The Fishermen

Told from the point of view of nine-year-old Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, The Fishermen is the story of an unforgettable childhood in 1990s Nigeria.

When their father has to travel to a distant city for work, the brothers take advantage of his extended absence to skip school and go fishing. At the forbidden nearby river they encounter a madman who predicts that one of the brothers, the eldest, would be killed by “a fisherman,” which he assumes to be one of his own brothers.

Thus, an extraordinary tension is created and an almost mythic chain of events — both tragic and redemptive — is set into motion, that will transform the lives and imaginations of the novel’s characters and its readers.