Description
Book SynopsisIn the early 1980s, a pharmaceutical company administers an unethical drug trial to residents of the Niger Delta village of Kreektown. When children die as a result, the dominoes of language extinction and cultural collapse begin to topple. Nwokolo moves across time and continents to deliver a novel that speaks to urgent contemporary concerns.
Trade Review“Twins separated at birth discover their true identities and a spiritual leader pursues the ancestral homeland of his ‘dying nation’ in this poignant, thrilling, and funny novel.…Nwokolo manages to brilliantly distill his branching plot into a singular portrayal of a threatened culture.” * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *
“As if anticipating 2019 as the year for language rights,
The Extinction of Menai by Chuma Nwokolo arrived in our bookstores and shelves not just as a novel but a cultural bible that demonstrates how language and culture are inseparable, how a viable culture and language could gradually become extinct.…In [contrast] to many academic writings telling about culture and language extinction, [Nwokolo] does not tell us, he shows us how languages and cultural extinction are not inseparable from human actions and inaction.” * Fiction and Development *
