sentences. In Ghostroots, the delightful speculative conceits of the stories are elegantly, even architecturally, balanced with the gorgeous fullness of human emotion, all the hunger and longing and fear and delight of being a human being in the world. A wonderful collection from a truly gifted writer.” Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds

“’Pemi Aguda’s Ghostroots is a triumph! The author’s strong storytelling skills give readers the gift of realistic characters and darkly imaginative stories that creep under your skin and stay buried there. Disturbing, enthralling and unforgettable. This author is now among my favorites.” Tananarive Due, author of The Reformatory

“Here you’ll find breathtaking stories of the familiar and the strange, full of empathy for characters trying to bridge chasms between communities, families, generations, and their ghosts. ‘Pemi Aguda builds worlds with blade-like acuity. You’ll be caught in their sway and transported.” Diane Cook, author of The New Wilderness

“In this perceptive and astute collection, ‘Pemi Aguda tells of the metaphysical cracks on the surface of contemporary Nigerian society with an uncompromising humane touch.” Emmanuel Iduma, author of I Am Still With You

“A marvelously unsettling collection where the everyday strangeness of life and the uncanny rub up against each other to create real fire.” Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love

“’Pemi Aguda is spectacular. This book is a big, strong river. Once you are caught in its currents, you flow with it no matter where it runs. And it runs through gorgeous and startling places.” Luis Alberto Urrea, author of Good Night, Irene

“I loved everything about this book, which heralds a major and extraordinary new voice in fiction. ‘Pemi Aguda knows where the real magic is, and she gives it all its gorgeousness, all its teeth. These stories consumed me. I’ll be thinking about them for years to come.” Clare Beams, author of The Garden

“Ghostroots is the kind of collection you dream of discovering and reading—from one of my favorite living writers.” Jeff VanderMeer, author of Hummingbird Salamander