Black Sunday

"Abraham stuffs her novel past brimming, but its sophisticated structure and propulsive narration allow her to tuck in a biting critique of corrupt colonial religion and universally exploitative men... A formidable debut."   -  Kirkus Reviews

Twin sisters Bibike and Ariyike are enjoying a relatively comfortable life in Lagos in 1996. Then their mother loses her job due to political strife, and the family, facing poverty, becomes drawn into the New Church, an institution led by a charismatic pastor who is not shy about worshipping earthly wealth. 

Soon Bibike and Ariyike’s father wagers the family home on a “sure bet” that evaporates like smoke. And as their parents’ marriage collapses in the aftermath of this gamble, the twin sisters and their siblings  - inseparable while they had their parents to care for them -  find their paths diverge. Each girl is left to locate, guard, and hone her own fragile source of power. 

"Tola Rotimi Abraham's Black Sunday will destroy you. It won't be an explosion or any other ultraviolent thing. Instead, the novel will inflict a thousand tiny cuts on you, and your soul will slowly pour from them... Abraham creates believable characters whose stories could easily have come from real life [that] makes them simultaneously unique and universal, and it makes it easy to understand the way they see the world, even if their lens is ugly."   -   Gabino Iglesias, NPR

Written with astonishing intimacy and wry attention to the fickleness of fate, Tola Rotimi Abraham’s Black Sunday takes us into the chaotic heart of family life, tracing a line from the euphoria of kinship to the devastation of estrangement.